Do We Actually Have Original Thoughts?

I have been thinking about this for a while now, and it has really reinforced itself over the past couple of years.

The core question is simple. Do I/we actually have original thoughts?

Before this goes off into abstract territory about humanity, collectives, or the idea that nothing is new under the sun, just hear me out. I am not talking about inspiration or influence in the normal sense. I am questioning whether the way we arrive at ideas, conclusions, preferences, morals, and even political positions is actually our own anymore.

I am starting to believe that many of our/my thoughts are not original at all, but are shaped by a much larger system of social cues, algorithms, and behavioral priming that we barely notice.

Think about how often this happens. You come up with an idea and feel like it is yours. Then weeks or months later, you see it implemented somewhere else. Or it shows up as an ad. Or someone else starts talking about it. Most of the time, we brush it off. We say someone else must have had the same idea. Or maybe we heard it somewhere and forgot.

I do not think that explanation holds up anymore.

There used to be coincidences. Multiple people might see or hear the same thing and independently arrive at similar conclusions. Maybe it happened subconsciously. But what I have been noticing more and more is that ideas, inventions, political positions, and social attitudes seem to appear in clusters, in waves, with people believing they arrived there naturally.

I find myself arriving to thoughts just a little before everyone else. I thought I was just tuned in earlier than most people. Then I said, nah… that is just my ego. Maybe it is because of how much time I spend online. Maybe because of ADD. Maybe because I process patterns faster. But that does not mean the thought was original. It just means I received the signal earlier.

And that is the part that bothers me.

We are all plugged into the same stream now. We see the same memes. We get sent the same jokes from different people. Your mom sends you something your friend already sent. Your brother repeats a talking point you heard somewhere else. It feels organic, but it is not.

It is a shared feed.

I will give you two recent examples that really stuck with me.

A month ago, my sister in law put tinned fish in my Christmas stocking. Premium smoked stuff. Tuna belly. Smoked mackerel. One of the brands was Fishwife. I never eat tinned fish beyond basic tuna, but I tried it and I was hooked.

I took a picture of it. That was it.

Suddenly, I started seeing Fishwife ads everywhere. Instagram. Facebook. Everywhere. Fishwife dominated my feed.

Three weeks later, I am walking through Costco and there it is. Fishwife tinned tuna with chili flakes. I had never noticed it there before. Maybe it was new. Maybe it was not. But now my brain was primed. The brand recognition hit immediately. I bought it without hesitation.

We all know how marketing works. Prime the audience. Build familiarity. Then launch at scale. Costco pallets do not move themselves. They knew what they were doing.

But here is the part that keeps bothering me.

How did my sister in law know about it?

Where did that signal start? How many hops did it take before it landed in my stocking and then exploded across my feed?

The second time came from a conversation with a friend about a year ago. He was frustrated with gym clothes. Everything is synthetic. Polyester. Plastic rubbing against your skin while you sweat. He wanted natural materials. Organic cotton. Something real.

He even talked about turning it into a business.

Fast forward a year and my Instagram feed is full of ads for exactly that. Natural fiber workout gear.

Again, we know how marketing works. Create a lifestyle. Attach a feeling. Present the solution. Sell the product.

But now the question changes.

How far does this go?

If algorithms can shape what we buy and what we want, how far does that extend into politics? Into morals. Ethics. Advocacy. Personal style. The way we talk. The way we dress.

There is a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep explains to Anne Hathaway that the sweater she thought she chose on her own was actually the result of years of top down decisions in fashion. She breaks down the entire chain. Suddenly, what felt like personal taste is exposed as downstream influence.

That scene never really left me.

How much of that same process is happening to our beliefs?

I like to think my positions are carefully reasoned. That I sit down, write, think, challenge myself. That my views come from a deep and logical place. But what if my real job is not creating ideas, but sorting them? Organizing what has already been placed in front of me?

This is not a new concept, but what feels new is the scale.

Never before have we carried a dopamine driven machine in our pockets. Never before have we spent our days moving from a phone to a laptop to a television and back again. Eight hours on a small screen. Eight hours on a work screen. A few more on a living room screen. Then repeat.

The volume of cues is unprecedented.

At some point, original thought starts to feel less like a certainty and more like a hallucination.

We believe we are choosing. We believe we are concluding. But we are being nudged, guided, and primed by systems that have been refining persuasion for nearly a century, now powered by data at a scale no human mind can grasp.

It is not just echo chambers. It is more insidious than that.

We truly believe these ideas are ours. We believe… I believe I came up with them.

So I keep asking myself the same question.

Do I actually have original thoughts?

Are my morals, ethics, and convictions my own? Or am I being pushed from one position to another by algorithms trained on my behavior?

And before you dismiss that idea, ask yourself this.

Is it really impossible?

These systems know where you go. What you buy. What you return. Who you live with. How fast you drive. What music you listen to. When you scroll. What you linger on. What excites you. What scares you. What you fantasize about. What you avoid.

They know your insecurities before you name them.

So I ask again.

Do we actually have original thoughts?

Stay Angry

Go down the rabbit hole of how much of your day to day is tracked.