KentForLiberty pages

Saturday, December 08, 2012

No new ideas?

It used to bother me when I came up with a thought, a "new idea", and then discovered that other people (Lysander Spooner, H. D. Thoreau, etc.) had thought the same thought long before I did.

This doesn't bother me much anymore.

Some things are just so self-evident that people who think will continue to come up with the same ideas over and over again.  This is a very good thing.

The fact that I have an idea isn't very influential.  Perhaps someday someone more influential than me will have the idea and it will spread like wildfire.  Or, perhaps someday enough people will have the same idea at the same time and it will cause a huge shift in society.

Keep thinking those thoughts and don't worry that countless others throughout history have probably thought of the same thing.  There may be no new ideas, but there are certainly new situations where those old ideas are needed.

And be sure and take those liberty-enhancing thoughts you have and put them to work in the real world instead of keeping them hidden inside your head.  Because, ultimately, that's the only real value to having the ideas.


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