OP-ED: IDEAS ARE BUILDING-BLOCKS REFORMATTED
By JAMES A. MARPLES
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I hear a lot of hubbub these days about “artificial intelligence” and “intellectual property”. To be sure, items of tangible worth used to generate profit can be copyrighted or patented. But I am leery about words like “plagiarism” and such on college campuses and elsewhere. Frankly, if some ideas had every precise footnote, a treatise might have enough footnotes to fill an old Sears catalog in thickness, even if the fundamental theme were only 4 pages long!
The noted scholar, Trevanion William Hugo said in June of 1917: “I am all mixed up on this plagiarism question, for short, stealing ideas and writing them down and either claiming them as my own by a definite signing of an article in which such ideas are used, or by saying nothing, permitting the opinion to be formed that they are original. I have previously made the assertion that there is no such a thing as an original idea. There may be ideas advanced which are new to us, but if we knew all that had been written or said we would not, nor could we claim originality, and a couple of the instances were quite striking, therefore I have been very careful in crediting to the last source of my information any concrete sent or paragraphs which I used, although I know my source was not the original by any means.” I believe Mr. Hugo was right.
In a neat twist of fate, Mr. Hugo was a friend of the former General and author Albert Pike (1809-1891). General Pike even published a thick, wordy, tome of a book called “Morals and Dogma”. It was meant to be a fraternal book, but sadly became controversial because of some passages that Pike either wrote in antiquated language using terminology that has entirely different connotations today. For instance, Pike was technically correct in that the word “Lucifer” as “morning star, bearer of light” and it can even refer to the planet Venus. However, in today’s modern language has a connotation of the devil, which wasn’t what 19th Century audiences were thinking.
To clear-up some of that confusion, after Pike’s death, Mr. Hugo published a “Digest of Morals and Dogma”. That helped to at least channel readers’ attention into categories or subject-headings.
Pike himself, was trying to hedge his bet when he himself wrote a preface to his own book: “In preparing this work, the (writer) has been about equally Author and Compiler, since he has extracted quite half its contents from the works of the best writers and most philosophic or eloquent thinkers. Perhaps it would have been better and more acceptable if he had extracted more and written less.”
To me, that is not only a disclaimer by Pike, but a super-charged disclaimer. He probably did extract more than half of what was printed. I don’t fault him for collecting breadcrumbs of thoughts and stringing them together and formulating them into a welded hybrid of old and new. However, I am concerned by a few other accusations that other people brought against Albert Pike in his life when he was a school-teacher. Pike was a rugged man weighing 350 pounds late in life, yet he allegedly authored a sweet poem reminiscent of a young teenage schoolgirl’s sweetness with wording —and her initials happened to be “A.P.” (Abby Poyen), and various contemporaries of Pike (even in his lifetime) accused him of plagiarism. In this 21st Century, we didn’t have to rely on “Artificial Intelligence”, but rather, diligent human intelligence and cross-comparisons which various academic scholars have picked-apart, and seemingly found Pike guilty of that act (possibly more). I think the term “plagiarism” is a non-issue, but what that amounts to is deplorable “identity-theft” –and it is serious. For a teenage student with coincidental initials “A.P.” having her schoolwork and private poems allegedly ransacked, stolen, and taken by a teacher (Albert Pike) defies any odds of mere coincidence. That, doesn’t merely imply sincerely flattery by copying, but hints at some subconscious fixation by hoping similar initials will hide the truth. That type of act, almost seizes the persona of another person. That’s an entirely different matter.
I firmly believe that ideas are like water: they flow and evolve. They flow over surfaces, they can etch-out crevices in earth as well as etch further creativity in the human brain by modifications. Indeed, ideas are building-blocks are like a Rubik’s Cube re-formatted for sparks of new thought. I do agree, that there needs to be governors or harnesses to prevent hurtful use. We don’t blame human babies for stacking their A, B, C blocks: We applaud it. Stacking an “X,Y,Z” set of blocks is simple growth an adaptation of another idea. No harm.
Simply “floating re-worked ideas” isn’t necessarily wrong; but “monetarily profiting” or impersonating someone’s entire persona and mannerisms entirely, amounts to ‘cloning’. And, that, in most cases, is wrong. Every situation must have conditions AND results taken into account. If no harm: No foul.
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