Summary & Response – Ordinary People Produce Extraordinary Results

Summary & Response – Ordinary People Produce Extraordinary Results

Rosa Parks, who refused to give her seat to a white person, became popular in America and even was interviewed on CNN. Hence, some people called her “mother of the civil rights movement.” Before this event, Rosa Parks had spent 12 years leading the local NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.) But it didn’t mean that she created the association but improved the movement for change at right time. It told us that this inevitable act might never happened without the lowly and dispiriting work that she or others did earlier on. It also told us that the first step she got involved in brought a lot of people courage to refuse to move to the back of the bus. The description of Parks suggested that social activists would not take dramatic stands without reasons. And it implied that if we acted alone initially, it must go along with the greatest impact.

Usually, a historical change was represented by an ordinary person who took extraordinary actions. An African American activist once said, “When people who work for social change are presented as saints, so much more noble than the rest of us. We get a false sense that from the moment they were born they were called to act, never had doubts, and were bathed in a circle of light. ”

The Rosa Parks’ story also told us that even if being the ordinary grass-roots, you can fight to preserve freedom, expand the sphere of democracy and so on. These activists taught us how to shift public point of view and find the power to protect despite all odds. Sometimes they brought about a supernatural outpouring of courage and heart. Give you a question! Do we have the chance to shape history despite all out uncertainties and doubts? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Response:

According to the article, it is “racial discrimination” evidently. Nowadays, this problem is still there. The white race thinks that his class is the highest among the black race and oriental. But I appreciate Rosa Parks, a black-skinned woman, persists in refusing to give her seat to a white person. This event inspires a lot of black-skinned people to assert their human rights.

Theoretically, everyone has the same relations on the equal basis, but it is impossible in reality. We cannot change the innate inequality, so we try to change our acquired inequality. In my opinion, I don’t think that a person’s skin color can decide a person’s class whether is high or low. There are still bad people in white race, of course, and there are good people in black race. Give you a good example. Obama, who is a black person, is an unprecedented black-skinned president in America. In his life, Obama improved himself constantly and finally he won the United State Presidential Election. And that is a black-skinned person. “The white race is better than others.” is typically stereotype. Human is human no matter what his skin color is. We are all the same and no one has special human rights in this world. If president do wrong, he is still accused by law.
We cannot discriminate a person by innate factors because he doesn’t want it, too. Equality is difficult and even we can say that is impossible. What we can do is to reduce inequality things to the minimum.

Summary and Response-The Decline of Neatness

Summary

The Decline of Neatness, written by Norman Cousins, depreciates the sloppy clothes people wear now for the sloppiness virus will ruin our society, especially in clothing styles, speaking ways, emotions and human relationships. Norman Cousins, first of all, regards comfortable clothing as the most important things while there are more and more young people loving to wear torn blue jeans. These people have strong desires to be fashionable so that they can catch people’s eye; however, in Norman Cousins’ mind, their preference is just a kind of blind behavior and lack of individual characteristics. Secondly, Norman Cousins despises slovenly speech people use today for these fragmentary words are the symbol of incoherence and casualness.

The casualness, moreover, influences the emotion and attitude people have a lot. When people become casual, they are prone to be brutal and violent facing others; in addition, children living in the society will be affected a lot because they see and mimic people around them everyday. Lastly, untidiness is also related to human relationships, as it is seen in films that people’s feelings are removed toward sex. In conclusion, Cousins deeply hopes that Victorian attitudes can be brought to an end, and people and the society can go back to basics.

Response

I always wonder why people who wearing torn and frayed clothes think they are in fashion. After reading the article, Norman Cousins tells what I wonder and gives me the answers. When it comes to clothing, there are many people wearing uncomfortable clothes in order to look fashionable; moreover, many young people try hard to mimic the clothes which singers or movie stars wear. In my opinion, the behavior is lack of deep meaning and cannot show individual characteristic because everyone is like the same. Why do not we wear comfortable clothing and feel at ease?

Slovenly words are used frequently nowadays but I do not agree with the phenomenon. There are more and more people having the habit to use fragmentary words while talking to people, especially chatting on the Internet. They enjoy using sprawled words and abbreviation; however, their sounds are no more than grunts and murmurs.

I also deem that the casual attitudes affect people’s behavior a lot. When they use little words communicating with others, they will gradually become careless and informal. Facing people, they will care less and then do some impolite action; in addition, in their mind, they will feel impatient and then become violent. It is a continuous process.

I conclude that everyone should be reliable to the phenomenon of untidiness; celebrities should not wear sloppy clothes so that people will not follow suit. Elders should be good models because children are lack of judgments and directly learn what they see on the streets or on TV. We should listen our true feeling and do what we really want to do instead of being blind. I am deeply convinced that neatness is the priority. If everyone does not follow the fashion right away, our society or even the world will become quite better.

Summary and response for "The Decline of Neatness"

Summary:

The trend of getting sloppy is unable to prevent. Norton Cousins claims that the slopping virus is gradually nibbling up our conceptions of being neat. This is just like the butterfly effect, influencing the people all over the world.

The first issue is about the way we dress. Blue jeans are the most common clothing either at now or at several decades ago. A casual and relaxed look of clothing is also a symbol of dressing nowadays. Cousins explains that the way people dress make them feel they “stamp out the cookie cutters.” Another issue is the sloppy and violent speech. Today people speak a noun or a phrase which is considered as a “chopped-up phrase” to express the whole meaning of a sentence. Cousins further explains that the reason why people speak with violence and brutality is the casual attitude of speaking. The final issue is about the relationship between humans. Because of the casual attitude of sex films, our thinking gradually becomes open from conservative. It also means that people will be unable to feel anything.

Cousins’s purpose is not to make people experience Victorian attitude; conversely, he says that our “calculated sloppiness” will disappear and suggests that people in their career can find new eyesight which people will be fund of and learn from it.

Response:

With rapid development of technology, the world we live is gradually becoming more and more convenient. “Technology is connecting to people” claimed by Nokia is a well-known slogan, announcing that technology is leading everyone to a whole new world. However, due to the trend of becoming convenient, we may gradually become lazy for relying on those high-tech products. This effect may transfer to other aspects such as the way we speak or the way we do things. In the future, this condition continues.

Almost every language has this kind of problem: the laziness of speaking. In traditional education, we are well taught to speak the whole sentences while answering a question. But we sometimes just answer a noun or a phrase instead of a sentence. Maybe it is like translation. In the translation class, we have learned that a good translation work should convey the meaning which is faithful to the author. As the translating skill promotes, we can use as less words as possible to convey the meaning. Maybe the oral skill is also influenced. It seems that using several words to express a meaning may be considered as laziness or even degeneration. If we can change the way of thinking, maybe it is another evolution because we can use words with precise meanings to express what we are thinking!

If a thing is good, it may not be so good as it looks like. Just like technology, maybe it can bring us convenience, but it also brings the earth pollution. If we can emphasize on the positive points of a thing and try to solve the problems the negative points produce, there will still be many things for us to learn.