My Longest Post Yet!Yeah, I know that this post is a wee bit late, but i just figured out that I can upload past documents onto blogger. Enjoy!
In the book Anthem, the children are forced to recite a pledge every day. The pledge reads, ‘We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives. We exist by, through, and for our brothers who are the state. Amen.’ This doctrine strips away everyone’s individuality, and forces them to believe in only one thing, which all of their ‘brothers’ believe; that their lives are worthless, that they don’t matter, and that the only thing that matters is the welfare of their brothers. They believe this whole-heartedly throughout their lives, because they are taught this belief from their birth. Since they have no other source of information off of which to form their own, individual opinions and beliefs other than what is provided them, which is bias one-sided junk, it is impossible for them to have their own beliefs, morals, and personality. To me, this pledge is almost like communist doctrine, since everything they have is shared, and no one man can work for his own individual profits. The only thing that matters to them is the welfare of their country, or state, as it is in Anthem, where the only thing that matters in their society is the welfare of their brothers, who are the state. I think that when a child is taught from his birth to his death that he is worthless and useless, that really takes away his sense of personality and individuality with which a normal child is born, and takes for granted. Of course, in the book, the children don’t even have a glimpse of anything beyond their small, bias world, so they don’t know that they have completely lost their personality. However, to an outsider, like us reading the book, it is tragic that the children have been completely deprived of any freedom or sense of belonging and a personality. While the other children are all the same, with no individuality, Equality 7-2521 has his own personality, and knows that he is different from all of the other children. His main difference is in his intellectual capacity. He is much smarter and brighter than all of the other children, which causes him to be scrutinized upon by the teachers, because in his world, to be different than any of your brothers is a heinous crime. Equality tries to hide his intelligence by trying to act dumb, but his act doesn’t work. He is always different, and always looked down upon by everyone around him. Another one of Equality’s differences is his looks. Naturally, he is taller and stronger than anyone else, but really feels pride about that, along with his intelligence. Another one of his differences is that he actually has preference. For example, when all of the other children felt no preference whatsoever about what profession they were given, Equality strongly hoped to be put into the council of scholars, where he could use his intelligence beneficially. He also preferred the Golden One over any other woman, and thought that she was more beautiful than any other woman. He feels pride about his differences, and is motivated to change based on his differences, mostly because of curiosity. He wants to know what else is out there besides what he knows in his world, and acts to find out, using his curiosity and intelligence. Everyone else in the story is completely unmotivated to further advance their own knowledge or well-being, because to them, all that matters is the welfare of their state. They have no self-esteem, no self-confidence, no individuality, and absolutely no personality. The city in which Equality lives is governed by a council, which gives out jobs to the children when they are old enough. Once you receive your job, there is no question, and you can’t be transferred to another area of work. It is ironic, however, because one’s individual talents and skills are counteractive in the decision as to what job one receives. For example, Equality is very intelligent, and expects to be assigned to the council of scholars, where he could use his intelligence for the good of his brothers, but instead is assigned to be a street sweeper, where intelligence has nothing to do with his assignment. Likewise, if someone is a very talented artist, he will be assigned to a job like sewage management, where his skills have nothing to do with his job. The reason the distribution of jobs is so ironic is because the government doesn’t want any one person to be better at their task, so they put the smartest people in the jobs that require the least amount of intelligence, and the dumbest people in the jobs that require the most amount of intelligence. That way, no one can be better than anyone else, and all are equal. The children in Anthem are raised exactly equal, and live in plain, white rooms with one hundred beds in every room. There is no personal space, no privacy, and no mirrors. Also, the children never meet their biological parents, and never even know who their parents are. This cruel way to raise children may seem very counter-productive and flat out dumb, but there are some advantages to it. For one, since the children are raised exactly alike, and all are equal, there can be no favoritism by the instructors. Also, there are no behavioral issues, because if there are very strict punishments to anyone who breaks the law. There are no problems with theft, because everything is communal, nobody has anything that they can call their own, and basically, there is nothing to steal. However, one of the disadvantages is that no child can learn at their own pace. The slowest and dumbest child’s learning pace is everyone’s learning pace. This minimizes the amount that any one child can learn, keeping them all uneducated.
Equality has a happiness that nobody else has. His unique happiness lies in the simple fact that he is alive. His happiness to be alive is caused by the fact that he is different than everybody else, that he is superior to everybody else, and the Golden One also cause his happiness. He loves the Golden One, even though he does not yet know what love really is. He is curious, and he wants to live another day to answer all of his questions about life. The Golden One is a woman that he met in the fields while he was a street sweeper, and from the moment he laid his eyes on her, he knew that she was beautiful. He loved her, and wanted to protect her from any pain, such as in the House of Mating. This is a problem because if anybody finds out that they have been associating with each other, Equality and the Golden One would get punished severely. Equality’s feelings towards the Golden One are also a problem because she is now in grave danger, and an obligation to Equality if he is ever captured or found out after he runs away. When Equality shares his discovery, electricity, with the World Council of Scholars, the members of the council are at first terrified of this new power, but then are enraged. They try to think of the worst possible punishment for Equality, and are about to capture him when he suddenly runs towards the window with his box, shouting, ‘You fools, you fools! You thrice damned fools!’ Equality then breaks the window and jumps out of it, and runs into the Uncharted Forest with his box. Equality’s days in the Uncharted Forest were wonderful, but lonely. He spent his time wandering, hunting, but most of all, trying to test the limits of his body. Where he used to live, the people were not allowed to do anything that was not beneficial for their brothers, but in the forest, Equality spent hours running, climbing, spinning, and doing practically anything he wanted to do. The reason Equality was not pursued or captured was because the people would not dare to enter the Uncharted Forest, because they were very superstitious, and believed that the forest would kill anyone when they went inside it. Freedom is a completely new thing to Equality, because he had lived for all of his life under absolute rule, and had no freedom whatsoever. At first he is overwhelmed, but he soon realizes that this is the way the world should work, and these are the freedoms that everyone alive should have. We can’t really know what Equality felt when he was free, because since we live in America, we take our freedom for granted, and don’t realize the true value of freedom. When he sees his reflection in the pool of water, he is shocked, because there are no mirrors in his old world, and nobody had ever seen their face before. After he finds the Golden One, they walk through the mountains until they find a house that was left from the Unmentionable Times, and inside, equality finds many books. He carefully reads them all, and finds one word that he had never heard or seen before. The word was ‘I’. Since, until then, Equality had only used the word ‘we’ when describing himself, he did not know of this word. He soon finds out that this ‘forbidden word’ describes an individual, which had never existed before.
The main conflict in this story is obviously man versus society, because Equality and the society struggle with views and opinions, and are very different from each other. Equality believes that everyone should be free, be an individual, and have the freedom to prefer something over another thing. Society does not even know what freedom is, and wants everyone to be equal. If someone is different from any of their brothers, they are looked down upon and punished. Equality wants to advance his society with his knowledge and differences, but after he runs away, does not care at all about his brothers. He learns the ‘sacred word’ ego, and develops a great one. In his eyes, the only person after whom someone should be obliged to look is themselves, and they should have the freedom to pick their own friends and what they want to believe in. Another conflict is man versus nature, because Equality had to live off of the land while in the Uncharted Forest, which proved to be relatively easy due to his intelligence.
The whole theme of the book was freedom. In the world in which Equality first lived, there was no freedom at all; people were not even able to choose what meal they ate, much less what they believed in. Equality’s ‘sacred word’ was ‘ego’, and this related to the theme in saying that man needs a little ego to be profitable. The society was sort of like a very extreme form of communism; nobody could choose what they wanted, they had no freedom, and everything that they produced was for their society, and they did not get to keep any of what they produced. That was one of the reasons that the Communist Soviet Union fell. Since there was no motivation to work harder, nobody did. If you were a farmer, and you spent an extra three hours harvesting your crops so as to produce more goods, you wouldn’t get any of what you produced; it was all distributed evenly. The question people were asking was, ‘Why should I work any harder just so some poor man who doesn’t work as hard as I do can receive the money I earned?’ There was no motivation to work, so nobody did, and the government fell. Also, like Communism, the government distributed jobs, and there were no questions asked. The point that Ayn Rand was trying to make was that a free society works much better and is much more profitable than that of a Communist society, where the government controls everything. Just look at North Korea compared to South Korea. While North Koreans are still using oil lamps and oxen to plow their fields, South Korea is a very advanced country, bustling with commerce. It is because the citizens have freedom, and their economy is capitalist. It’s like in Anthem, where it took the Council of Scholars over one hundred years with as many resources they wanted to invent the candle, while it took about five years for Equality, with virtually no resources and only two hours per day to work, to invent the light-bulb.
A society without freedom cannot possibly be productive, because there is no motivation or drive to work harder and produce more goods. Since everything is shared equally, and all is for the ‘good of the state’, there is no reason to try to be more productive than what can provide for yourself, because you don’t get any of what you produce. A society that is free, on the other hand, is very productive, and advances much more rapidly than a society that is not free. If I receive what I produce, I will be motivated to produce as much as I possibly can, because I benefit from my work directly, instead of some poor person whom I’ve never met getting my money and goods. It’s stupid to think that someone will work solely for the benefit of his brothers. It is human nature, man’s ego, to work for his own direct benefits, because he rightfully believes that he deserves the goods that he produces. In communism, there is no ‘corporate ladder’ to climb up, no motivation to work harder in a company in order to receive a raise, and get a larger salary. In a free society, there is that ego; that drive to work harder in order to advance one’s own well-being.
In my opinion, a moral and just society is one in which no one person has absolute power, and the people vote on the course of action that they want their country to take. It would be a democracy, in which everyone was free, and had basic rights as citizens. Everyone would have the freedom of religion, the right to free speech, the right to a fair trial in which the defendant argues his own case before a jury of randomly selected citizens, and other rights. Citizens would be able to choose their own line of profession, and would get to keep all of their income except for a small tax for government costs. There would be one leader, but he would have a very limited amount of power, because every main course of action that the government takes would be voted upon by the citizens, and the majority rules. Punishment for criminals depends on the severity of their crime, but the basic principle would be, ‘An eye for an eye.’ What that means is, if you murder a man, you receive the death penalty. If you steal from a man, you must reimburse him for all of the money that you took from him. An exception might be if you tortured and killed a man, you would only be killed. There would be no cruel and unusual punishment, and a prisoner is allowed to repeal his death sentence, as well as to receive another fair trial if his original trial was voted unfair. This description does not nearly scratch the surface of a whole working government, but is a brief summary of my idea of a just government.
In the book Anthem, the children are forced to recite a pledge every day. The pledge reads, ‘We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives. We exist by, through, and for our brothers who are the state. Amen.’ This doctrine strips away everyone’s individuality, and forces them to believe in only one thing, which all of their ‘brothers’ believe; that their lives are worthless, that they don’t matter, and that the only thing that matters is the welfare of their brothers. They believe this whole-heartedly throughout their lives, because they are taught this belief from their birth. Since they have no other source of information off of which to form their own, individual opinions and beliefs other than what is provided them, which is bias one-sided junk, it is impossible for them to have their own beliefs, morals, and personality. To me, this pledge is almost like communist doctrine, since everything they have is shared, and no one man can work for his own individual profits. The only thing that matters to them is the welfare of their country, or state, as it is in Anthem, where the only thing that matters in their society is the welfare of their brothers, who are the state. I think that when a child is taught from his birth to his death that he is worthless and useless, that really takes away his sense of personality and individuality with which a normal child is born, and takes for granted. Of course, in the book, the children don’t even have a glimpse of anything beyond their small, bias world, so they don’t know that they have completely lost their personality. However, to an outsider, like us reading the book, it is tragic that the children have been completely deprived of any freedom or sense of belonging and a personality. While the other children are all the same, with no individuality, Equality 7-2521 has his own personality, and knows that he is different from all of the other children. His main difference is in his intellectual capacity. He is much smarter and brighter than all of the other children, which causes him to be scrutinized upon by the teachers, because in his world, to be different than any of your brothers is a heinous crime. Equality tries to hide his intelligence by trying to act dumb, but his act doesn’t work. He is always different, and always looked down upon by everyone around him. Another one of Equality’s differences is his looks. Naturally, he is taller and stronger than anyone else, but really feels pride about that, along with his intelligence. Another one of his differences is that he actually has preference. For example, when all of the other children felt no preference whatsoever about what profession they were given, Equality strongly hoped to be put into the council of scholars, where he could use his intelligence beneficially. He also preferred the Golden One over any other woman, and thought that she was more beautiful than any other woman. He feels pride about his differences, and is motivated to change based on his differences, mostly because of curiosity. He wants to know what else is out there besides what he knows in his world, and acts to find out, using his curiosity and intelligence. Everyone else in the story is completely unmotivated to further advance their own knowledge or well-being, because to them, all that matters is the welfare of their state. They have no self-esteem, no self-confidence, no individuality, and absolutely no personality. The city in which Equality lives is governed by a council, which gives out jobs to the children when they are old enough. Once you receive your job, there is no question, and you can’t be transferred to another area of work. It is ironic, however, because one’s individual talents and skills are counteractive in the decision as to what job one receives. For example, Equality is very intelligent, and expects to be assigned to the council of scholars, where he could use his intelligence for the good of his brothers, but instead is assigned to be a street sweeper, where intelligence has nothing to do with his assignment. Likewise, if someone is a very talented artist, he will be assigned to a job like sewage management, where his skills have nothing to do with his job. The reason the distribution of jobs is so ironic is because the government doesn’t want any one person to be better at their task, so they put the smartest people in the jobs that require the least amount of intelligence, and the dumbest people in the jobs that require the most amount of intelligence. That way, no one can be better than anyone else, and all are equal. The children in Anthem are raised exactly equal, and live in plain, white rooms with one hundred beds in every room. There is no personal space, no privacy, and no mirrors. Also, the children never meet their biological parents, and never even know who their parents are. This cruel way to raise children may seem very counter-productive and flat out dumb, but there are some advantages to it. For one, since the children are raised exactly alike, and all are equal, there can be no favoritism by the instructors. Also, there are no behavioral issues, because if there are very strict punishments to anyone who breaks the law. There are no problems with theft, because everything is communal, nobody has anything that they can call their own, and basically, there is nothing to steal. However, one of the disadvantages is that no child can learn at their own pace. The slowest and dumbest child’s learning pace is everyone’s learning pace. This minimizes the amount that any one child can learn, keeping them all uneducated.
Equality has a happiness that nobody else has. His unique happiness lies in the simple fact that he is alive. His happiness to be alive is caused by the fact that he is different than everybody else, that he is superior to everybody else, and the Golden One also cause his happiness. He loves the Golden One, even though he does not yet know what love really is. He is curious, and he wants to live another day to answer all of his questions about life. The Golden One is a woman that he met in the fields while he was a street sweeper, and from the moment he laid his eyes on her, he knew that she was beautiful. He loved her, and wanted to protect her from any pain, such as in the House of Mating. This is a problem because if anybody finds out that they have been associating with each other, Equality and the Golden One would get punished severely. Equality’s feelings towards the Golden One are also a problem because she is now in grave danger, and an obligation to Equality if he is ever captured or found out after he runs away. When Equality shares his discovery, electricity, with the World Council of Scholars, the members of the council are at first terrified of this new power, but then are enraged. They try to think of the worst possible punishment for Equality, and are about to capture him when he suddenly runs towards the window with his box, shouting, ‘You fools, you fools! You thrice damned fools!’ Equality then breaks the window and jumps out of it, and runs into the Uncharted Forest with his box. Equality’s days in the Uncharted Forest were wonderful, but lonely. He spent his time wandering, hunting, but most of all, trying to test the limits of his body. Where he used to live, the people were not allowed to do anything that was not beneficial for their brothers, but in the forest, Equality spent hours running, climbing, spinning, and doing practically anything he wanted to do. The reason Equality was not pursued or captured was because the people would not dare to enter the Uncharted Forest, because they were very superstitious, and believed that the forest would kill anyone when they went inside it. Freedom is a completely new thing to Equality, because he had lived for all of his life under absolute rule, and had no freedom whatsoever. At first he is overwhelmed, but he soon realizes that this is the way the world should work, and these are the freedoms that everyone alive should have. We can’t really know what Equality felt when he was free, because since we live in America, we take our freedom for granted, and don’t realize the true value of freedom. When he sees his reflection in the pool of water, he is shocked, because there are no mirrors in his old world, and nobody had ever seen their face before. After he finds the Golden One, they walk through the mountains until they find a house that was left from the Unmentionable Times, and inside, equality finds many books. He carefully reads them all, and finds one word that he had never heard or seen before. The word was ‘I’. Since, until then, Equality had only used the word ‘we’ when describing himself, he did not know of this word. He soon finds out that this ‘forbidden word’ describes an individual, which had never existed before.
The main conflict in this story is obviously man versus society, because Equality and the society struggle with views and opinions, and are very different from each other. Equality believes that everyone should be free, be an individual, and have the freedom to prefer something over another thing. Society does not even know what freedom is, and wants everyone to be equal. If someone is different from any of their brothers, they are looked down upon and punished. Equality wants to advance his society with his knowledge and differences, but after he runs away, does not care at all about his brothers. He learns the ‘sacred word’ ego, and develops a great one. In his eyes, the only person after whom someone should be obliged to look is themselves, and they should have the freedom to pick their own friends and what they want to believe in. Another conflict is man versus nature, because Equality had to live off of the land while in the Uncharted Forest, which proved to be relatively easy due to his intelligence.
The whole theme of the book was freedom. In the world in which Equality first lived, there was no freedom at all; people were not even able to choose what meal they ate, much less what they believed in. Equality’s ‘sacred word’ was ‘ego’, and this related to the theme in saying that man needs a little ego to be profitable. The society was sort of like a very extreme form of communism; nobody could choose what they wanted, they had no freedom, and everything that they produced was for their society, and they did not get to keep any of what they produced. That was one of the reasons that the Communist Soviet Union fell. Since there was no motivation to work harder, nobody did. If you were a farmer, and you spent an extra three hours harvesting your crops so as to produce more goods, you wouldn’t get any of what you produced; it was all distributed evenly. The question people were asking was, ‘Why should I work any harder just so some poor man who doesn’t work as hard as I do can receive the money I earned?’ There was no motivation to work, so nobody did, and the government fell. Also, like Communism, the government distributed jobs, and there were no questions asked. The point that Ayn Rand was trying to make was that a free society works much better and is much more profitable than that of a Communist society, where the government controls everything. Just look at North Korea compared to South Korea. While North Koreans are still using oil lamps and oxen to plow their fields, South Korea is a very advanced country, bustling with commerce. It is because the citizens have freedom, and their economy is capitalist. It’s like in Anthem, where it took the Council of Scholars over one hundred years with as many resources they wanted to invent the candle, while it took about five years for Equality, with virtually no resources and only two hours per day to work, to invent the light-bulb.
A society without freedom cannot possibly be productive, because there is no motivation or drive to work harder and produce more goods. Since everything is shared equally, and all is for the ‘good of the state’, there is no reason to try to be more productive than what can provide for yourself, because you don’t get any of what you produce. A society that is free, on the other hand, is very productive, and advances much more rapidly than a society that is not free. If I receive what I produce, I will be motivated to produce as much as I possibly can, because I benefit from my work directly, instead of some poor person whom I’ve never met getting my money and goods. It’s stupid to think that someone will work solely for the benefit of his brothers. It is human nature, man’s ego, to work for his own direct benefits, because he rightfully believes that he deserves the goods that he produces. In communism, there is no ‘corporate ladder’ to climb up, no motivation to work harder in a company in order to receive a raise, and get a larger salary. In a free society, there is that ego; that drive to work harder in order to advance one’s own well-being.
In my opinion, a moral and just society is one in which no one person has absolute power, and the people vote on the course of action that they want their country to take. It would be a democracy, in which everyone was free, and had basic rights as citizens. Everyone would have the freedom of religion, the right to free speech, the right to a fair trial in which the defendant argues his own case before a jury of randomly selected citizens, and other rights. Citizens would be able to choose their own line of profession, and would get to keep all of their income except for a small tax for government costs. There would be one leader, but he would have a very limited amount of power, because every main course of action that the government takes would be voted upon by the citizens, and the majority rules. Punishment for criminals depends on the severity of their crime, but the basic principle would be, ‘An eye for an eye.’ What that means is, if you murder a man, you receive the death penalty. If you steal from a man, you must reimburse him for all of the money that you took from him. An exception might be if you tortured and killed a man, you would only be killed. There would be no cruel and unusual punishment, and a prisoner is allowed to repeal his death sentence, as well as to receive another fair trial if his original trial was voted unfair. This description does not nearly scratch the surface of a whole working government, but is a brief summary of my idea of a just government.
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