We don’t really expect to find ideal people when reviewing the history of America. We consider what is reasonable from our experience and circumstance, which is never a match with historical experience and circumstance.
Certainly unjust situations create an imbalance which nags at us until we can find a way to put the injustice to rest. Is our aim to better understand the apparent conflict, is it to correct the record, to learn from history, to resolve and reconcile, or is it to simply judge the man.
The easy course is to make erroneous assumptions based on some preconceived notions of sentiment. Suffice it to say there is universality in societal mores at any given time in history where fashionable ideologies determine what is exceptional and what is not. The sense of having evolved to a finer state and the notion of a higher morality, a single standard of good, is ever present.
From our current evolved sense of virtue, justice, and all that is right and good we make judgments on the words and actions of other people and, as in the case of Jefferson, by historical reference. We can attempt to take an anti-historical perspective but without walking in Jefferson’s shoes we cannot recreate the circumstance of experiences which drove his decision making. We know he was a man bound in circumstance. Apparently he was able to wield enough influence to bring tremendous change in the world related to the freedom of human beings. Like most he was less powerful on a personal and concrete level.
We are not dependent on any previous individual or generation. History is writhe with both accomplishment and retrogression. We are here now and it is on each of us as individuals to orient ourselves to a living, conscious, and enduring autonomy of the present.
Have peace and be free,
one_less |
