How much of human thought or action is actually original? I know we think we are a creative and original specie of animal, but are we truly? Sure, we are 'different' from other animals (that brain), but the differences we see are simply an accumulation of 50,000 years of stumbing around and getting lucky once in awhile.

All my experience suggests that nearly All we do or think is formed through group (tribal) consensus. Sure, each 'monkey' adds his bit. But, as Einstein said, "I'm standing on the shoulders of giants" (50,000 years worth). Most of the bits we add are just rearrangements of other bits and pieces. It is like we each have a room full of furniture in our mind. We move the furniture around - different points of view - but no one is the 'master carpenter' creating his own furniture. We arrive into 'adulthood' with a mind space fully furnished with words - and a set of parochial world-views formed by them. Sure, we may throw out some of this furniture, trade it or borrow someone else's, but nothing new is actually created in the deepest sense of that word. Earth has its carbon cycle and water cycle... we have our perception and preconception cycle. Correlations gives us a way to look at the furniture, examine it, feel it, and maybe even shrink and weaken it enough so it can be laid aside somewhat... at least enough to peek into the gateway of the manifold secrets

It is all already known. It is only, as yet, undiscovered by me.