Pretending in the virgin birth of ideas and words

A couple of weeks ago, I posted The narcissism of small differences, a series of observations by the economic historian, Niall Fergusson in an article from June of this year, Networks and Hierarchies. I was particularly taken by that turn of phrase, the narcissism of small differences because it so deftly captures what is so often at the heart of heated debates.

But recently, at the beach, I read Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures. And there it was again.

“The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.”

So has this phrase been circulating a long time and I am just now registering it? Is Fergusson, ironically, committing micro-plagiarism by using Gladwell's turn of phrase?

Fortunately we can set plagiarism aside. It is indeed a phrase of some lineage and circulation stretching back via Sigmund Freud (The Taboo of Virginity, 1917) to the work of a British anthropologist Ernest Crawley (1867-1924). From Freud's account.

Crawley, in language which differs only slightly from the current terminology of psycho-analysis, declares that each individual is separated from others by a ‘taboo of personal isolation’, and that it is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them.
It would be tempting to pursue this idea and to derive from this 'narcissism of minor differences' the hostility which in every human relationship we see fighting successfully against feelings of fellowship and overpowering the commandment that all men should love one another.(Freud 1917:199)

This brief search is interesting because it comports with Gladwell's conclusion in his Something Borrowed which appeared in The New Yorker, November 22, 2004. In the article he explores serendipity, uncertainty, chance, fallible memory and other contributors to perceived plagiarism. Here is one of his conclusions, as it happens, containing the mentioned phrase.

And this is the second problem with plagiarism. It is not merely extremist. It has also become disconnected from the broader question of what does and does not inhibit creativity. We accept the right of one writer to engage in a full-scale knockoff of another—think how many serial-killer novels have been cloned from “The Silence of the Lambs.” Yet, when Kathy Acker incorporated parts of a Harold Robbins sex scene verbatim in a satiric novel, she was denounced as a plagiarist (and threatened with a lawsuit). When I worked at a newspaper, we were routinely dispatched to “match” a story from the Times: to do a new version of someone else’s idea. But had we “matched” any of the Times’ words—even the most banal of phrases—it could have been a firing offense. The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.

His overall conclusion is

The final dishonesty of the plagiarism fundamentalists is to encourage us to pretend that these chains of influence and evolution do not exist, and that a writer’s words have a virgin birth and an eternal life. I suppose that I could get upset about what happened to my words. I could also simply acknowledge that I had a good, long ride with that line—and let it go.

So Freud got his idea from Crawley, paraphrasing Crawley in a strikingly meaningful manner which has echoed down the times and lines to Gladwell and then to Fergusson (and undoubtedly hundreds or thousands of others). A good idea or phrase thrives on its own merits regardless of its progenitor and any putative idea of ownership.

Of course all this brings to mind Henry Kissinger's quip, which is a variant of the idea behind the narcissism of small differences; "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."

Finally, there is Dr. Joy Bliss's joke about the narcissism of small differences.

I was walking across a bridge one sunny day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: 'Stop. Don't do it.'

'Why shouldn't I?' he asked.

'Well, there's so much to live for!'

'Like what?'

'Are you religious?'

He said: 'Yes.'

I said. 'Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?'

'Christian.'

'Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?''

'Protestant.'

'Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?'

'Baptist.'

'Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?'

'Baptist Church of God.'

'Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?'

'Reformed Baptist Church of God.'

'Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?'

He said: 'Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915.'

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off the bridge.