One of the great struggles of writing becomes a search for originality. A thought is born, it flashes to life and wanders around the intellectual landscape. It starts out in some village, meets other ideas, networks, makes friends & enemies and eventually finds that some other almost identical idea was born years or centuries earlier and is well known in the next city over.
As an amateur mathematician I run into this problem very frequently. I prove Fermat's Little Theorem in the sixth grade only to discover that some other bloke did so centuries earlier, etc. Other intellectual landscapes offer far more grey area for varied thought and discover than mathematics, but you are only standing in a crowded field then. The challenge becomes weaving together the narratives of others into a platform you can build from. Takes research and time, and one could argue whether it even counts as originality anymore.
Outstanding questions (pending further research):
The role of wealth accumulation in the creation of high art, and its value.
The utility of cities - social, environmental, and economic.
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