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Will Anything Really Change

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After his remarks, then Jefferson found me at a front table: “George, I’m sorry but I’m no longer running for President. I’ll drive up to my place in Connecticut. Anyway, I’m going to be dead soon. Aren’t we all. Good night.” Jefferson Bean had been heard from, I had seen to that. But no one was really listening and he knew it. For all I know he may already be dead—up there in Connecticut. Will Anything Really Change? Why do assumptions come easy and persist? As I indicated in the opening chapter, entertaining too many variables can leave one hopelessly confused and without a direction to pursue. The capacity and willingness to acknowledge variables and to account for them would undermine many of the assumptions that we take for granted, or …show more content…

The use of reason aims at control and predictability. But the process of the advance of reason rests on freedom and unpredictability of human action. Those who extol the powers of human reason usually see only one side of the interaction of human thought and conduct in which reason is at the same time used and shaped. They do not see that, for the advance, to take place, the social process from which the growth of reason emerges must remain free from its control.” Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, Phoenix edition, 1978), 38. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (Free Press, 1965), 171. David Warfield Brown, The Real Change-Makers (Praeger, 2012), 51–54. I have developed the concept of “enough others” in some of my earlier work, most particularly in The Real Change-Makers. Dennis Chong, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement (University of Chicago Press, 1991), 176. Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton University Press, 1982), 89. Brown, The Real Change-Makers, 69. Charles Lindblom and David Cohen describe “social learning” as an “actual experience that upsets old attitudes and dispositions.” Charles Lindblom and David K. Cohen, Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving (Yale University Press, 1979), 18.The liberal mindset. The Real Change-Maker, 64. Ibid.,

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Jefferson’s execution day is set and everyone is waiting for the inevitable and to see if Jefferson and Grant can prove the whites wrong, that Jefferson is not a ‘hog’ but a man. Jefferson holds his head up high as he is lead to his execution and proves he is just as much a man as anyone,

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but he was wrong as Jefferson died approximately 5 hours earlier in his plantation in Monticello (Larson, ).

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No matter who a person is or what others think of him or her, that person will always have the opportunity to change for the better; Nobody has the power to tell a person what he or she can or cannot do. In the novel, A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, the protagonist, Jefferson discovers that he could change as a whole person and finally become a man, even under difficult circumstances. He is constantly discriminated and does not feel welcomed to the society. Throughout the majority of the novel, Jefferson believes he is his own stereotype and takes it to heart when he is being called a hog. Although he knows he will be exiled, Jefferson and his family hopes for a change in his heart.

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“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” He should believe so, as Thomas Jefferson’s actions clearly characterize his individual self, while also inducing the question, Does Thomas Jefferson deserve the honor he possesses, through these eminent actions?

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At the beginning of A Lesson Before Dying, Jefferson was a character that didn’t want to speak or interact with anyone, including

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First, Jefferson learns that he is no less human than other people. Jefferson admits that he is strong and that he is a man, not the hog the white men say he is, “good by mr wigin tell them im strong and tell them im a man good by mr wigin im gon

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Not knowing his friends would do this, Jefferson has no choice but to take cover and hope for the best. Relying on nothing but prayers, Jefferson makes it out alive and is left to answer for the actions of his friends. Later on Jefferson is taken to jail, where the judge will make his ruling on what punishment he will be receiving for the actions of the shooting and robbery. “Twelve white men say a black man must die, and another white man sets the date and time without consulting one black person. Justice? …”

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We find everyday examples in our society of reason dominating

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Jefferson walked straight to his death in front of many white authorities and showed no signs of weaknesses. The attendees saw Jefferson as an inferior animal who would have to crawl to the chair, however since walking, Jefferson was able to prove how much of a man he was. This created change because he changed the mindsets that he was weaker because of his race. When Jefferson was walking to his death, his last words were, “‘Tell Nannan I walked.’” (Gaines 254).

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•“She was not even listening. She had gotten tired of listening. She knew, as we all knew, what the outcome would be. A white man had been killed during a robbery, and thought two of the robbers had been killed on the spot, one had been captured, and he, too, would have to die” (4). This quote is important because it allows me to understand that Jefferson has to die because he was the only person in the liquor store and was a black man.

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So, let us ask ourselves this: if Jefferson were alive today, would he be

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Change takes places everywhere, everyday. If we as humans experience change on a daily basis, it should be no surprise that even “The Land of the Free” must eventually evolve. A Fierce Discontent by Yale alumni Indiana University historian and Michael McGerr documents this change that spread throughout America, which is known as the Progressive Movement. Michael McGerr believed that “the people and struggles of that age of “fierce discontent” a century ago still command our attention” (McGerr, xiii), which sheds a little light as to why he chose to write about the Progressive Era. It was social and political reform and activism that made up the Progressive Era and

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Additionally, reason was able to develop because of human passion; the passions for another human, for food, and for enjoyment, which spurred our desire to know, and “[w]e seek to know only because we desire to find enjoyment; and it is impossible to conceive why someone who had neither desires nor fears would go to the bother of reasoning” (54). So we learn what we want and reason tells us how to have it; which along with the progression of time and humanity coming together to live in groups, allows jealousies to form, and the concept of property to aid the forming of small societal communities. Humans living together means people become aware of themselves as individuals and what they want to possess separately from others, in this way “[r]eason is what engenders egocentrism…. Reason is what turns man upon himself” (63). So reason is everywhere in society, it was crucial to society having formed, it is also crucial to how we interact in

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This restriction of freedom allows humans to become lazy and immature which prevents them from becoming Enlightened. Kant argues that once people embrace laziness and immaturity, it becomes difficult to think by one’s self. He believes in the use of two types of reason, the public and private use of reason. He claims that the public use of reason alone can bring mankind into Enlightenment because it is this reasoning that allows groups of people with similar thoughts and criticisms to take a stance on a specific issue and bring it to the attention of the king.

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