Dictators fight an endless battle against human nature, for every infant born in every year is a potential threat; they cannot afford to stunt the intellectual development of merely most. The dictators must get them all. For even one like Equality 7-2521 — even one Copernicus or Galileo or Darwin or Thomas Jefferson — is a grave danger to their power. The rulers must be ceaselessly, zealously on guard, regarding the brain of every baby as a potential death threat. The tyrants, in battling human nature, face a hopeless task and are doomed to lose. In every birth is the possibility of an extraordinary individual such as Equality 7-2521, one who chooses human nature rather than the arbitrary dogma of a dictator. These are the heroes responsible for humanity's rise from prehistoric savagery to modern civilization.
There have been dogmatists and dictators from the dawn of history — religious, political, even familial — who in their quest for power have sought to stifle the human mind. Again and again, they have carved out their fiefdoms and declared the human duty to obey; empires have lasted for generations, even centuries. But in the end, thinkers such as Equality 7-2521 arise, who know from childhood that their allegiance is to their mind, not their ruler, and who set forth new thoughts. The age old battle has gone by many names — in Anthem, it is the individual versus the collective — but the primordial antagonists, though taking varying forms, remain the same: Those those who champion the mind and those who stifle it. This is the fundamental choice confronted by human beings. In Anthem, those on each side are clear.
