Rand's Virtue of the Individual

When I was younger, I was really into philosophy and spent a lot of my free time researching different philosophical ideas and debating them with my best friend. In time, I began to realize what Karl Marx had realized and summarized well in his 1845 11 Theses of Feuerbach: "Philosophers have sought to understand the world; the point, however is to change it." In all my study of philosophy and history and theory, while I had, perhaps, come to understand a little better my own identity and my place in the world, I had done nothing to change the world or influence it for good. I began a long journey of discovery and application that I strive to carry on today.

One of the most influential writers in terms of my understanding of taking action and the power of one to create change is Ayn Rand. I began reading The Fountainhead when I was about fifteen, perhaps more so because it had been recommended to me by a girl that I really liked, but I got down to reading it immediately and fell in love with some of the themes and ideas presented therein. Since then, I've grown out of a number of Rand's ideas, but The Fountainhead remains, in my mind, an apotheosis of the human spirit, championing the value of the individual, the virtue of pure art, the power of the word, and the treasure of innovation. Rand encourages her readers to break away from stale and unfeeling orthodoxy in creating, to be true to one's own personal vision in denying the structured arbitrariness of conventional thought. The Fountainhead really was life-changing in helping me to realize my own power to create and innovate, and it's a great read as a whole.