Memorial vacation

My vacation was okay. I went to Palisades Mall to watch Indiana Jones with my family. The movie was highly anticipated by many Indiana Jones fans, but the movie was horrible. I'm not a big Indiana Jones fan, but my dad who is also thought it was horrible. I also went to a friend's birthday party on Suday and had a barbeque with my family on Memorials day.

Outline

What is the question you are answering in your own words?

Is collectivism good or bad?

What is your thesis statement? This sets up the entire paper
with your focus and direction.

Suppressing individual desires to maintain interests of the society does exact opposite of what it intended to do; rather than preserving the society, it destroys it.


BODY PARAGRAPH 1
What is the topic/idea of this paragraph?
Collectivism forces individuals to accept what the society demands them to do.

What quote(s) ideas from research will you use to help prove your points?
a. “Rand suggests that society should be sought out only when a person chooses it, as a second thought to what the individual wants, and that it should be only with those people whom the individual chooses.”


b. “like stone, crushing [others] beneath it “

What example(s) from the book(s) will you use to help prove your points?
a. Equality wanted to be a scientist but the council made him a streetsweeper.




BODY PARAGRAPH 2
What is the topic/idea of this paragraph?
Collectivism hinders technological growth. Collectivist Councils suppress individual’s scientific knowledge because not all men agree with it.

What quote(s) ideas from research will you use to help prove your points?
a. “many strange things, of towers which rose to the sky ... and of the wagons which moved without horses, and of lights which burned without flame. But those times were evil. And those times passed away, when men saw the Great Truth which is this: that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men together”


What example(s) from the book(s) will you use to help prove your points?
a. Council shuns Equality’s rediscovery of electricity


BODY PARAGRAPH 3
What is the topic/idea of this paragraph?
The society has significant effect on the growth of individualism. If the society prevents growth, then great individuals will not develop at all.

What quote(s) ideas from research will you use to help prove your points?
a. “the individual is not an isolated monid, but a social product. His
ideals and interests, his very language and logic, everything, in fact, that enables him to think at all, is socially given him.“

What example(s) from the book(s) will you use to help prove your points?
a.. The World Councils, the greatest minds in the world, are not as great as Equality thought. They are molded into the dumbfounded society that prohibits human advances.

CONCLUSION
What should we now understand after reading your paper? Where idea(s) does your paper lead to?
a. Individualism is almost a holy right that we should enjoy.

b. Individualism is a key factor in technological, moral, and social advances.

Cornell Notes 3 (from Source 2)

TITLE: Robert Welch: John Birch Society Resolution (1970)
AUTHOR: Issues: Understanding Controversey and Society
YEAR PUBLISHED: 1970

Main Idea #1: Collectivism only leads to disaster. Use of violence and trickery to keep collectivism alive only begets more violence and trickery.

Summary:
To preserve collectivism people use pseudo-science and propagandas to control the people's minds. Because it is human nature to be selfish and greedy, collectivism values the society to suppress such greed.

Quote:
"Because of the very nature of man, the temptingly presented road to collectivism is always the road to moral degradation and eventually to a stultifying spread of poverty for all. "

" such a system can only be kept in existence by the use of trickery, force, and cruelty, it also leads inevitably to the loss of all freedom"

Question:

Cornell Notes 2 (from Source 1)

TITLE: Technology in the Dystopian Novel
AUTHOR: Gorman Beauchamp
YEAR PUBLISHED: 1986

Main Idea #1: Technology has different effects on different dystopian novels

Summary:
In the Anthem technology is controlled and influenced by collectivism. The society in Anthm rejects scientific discoveries that would be praised today. The idea that all must work on and agree with the discovery hinders technological growth.
Quote:
" [Rand] presents a future where the ideological imperative proves stronger than the technological imperative--a nightmare pastoral where the shamans of superstition have banished the scientists."

Questions:
Wouldn't the ignorance of the people's interest for technological advances also lead to disaster? Look at the Industrial Revolution. People traded technology for misuse of laborers and use of child labor to support such technological advances.

Cornell Notes 1 (from Source 4)

TITLE: Anthem Study Guide: Chapter X-XI
AUTHOR: Sparknotes
YEAR PUBLISHED: 2006

Main Idea #1: The meaning of objectivism, egoism, and individualism relies on the fact that individuals are above everything

Summary:
Equality 7-2521 learns the evil of collectivism. Rand uses Equality to “[lay] out in plain language the meaning of objectivism, egoism, and individualism”. Rand criticizes collectivism that it is “like stone, crushing [others] beneath it” while praises individual that “freedom is a treasure, and the sense of self is god to be exalted and worshipped.”

Quote:
“Rand suggests that society should be sought out only when a person chooses it, as a second thought to what the individual wants, and that it should be only with those people whom the individual chooses.”

Question:
“Critics of Rand are repulsed by the blatant selfishness she professes. They argue that humankind comes together into society in order to provide and be provided for, and that in the company of others, humans gain as much from their peers as they give to them.”

Who are theses critics? Any names I can cite?

Source 5

Utopian Studies, Spring 2006 v17 i2 p392(5)

Robert Mayhew, ed. Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem.(Book review) Cox, Stephen.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2006 Society for Utopian Studies

Robert Mayhew, ed. Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem. Lanham, MD: Lexington-Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. ix + 337 pp. $28.95

Ayn Rand's novel Anthem is one of the most popular works of utopian literature. It is a poetic, evocative book, a book that has the distinction of being both a utopia and a dystopia. Equality 7-2521, Rand's engaging hero, is born into a collectivist society in which everyone's life is controlled by various Councils of social planners and disciplinarians and in which use of the word "I" has been forbidden. Every individual now is "we," the perfection of "equality." Lacking any scope for private thought and initiative, this would-be utopia is so miserably poor, intellectually and materially, that its heroes of technological progress are "the twenty illustrious men who had invented the candle." Equality 7-2521 rebels against the cult of interchangeable parts and the lowest common denominator and hides by himself to do what he does best: conduct scientific research. With help from discoveries he makes among the ruins of the preceding civilization (our own), he reinvents the electric light. He offers this "power of the sky" to the World Council of Scholars, but they treat his achievement as an act of rebellion. He flees to the wilderness and with the help of a like-minded woman starts to build his own society, a place of freedom to which dissidents can resort and begin to recover the world that was lost. Thus is dystopia replaced by a true utopia, which unlike the allegedly perfect societies devised by social planners from Plato to the present is dedicated to the principle of individualism.

Rand's unusual book had little impact on first publication, but after the enormous success of her novel The Fountainhead (1943) it started to find its audience. It is now that very unusual book which sells 100,000 copies a year, six decades after its original appearance. The volume at hand is a collection of 14 essays examining and celebrating the book and its ideas. The essays are cast in an academic form, suggesting a desire to make Anthem the object of serious scholarly analysis. This aim would have been better served if the book had taken a less insular and institutional approach to its topic. Every essay is written by someone associated with the Ayn Rand Institute, an organization devoted to the dissemination of Rand's ideas. The authors agree with one another and frequently acknowledge one another's contributions and those of other persons associated with ARI, but they appear oblivious to the large amount of independent scholarship that has been published on Rand and her work. The closest they come to an acknowledgment of any such scholarship is a reference to an obscure Russian article about Rand's relationship to Dostoevsky.

No attempt is made to submit Rand's novel to the kind of critical analysis that might, conceivably, discover important imperfections or even immaturities in it. Rand insisted that her fundamental ideas never changed, and in a sense they didn't. She was always an advocate of individualism. But it's no news to Rand scholars that when one compares various expressions of her ideas--in particular, when one compares her writing of the 1930s with her writing of the 1940s and afterward--one finds evidence of important intellectual and artistic changes. Among these was her progress from an immature form of psychological and aesthetic egoism, associated with youth and her reading of European literature and philosophy, to an individualism grounded in American traditions of minimal government, free enterprise, and universal human rights--in a word, to what is ordinarily called libertarianism. The essays in this volume appear to assume that such a basic change could not have occurred. When Rand's revisions seem to indicate that she is altering or abandoning an idea, they are generally treated as deletions of "confusing" "implications" (18-19), corrections of passages "that could be taken to imply" ideas "completely inconsistent with her political philosophy" (41), or changes "clarifying ... what must have been the intended meaning all along" (223).

The only information about Rand's relationship to the American libertarian movement, on which she exerted a major influence, comes in a note by essayist Michael S. Berliner, who informs us that the term "libertarian," while once "honorific," was "taken over by anarchists and others whom Ayn Rand characterized as 'hippies of the right'" (60). So much for Milton Friedman. And so much for the libertarian intellectuals--such people as the novelist and political theorist Isabel Paterson and the economist Ludwig von Mises--who befriended Rand, and from whom Rand learned much. They are not mentioned here.

A similar attempt to save Rand from the embarrassment of intellectual allies can be seen in the book's strange characterization of Malcolm Muggeridge, a distinguished opponent of collectivism who honored Anthem with a favorable review. While doing so, he had the misfortune to suggest that "nightmare Utopias ... are inconceivable, since experience shows that no tendency ever is carried to its limit, that man remains man in spite of everything." So Muggeridge, who was a notorious idealist and crusader, is dismissed as "the renowned cynic" Malcolm Muggeridge and indicted for the "implicit anti-intellectualism" of his (presumed) opinion that "since ideas are basically irrelevant, it is of no value to identify essentials and what they would mean if acted on consistently" (56).

Whatever one thinks of that charge, the concern with "ideas" and "essentials" is appropriate to the subject. Rand was a novelist who became a systematic philosopher, and Anthem is very much a novel of ideas. Accordingly, about half of Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem is occupied by discussions of her philosophy. There are intelligent discussions of her ideas about psychology, epistemology, ethics, and much else; and although one often feels that her delicate, 20,000-word story is being crushed beneath the vast corpus of philosophical ideas that she later codified, much of value appears.

The best of the philosophical essays is Darryl Wright's review of Rand's ethical ideas. Wright provides the most effective exposition one could find of Rand's idea "that the nature of human life generates norms ... for thought, choice, and action" (199). The least effective contribution is probably John Lewis's article on the opposition between Rand's ideas and those of Thomas More. Here one sees, in an extreme form, the general refusal of these essayists to allow anyone but Rand a legitimate role on the philosophical stage. Attempting to clarify her dispute with Christianity, Lewis portrays that religion as nothing but a brutal attempt to subjugate the individual mind, as an attack on every aspect of human "pride," which he resolutely identifies with self-determination, self-respect, and a number of other things that get a pretty good press in the New Testament, as well as in Anthem. Even readers who (in company with this reviewer) heartily dislike the collectivist ideals of More's Utopia will feel their eyes widening when they read Lewis's comments on Utopia's "dearth of clarity," which is allegedly "reflected in the status More claims for his creation. The island of Utopia is real, he asserts, and this is supposedly evidence for the truth of his ideals. Such literary devices are consistent with the views of Plato and Augustine, who thought that our knowledge was only a dim and imperfect reflection of a 'higher,' non-sensory world, which is real although beyond the range of human examination ..." (174-175).

It's hard to know where to start with arguments such as that. One might begin with the observation that More made no greater claim for the reality of Utopia than Rand did for the reality of the world of Anthem; he didn't use fiction as "evidence," any more than she did; and his literary devices may be "consistent" with any number of philosophical views, just as her own literary devices may be. On the issue of Platonic philosophy and its relationship to utopian thought, one might simply advise readers to consult the classic work in the field, Karl Poppers exhaustive critique of Plato, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Like many other works that the authors of this volume might have used to test, refine, or support their arguments, Poppers book is not examined here.

The major redeeming feature of Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem is the wealth of information contained in its series of chapters on the history of the novel: Richard E. Ralston's account of its various publications; Robert Mayhew's catalogue of the numerous revisions that Rand performed in creating its second edition; Michael S. Berliner's look at the book's reviews; Jeff Btitting's study of the many attempts to adapt it for use in film, radio, ballet, and opera, and Britting's succeeding article on Anthem's relationship to "The Individualist Manifesto," a political essay that Rand drafted in the early 1940s (although one would like to know more about the progress of thought revealed in sequential versions of the "Manifesto," the existence of which is suggested by Britting's tantalizing source reference to "version ARP 32-06-90A" [79]).

Shoshana Milgram's two contributions are of particular value. The first concerns Rand's revisions to the manuscript of Anthem. Unlike her revisions to the second edition, these have hitherto not been published. Countering some older accounts of Rand as a propagandist rather than a serious writer, Milgram demonstrates the author's meticulously conscientious literary art. Rand worried about every word she wrote, and she was an excellent critic of her own prose. Milgram's second essay is a long and masterly analysis of Anthem's relationship to Evgeny Zamyatin's We, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, H. G. Wells's The Time Machine and When the Sleeper Wakes, E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," and other works that are relevant to Rand's themes. This essay provides interesting comments on some well-known books and a useful introduction to a good deal of literature that ought to be better known. It shows that Rand added much that was fresh and significant to the utopian tradition, both as critic and as creator.

Love her or hate her, Ayn Rand was never dull. Her words were clear, challenging, memorable. Her ideas were boldly adventurous, and they were boldly expressed. For the most part, the writing in Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem is far below the standard of the original, but there is still enough in the collection to provoke healthy curiosity about Rand's superbly individual art.

Cox, Stephen. "Robert Mayhew, ed. Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem.(Book review)."
Utopian Studies (Spring 2006). Literature Resource Center. Gale. Pascack
Hills HS Lib., Montvale NJ. 8 May 2008 itweb/?db=LitRC>. Review of the book Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem.

Source 4

Sparknotes

Equality 7-2521’s switch from the use of the word “we” to the use of the word “I” to mean himself signals the internal resolution of Anthem. Chapter XI is the culmination of all that Equality 7-2521 has learned about the evils of collectivism is the first time he sees clearly. In the sense that the novella is really about a man’s internal battle with himself to discover individualism, Chapter XI could be considered the resolution of the story’s conflict. Rand herself considered Chapters XI and XII to be the most important in the story. They are the place where she lays out in plain language the meaning of objectivism, egoism, and individualism. These philosophies place the individual above all else, and they savor freedom over the goods of society. Rand suggests that society should be sought out only when a person chooses it, as a second thought to what the individual wants, and that it should be only with those people whom the individual chooses. In Rand’s view, any other kind of life, in which another person is more important than or as important as the self, is a lie that ultimately brings about great evil.
Critics of Rand are repulsed by the blatant selfishness she professes. They argue that humankind comes together into society in order to provide and be provided for, and that in the company of others, humans gain as much from their peers as they give to them. Religious critics and others also argue that the individual has a moral obligation to care for those less fortunate than him- or herself. Rand directly engages these critics by mocking well-known passages of the New Testament. In his letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes that the three things that endure are faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. He says that love endures beyond even the end of the world, when faith and hope are no longer necessary virtues. Rand is deliberately offering a different triptych with her lofty estimation of thought, will, and freedom. She suggests, by implication, that of these, freedom is the cornerstone of all life and that without it nothing else endures. Moreover, Rand often announced that she was writing directly against those who believed that selfishness was a vice. She was offering an entirely new way of living, and she believed that it was the only way to live.
The language and imagery of Anthem, in addition to being laden with religious and philosophic references, is extraordinarily heavy-handed. In his moment of triumph, Equality 7-2521 stands on a mountain top at dawn—quite a melodramatic image. In his lowest moments, he suffers at the hands of men less worthy than he in a dungeon at the Palace of Corrective Detention. In this way, Rand offers a philosophy that is very easy to navigate. When she wants to mark a character as good, she makes him or her beautiful and strong. When she wants to mark a character as evil, on the other hand, she makes him or her ugly and weak. The most obvious example of this dichotomy comes in the form of the Golden One, whose physical beauty is unsurpassed, and who is, as her name suggests, blonde. By contrast, the council members are shapeless and frightened. This same kind of opposition appears in the explanation of Rand’s philosophy: collectivism is like stone, crushing those beneath it, while freedom is a treasure, and the sense of self is a god to be exalted and worshipped. Rand wants us to read Anthem seriously, in a straightforward manner. The imagery is meant to guide us directly to the right answer, the right philosophy, with a minimum of guessing and side-tracking.

"Anthem Study Guide: Chapter X-XI." Rev. of Anthem, by Ayn Rand. Sparknotes.
2006. 8 May 2008 section9.rhtml>. Helpful analysis of Chapter X-XI of Anthem. In these
chapters Rand criticize that individualism and personal liberties should
come first, society second. The review notes that some critics believe that
her interpretation of individualism is too harsh on the society, and
placing individualism on top of the good of the society can make things
fall apart.