=七月流火=小组第5次小组作业 issue208 by fredrichodie

fredrichodieUID: 2612910

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."
WORDS: 586         TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 8/7/2009 7:03:28 PM

Does the appearance and behavior reflects the attitudes and interests of people? The speaker raised this topic of the nexus between exterior and interior facets of individuals, and believes that the observation of the appearance and behavior of a society’s people would reveal its ideas and values. I concede the existence of this nexus, however, it is partial to judge the values and ideas merely by the appearance, which might even cover up the fact.

To start with, there is often a intrinsic relationship between people's attitudes and interests and their appearance and behavior. On the one hand, when choosing cloths, their choices would refer to their personal inclinations towards colors, patterns, styles and so forth, which would reflect their preferences to other aspects according to a psychological opinion, thus we may conclude through these preferences. For instance, insightful and prudent businessmen or officers might choose formal suits of deep colors like black, gray, dark blue or purple. Even the specific difference in these colors indicate distinct personalities: those prefer black are likely to be rigorous, gray of a low key, dark blue insightful and purple fashionable. On the other hand, people's behavior is a indicator of their growing environment and education, which both have great impacts on their attitudes and interests. Well educated, positive people would behave politely while those poor educated, passive ones would behave roughly. Furthermore, a more reliable exterior indicator is the eyes, through which we could tell how insightful, honest or kind a person is. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that there is a nexus between the interior and exterior facets of an individual.

However, in more occasions this nexus is not so direct, hence the judgment of the inner thoughts and interests by the appearance and behavior would not work, since the ideas and values are very extended, far more than the appearance could reflect, and different ideas and values might result in a similarity of appearance and behavior. For example, an austere suited old man with glasses could be a professor, a retiree, or even a millionaire, however, ideas and values are obviously different of the three kinds of people. In short, we can tell that people with different styles of appearance and behavior might have distinguished values and ideas, however, people of the same style from the appearance might also differ in values and ideas. Thus the appearance and behavior cannot be depended on as a standard to completely judge people's values and ideas.

Moreover, is this nexus enough to tell much about the spiritual form of the whole society? It is true that Indian women have to cover their faces except the eyes outside their homes, through which we may find Indian people might have a traditional form of ideas and values. However, what more about the inner thoughts and ideas can we tell from their appearance and behaviors, in such a era of globalization and they are beginning to think as the way people in other countries do? Moreover, a society is consists of people from various dimensions, hence there can hardly be a unified form of values and ideas. It is even harder to tell a general form of values and ideas lurking underneath the society.

In sum, the appearance and behavior do act as indicators of peoples' attitudes and interests. However, we cannot tell much about a society's ideas and values by simply observing these features, since the two indicators are just apparent expression, which is far from reflecting the interior thoughts completely.