Blog Three: Indivisualism

What might it be like to live in a society with no "selves" and where "we" has replaced "I"?

A society is an ordered community, or a particular system of ordering a community. The society that I grew up in, and have always known as right, is a Capitalistic sort of organization. There are many, many, individuals making up our society, instead of one large group of people. Everyone makes their own decisions, and there is an abundance of freedom. People in America choose where they want to go to school, and what they want to do with their lives. Everyone here has a free will, and no one is forced to be something that they despise. When people in America, and every other country for that matter, say "we", they are referring to a group of people, and not just themselves. If we were to stop using the word "I", there would be no individualism. I wouldn't be hungry, but we would, even if I was the only person hungry. This is more of a hypothetical situation, more than it is actually explaining something, as it wouldn't make sense to say, "we are hungry," when walking in from school. There would be no free will if we stopped using the word "I", and everyone would want the same thing. If you were to take away the world's ability to be full of individuals, everything would, in a sense, would be collective. Everyone would aim for the same things, and no one would step up to be a leader. Everyone would go along with the "group's" wants. If we lived in a society with no "selves", someone would eventually step up and change it, just like Equality 7-2521 did. The world is full of intellectual people, and there is no way that EVERYONE could be the same. Sure, they wouldn't be accepted if they were different, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't exist. Take away individualism, creativity will go with it. There will be no new ideas, the world won't advance anymore; everything will stop.


Explain the significance of the names that Rand gave her characters. Why do you think particular names were used?

There were many characters in this book, and some of the names repeated various times. The main character was named Equality, and I think his name is slightly ironic. Equality stood up for the right for everyone to be individual and successful. Equality wanted everyone to have proportional chances and equal success, but in a different sense than equality that is achieved through collectivism. Everyone was already equal, but he wanted people to be able to have the right to gain what they earn. Equality stood up against a collectivist society, and a few of the collectivist characters had names to represent that. Fraternity, Alliance, International, Similarity and Unanimity are some of the names that Rand chose to represent collectivism. The names of these scholars all represent people sharing things in common, be it a small or large group. I think that she chose these names to show what an individual would have to stand up to in order the achieve equality.


Equality talks about the unspeakable word on page 51. What do you think that word is, and why is it unspeakable in this society? What would happen if this word was used, and how would it change the way people think of each other and themselves?

Before I finished the book, I thought the unspeakable word was "I". I thought this because there are no individuals in the book (that society knows of), and it is forbidden to be a single person. If people were to start using the word "I", there would be no collectivism, and there would be far less group control. People would start developing opinions and thinking for themselves. They would become aware of "themselves" and their emotions. Everyone would start to think of themselves as individually capable, and they would think the same about other people. No one would rely on a single person to tell the world what to do, and people would choose to do things to benefit themselves instead of the group.