But such courage remains extraordinary. No deeper factors necessitate Equality 7-2521’s independence. That nothing necessitates his use of the mind is what makes it a choice. However, the question can be asked: What makes it possible? With what faculty or power does he resist the oppressive dogma of his society? The author’s answer is that the nature of the individual is to be a thinker. Just as a bird’s nature is to fly, a lion’s is to hunt, and a cow’s is to give milk, so a human’s is to think. Birds have wings, lions have claws, and so on. Humans have brains, and successful living on earth requires them to use them. An oppressive family or society, in requiring blind conformity, fights a war against human nature, which is to be a thinking being.
The dictators may succeed in cowing large elements of the populace, convincing them to meekly grovel—but they will never succeed in changing human nature. Their mandates are powerless to alter the earth’s orbit around the sun or a plant’s necessity to conduct photosynthesis or a bird’s need to fly. Similarly, their commands cannot change the fact that a human is a thinking being. Therefore, the possibility of thinkers arising to question those who wish to subjugate others cannot be extirpated.
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.
