The Merit of Ipseity Anonymous 12th Grade

José Martí once asserted that “The first duty of a man is to think for himself.” When society favors mindless obedience over independent thinking, ego, forward progress, and knowledge all but disappear. Indubitably, objectivism is vital for humankind to persist and prosper. In her novella, Anthem, Rand advocates her philosophy of objectivism through Equality’s aspiration, value in realism, and the triumph of the individual.

With rational self-interest being a key principle of objectivism, aspiration supplies the individual with an objective to pursue in life. Contrastingly, unconditional allocentricity and submissiveness resonate a sense of meaningless and the inability to live one’s life to the fullest. In Anthem, the egregious collectivism subjugates the population to relinquish all desires in favor of laboring for the prosperity of society; “There is no life for men, save in useful toil for the good of their brothers. But we lived not, when we toiled for our brothers, we were only weary. There is no job for men, save the job shared with all their brothers” (Rand 86). Consequently, the notion of pursuing one’s own interests is an utterly foreign concept. However, through valuing objectivism and thusly the pursuit of...