The Act of Reproduction is Definitely Not Sexy!

Let's talk about how we manage reproduction, by which I mean the following processes:

• Desiring to cultivate the initial seeds that will eventually lead to conception; 
• Selecting an appropriate source (or sources) where the seeds may come together and be nurtured; and 
• Forming the perfect offspring without duplication or replication.

Enjoyable as reproduction may initially be, particularly when a number of other people are involved in the processes (whether knowingly or unwittingly), it is particularly important to take all proper precautions.  This is so as to avoid future litigation and to establish proper ownership of our products of conception. 

I am talking about something that many of us do from time to time. It's sometimes deliciously gratifying or even ecstatically pleasing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes arduous and long drawn out, and sometimes terminated prematurely. It is, of course, the compilation of a mixture of concepts and ideas and the committing of them either to paper or to screen, via the art formerly known as writing. 

Now that you've all dragged your minds out of the gutter and are focusing on the art of written communication, rather than the art of fooling around, let's examine how we acknowledge the contribution of others and how we fuse them into our presentations, while some of us avoid and others embrace the dreaded plagiarism.

So why entice us with the word reproduction, do I hear you say, when writing is a creative and uniquely individual process?  Well creative, most certainly, but unique? I hardly think so.  

“Originality is undetected plagiarism” - William Inge (at least I believe so, in the absence of multiple other claims to quote).

These days I challenge anyone to write on any subject that hasn't already been explored by a plethora of others, either recently, or in the dark and distant past of “the olden days”, to which my kids used to refer, as in:

“Dad, how did they write in the olden days before computers and keyboards?” or

"Dad, how did they count in the olden days before pocket calculators?

Yes, of course there was life before Google, but, back then, when Adam was a lad and Eve didn't have a wickedly serpent induced recipe for apple strudel, we used to either remain blissfully ignorant of the possibility of duplication and replication, or else we'd spend hours begrudgingly perusing dusty leather-bound parchment in that chamber of silent whispers, the library.  Such time indoors was arguably wasted, back then, instead of practicing the outdoor rudiments of how to beat the Poms at cricket.  

These days, you can find the answer to almost any nagging query, including the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, with a few hasty movements of your thumbs across a small pocket sized magic gizmo.  This same device, besides providing us with an instant communicator and data finder, is also subliminally responsible for our hyperbolically reducing attention spans.  Said Apple vs Android products may also be slowly bending the formerly upright spine of Homo Sapiens to the curved stoop of modern day Homo Non-Sapiens (or Homo Ignoratio). 

Incidentally, Douglas Adams fans will take great delight in telling you that the answer to the Ultimate Question can be found while waiting for your order to arrive at any fast food restaurant, without making a booking in advance at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.  The spoiler, for anyone out there who hasn't as yet read Adams' famous thumbs up to passing interstellar vehicles, bears an amazing resemblance to the product of 6 and 7, 2 and 21, or 3 and 14. But I digress.

These days it's all too easy to find storybook tales and quotes, or jokes and fun-and-frolic pokes at so many subjects, along with who was reputedly responsible for the initial setting down in words of various phrases, whether comical, whimsical or stoic.  I say reputedly responsible, since passage of time, and increase in both database and accessibility, have often left us with so many possibilities.  As an example, @John Rylance, in the comments string of one of @Franci 🐝Eugenia Hoffman, beBee Brand Ambassador 's posts, quoted the following:  

“Plagiarism is when you steal from one author. If you steal from several it's research”

- by Wilson Mizner.

A little research on https://quoteinvestigator.com">https://quoteinvestigator.com">https://quoteinvestigator.com , however, suggests that the old ‘plagiarism vs research’ quote, in perhaps slightly varying presentation, has also been accredited to Steven Wright, Wallace Notestein, Ralph Foss, Joseph Cummings Chase, Asa George Baker, Leslie Henson, Tom Lehrer, Bob Oliver and Anonymous.

This is not surprising really, as we have been telling ‘stories’, in one form or another, since our cave dwelling days and well before the good old ‘olden days’, that our children quiz us about.  Let's briefly look at a storytelling timeline, which I stumbled across recently, as depicted by Matt Peters in “The History of Storytelling in 10 Minutes” and which I've summarised as follows: 

1. Visual Oral Storytelling - from 30,000 BC (with primitive art, cave paintings and murals) to 700 BC (with printed stories carved into city walls).
2. Written Storytelling - from 200 BC to the late 20th Century and beyond, via handwritten scripts on papyrus, then printing on books and newspapers, and mass media storytelling via magazines.
3. Digital Storytelling - from the birth of network TV in 1939, through video games in the 1970s, music videos in the 1980s, and through to SM platforms with blog at the start of the 21st Century through to the recent advent (post 2018?) of virtual reality.

The above, of course, may suggest that we've now come full circle as a species, and begs us to question whether or not there can really be ownership these days in our telling of stories, whether they take the form, as I said above, of storybook tales and quotes, or jokes and fun-and-frolic pokes.

Where did our ideas come from and were they really self inspired, or are they a fusion of our worldly experiences and what we have retained, knowingly or subliminally, from our formal studies or our life's learnings, or indeed what has been passed down to us by our ancestors? 

This brings us back to plagiarism, what is it, is it good or bad and do we need to avoid it?

If you fellow writers and commenters, who are reading this, haven't already worked out the answers to the above for yourselves, and I suggest that perhaps you should, then may I further suggest that you read “Plagiarism Explained, Types, Why It's Bad, & How to Prevent It”, at this link, https://www.scribbr.com/category/plagiarism/">https://www.scribbr.com/category/plagiarism/">https://www.scribbr.com/category/plagiarism/ .

While you're at it, perhaps consider the following:

• Can words, ideas and concepts, really be stolen these days?
• Does plagiarism only apply to writing, or is it also applicable to images, videos and music?
• What are the consequences of plagiarism, if any?
• Is plagiarism only bad when we infringe upon copyright (or when we are caught)?
• Assuming that plagiarism can be bad, at least sometimes, then how do we avoid avoid engaging in it, whether knowingly or otherwise?

I look forward to your ideas and contributions in the comments string below, provided of course that they are your own.  On second thoughts, reproduce the work of others, if you want to, but just remember that, 

The Act of Reproduction (without taking proper precautions) is definitely not sexy! 

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When not researching the weird or the wonderful, the comical or the cultured, the sinful or the serious, I chase my creative side, the results of which can be seen as selected photographs of my travels on my website at:

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The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.