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This week’s assigned reading was one I found to be very interesting. While “The Road To Serfdom” by Friedrich A. Hayek covered many different topics related to several various issues, one that stuck out to me the most was the chapter “Background to Danger.” It focused on the progression in both scientific developments and growth within society and how it eventually led to the growing power of fascism through many ideas and actions that sprung from socialism. Individualism is described within the chapter to have come from the beliefs of Christianity that gained further traction just before the Renaissance. Thinking of individualism in the light was something that I had never considered or even thought of before. I never considered the world’s budding emphasis on individualism to be the cause for greater expansion of a culture of information sharing and a freer exchanging of ideas. This culture would be what fueled the Renaissance itself, thousands of scientific advancements, and exponential growth in both technology and art. Friedrich Hayek states “industrial freedom opened the path to the free use of new knowledge” and “science made the great strides which in the last one hundred and fifty years have changed the face of the world.” The progressing sharing of wisdom, knowledge, and thinking is stated to eventually lead to a greater sense of personal freedom and power within very many people of the time. This established a new “belief in the unbounded possibilities of improving their own lot.” The progression that sprung from these times, however, led to a change in the way governments and those who wanted further control over their own lives and those of others. Hayek says that it was “the socialists who began to collect children at the tenderest age into political organizations to direct their thinking” and “it was they who, by their organization of ‘cells’ and devices for the permanent supervision of private life created the prototype for the totalitarian party.” This method of oppression of a person’s individualism and denial of personal freedoms of thought and action is what opened the gateway to fascist rulers such as Hitler. The unchecked propaganda fed to the people from the time they were able to walk affected the citizens in a way that allowed these people to rule.