求回拍issue208

芷琳UID: 2682149

TOPIC: ISSUE208 - "The way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests. You can tell much about a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance and behavior of its people."


The speaker asserts that one can be acquaint with a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance and behavior of its people. While I agree that in certain cases, one's look, dress and act can revels their attitudes and interests, however, I do not approve that only by observation of its people's appearance and behavior, can we know much about a society's characteristics, like ideas and values.

Admittedly, with various interests and attitudes for one object, people always have different tastes of dresses and styles of acting. Especially some certain groups, like teachers and singers. As a teacher, he always dresses simple and austere clothes and wears glasses with steady behavior, which gives people a down-to-earth feeling of learning; while as a singer, he will use colorful clothes to dress himself up and act exaggeratedly. These two wholly different attire and behavior style reflect their attitude and their different life-style. For that matter, the appearances of people indeed present, to some extent, their attitudes to life and work.

However, in some cases, we still cannot identify one's attitude only by their appearance. Common senses tell us, many people do not care about their appearances. It is entirely possible that a wealthy man wears common clothes, or a leader is living a simple live among common people, which are not probable to identify them from others, and also we cannot know their interests and values. For a society, if its' people all acting like this, observing their appearance and behavior aim to get acquaintance with the society, it is in vain.


And also in some certain situations, people wear themselves by styles which are totally different from they do in common days. Camouflage which is very mean to mislead people is a good example. If a policeman wants to win the trusts of offenders to master their criminal evidences, he will never wear his uniform which can expose himself easily; instead, he will wear as similar as those people whom he wants to close to and rough in manner, which is wholly different from a policeman. In this condition, the appearances of people are entirely opposite to their real character.

Nevertheless, even though everyone acts as themselves, it is still difficulty to comprehend the values of the society. Values are deep cognition of objects and phenomena, which exist in deepest stage of one’s thinking and indicate a society’s profoundest cultural traits. All of these are not comprehended by people’ wearing and behavior, instead needing to exploit the society’s real cultural accumulation.

In conclusion, it is truly that we can know one's interests and attitudes by first glance in some cases. But being really acquaint with one's values even a society's traits, we still should careful research its culture and policy. Only observation the appearance and behavior of its people may be not complete and even misleading. As a consequence, the way to comprehend one society entirely is to know more about its cultual and its' people real values.