There seems to be a lot of cries of plagiarism lately. Some of it founded, but a lot of it unfounded, and based in something I like to call Convergent Creativity.

The same way Convergent Evolution works, so does the creative process.

In convergent evolution, two species in two entirely different environments, on opposite sides of the world, may evolve the exact same new traits at the exact same time! For example, two species of birds, one in Asia, one in Canada, both develop the same shape beak without ever having come into contact with each other.

Now, say instead of birds, we use artists. A man in Canada and a woman in Japan both decide they want to paint an apple. So do several hundred artists around the world, but these two, the Canadian and Japanese, both paint it almost exactly the same. Neither has ever met, but they both painted the same thing.

People all over the place, without knowing each other or experiencing each other's creations, come up with the same idea at the same time. Whoever gets it out there first is "original", while the others, who had the idea at the same time but submitted it to the world half a second later, are set upon by angry mobs with cries of "Plagarism" and "Unoriginal!"

Next time you see something you think is "unoriginal", perhaps also consider this: Humans have been around for thousands of years. This whole time, they have been writing stories, drawing pictures, making sculptures. The world changes, and gives them new material to write about, or paint, or draw, but there are also more people with every passing year. More artists wanting a piece of the new materials to work with.

There are only so many ideas in the world, and even the most creative person alive will find themselves doing the exact same thing as someone else. We can't help it.

A good friend of mine theorized that the only way for anything to be original ever again would be to completely destroy every historical painting, sculpture, work of art, book, poem, story... and start again. Even then, it would not be original, but we wouldn't remember that the twins of these works had once existed. But we won't do that. That would be crazy.

Perhaps we need to stop qualifying art by how original it is, and stop qualifying an artist by how original they are. Let us all make art for the joy of making on, and if it's never been done before- awesome! If it has, take pleasure in knowing that this one was done by you, to the best of your ability, and you enjoyed yourself doing it.

We need to stop being so quick to get angry with creative people for what they can't control.


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Now that isn't to say that tracers who surpass the people they traced from shouldn't be hacked into tiny bits and fed to hyenas.

But really, if it wasn't traced, instead of accusing them of plagiarism, accept the fact that that "totally awesome creative original idea" you had, maybe wasn't so original after all.