belonging essay

Ayn Rand said that “Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the progress of setting man free from men.” I think that Rand is wrong. Civilization is not people keeping their lives hidden from others, but sharing their experiences in a way that is beneficial to yourself and society. One way that one can create a better world, is for people to open up and share their ideas so that others can learn from them. For example, Jan McGonigal, a video game designer gave a talk through TED talks, concerning a very personal time in her life and how she overcame it. McGonigal, suffered from a very bad concussion so that for moths of her life she had to stay in bed and was allowed to do almost nothing but sleep and eat. This was a very hard time for McGonigal; she felt useless and even considered suicide. At that point she realized that it was time to change, using her love of games, she created a game in which the “bad guy” was her illness and her avatar was “Jane the Concussion Slayer”. The game was not a game in the sense that one could put in into a game console and play it, but where you kept track yourself and played in the real world. It was personal and represented the things she like the most in the world. When she healed she felt like the game had helped her so much that she wanted to share it with the rest of the world. She posted a video on YouTube about how to play the game and personalize it so that you can personalize your power-ups and create your own avatar, so that it was beneficial to you. Soon after she posted the video she got many responses from people all over the world, especially from people who had severe illnesses. People everywhere were benefitting by this game that McGonigal. Because McGonigal shared this personal experience, society benefited from it. Rand would not have supported this public display of her life saying that “…A savage’s