<p>Any advice is welcome!</p>
<p>Prompt: Does the success of a communitywhether it is a class, a team, a family, a nation, or any other groupdepend upon peoples willingness to limit their personal interests?</p>
<p>Essay: </p>
<p>As humanity has progressed, successful communities have tended to minimize the importance of personal interests; history has proven that personal interests have held the magnitude to upturn society as a whole. Indeed, as proven through examples from literature, history, and psychology, the propriety of any given community depends on people's willingness to limit their multitudinous personal interests.</p>
<p>Brave New World, a classic dystopic novel written by Aldous Huxley, substantiates the utilitarian claim that communities depend on a loss of personal interest. In this book, the future global society is predicated on the idea that all citizens do everything "for the greater good." For example, people volunteer to be murdered as they approach the age of 60, in order to maintain societal stability. Although this novel is meant to invoke fear and governmental distrust in the eyes of the reader, one cannot doubt that the society in which the novel is set is "successful"; while its members are effectively dehumanized, the greater community is more connected than ever before. Overall, it is clear through Huxley's classic, Brave New World, that the myriad of issues inherent in every society are only exacerbated when personal interests are brought into consideration.</p>
<p>Beyond literature (fictional, yet shockingly contemporary), history proves that one must repress their personal interests in order to truly benefit society. After the close of the Civil War (when America was once again reunited), there was an enormous struggle to reunify national interests--the North favored business/industry and no slavery, whereas the South had an economy predominantly comprised of slave labor and plantations. As such, at first, neither side was willing to compromise with the other, sticking to their own ways. As economist Frederique Blouin from the New Yorker points out, however, this caused the national GDP to decrease by over 9%. After economic analysts throughout the nations realized the falling of national opulence, both the South and North worked to collaborate to create a more cohesive economic plan. Thus, through analyzing the beginning of the "Reconstruction" era, it is vividly apparent that the success of a community depends on limitations on personal interest.</p>
<p>Finally, "groupthink" psychology proves the necessity of a cap on personal interests within a larger group. In late 1993, psychologist Bayn Rind discovered that every intra-societal group (whether it be cults, religions, sects, etc.) have a preeminent leader upon whom the constituents of that group "believe." Due to this hierarchical dominance, people within groups conform to the ideologies of their leader in order to bring about a "greater good." The experiments of Bayn Rind irrefutably substantiate the claim that group "success" depends on minimizing the role of personal interests in communal (or group-based) decision making abilities.</p>
<p>As proven through examples from classic literature (Huxley's Brave New World), empirical history (economic post-Civil War Reconstruction), and psychology (Bayn Rind's experiments on "Groupthink"), it is indeed apparent that individual values must be put below those of the community in order to attain a greater level of efficiency and overall "success." As biomedical engineer Thomas McKean puts it, "It all comes down to how you work as a cog in the machine of teamwork." This fact must be given due attention, as our society depends on the communal work of individuals. Without teamwork, we are all but defeated.</p>