Is Progression an Individual Effort?

Progress can be defined as:  movement, as toward a goal; advancement, development or growth.   Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead places an importance on the mobility of a nation through individuals.  Throughout the novel, Rand explores this idea of progression most with the character of Howard Roark.  Roark’s accomplishments are true acts of an individualist.  His buildings are, in Ayn Rand’s eyes, the only suitable kind of progress in society.  His buildings come from his mind, without the influence of others.  Masses don’t contribute to the growth of society, individuals do.  This theory, in my opinion, does not serve to be true in today’s society. 

A country’s growth has a lot to do with the achievements of a group of people, not just a few individuals. Without the contributions of a number of people, we would be nowhere. Our society is dependent on collaboration and the progress that can be made by it.   Think of an idea as a tree.  If only one person contributes to an idea, the tree stays as a single trunk.  But once the idea is added to or made better by a number of people, the tree grows branches.  Those branches aid in the tree’s survival, much like the progression of a good idea in society. 

In the Fountainhead, Roark achieves his goal of erecting buildings of his pure design.  For Roark, these buildings “change” society, and he believes that they are a step in the right direction for the progress of society.  This does not appear to be true when looked at on a broader scale.  His society sees the buildings as a distraction, as a set-back because they believe that the work of a single individual is selfish.  I think that some of their ideas are true. When ideas cannot be reformed for the time they are useless.  For example, the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, with the help of his assistant Thomas A. Watson.  And once that idea became known, over many years people came up with new models and versions of the phone because technology was progressing.  Without the collaboration and building off of that idea, the telephone might still be the same as the model in the 1880’s. Although one individual might think up an idea, collaboration and the work of others is needed to make the idea flourish.  So the ultimate question: Is progression an individual effort, would have to be answered as “no”.  It takes a generation of people and ideas to grow, not the work of a single person.