Oscar Wilde wrote that most people are other people. Their thoughts are somebody else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Try to think of a thought that is uniquely, originally yours (not something you've absorbed, been sold, or that you've heard) but something that you yourself have come up with. Because, according to the philosopher Louis Althusser, it's nearly impossible.
We have inherited an idea that has its roots in ancient Greece: that it's important to be independent. The best minds will be self-aware and self-governing, that we alone should control our thoughts. With good thinking and pure reason, we can rid ourselves of illusions. But, in the 1970s, Althusser argued that it's already too late. By the time any of us developed the cognitive ability to do anything like philosophizing, our reason has already become decidedly impure.
From the moment we are born, we are doused in an amniotic fluid of bias, propaganda, and ideology. Your parents, your school, your job, your church, and your government are all dropping in certain thoughts that you call 'my thoughts'. And these days, we can add media barons, tech oligarchs, and social media into the shadowy equation. Althusser argued that we all internalize certain dominant social values, and we take our place in a social hierarchy that he called 'interpellation'.
And so, we think we are living original lives and having original thoughts. But, in reality, we are just regurgitating a memetic script that has been force-fed to us from birth. So, if Wilde and Althusser are right, is there any such thing as an original thought?