Conformity vs. Individuality

"People don't talk about anything...and nobody says anything different from anyone else" This quote, from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, demonstrates how this fictional society had no individuality, yet they expressed no disprovement of the conformity. To be so simple minded as this civilization was would have eventually lead to self-destruction. To support my theory, recall in the novel when the old lady chose to commit suicide because she did not have freedom. She felt that even though she was "free" she was "enslaved" by the enforcement of limited knowledge.
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<br>Without individuality in today's society, the world would be filled with a population of large amounts of followers as opposed to leaders. Do you know where and what this society would be like if we didn't have leaders like Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, etc.? I presume that we wouldn't be as strong of a nation as we are now. We wouldn't have any freedoms or rights that these leaders fought so hard to achieve. We wouldn't be able to experience historical periods such as the Industrial Revolution, the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, etc. for all of these eras express different ideas, inventions, and opinions and gradually erased some people's ignorance towards these changes. As an African-American, I take great pride in the Harlem Renaissance because this was a time when we got to prove the "ignorant" people wrong as we demonstrated our artistic and intellectual abilities.
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<br>"What do we want in this country, above all? To be happy!" I disagree with this quote made by Captain Beatty due to the fact that with a society like ours full of different people with different outlooks towards different things, it is impossible to make everyone happy. What I think our country wants above all is equality, freedom, and peace, something our past leaders have fought so courageously to obtain. Being happy all the time isn't everything, it is beneficial to experience other