issue208 【红尘笑看沧桑】互改小组第14次作业 by maggie

zyl.4758UID: 2727331

208"Theway people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests. You cantell much about a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance andbehavior of its people.

Peoplelive in the society, to some extent, will definitely influenced by the society.So to some extent, I agree with the speaker’s assertion that people’s appearanceand behavior reveals their attitudes and interests beside their values andideas. However, apart from the appearance and behavior, there are a lot more todo if we want to see people’s ideas and values as well as the society’s.

Tosome extent, the appearance and behavior of people can reveal people’sattitudes and interests, to be further, can reflect a society’s ideas andvalues. When we get to know a person first, there is no way for us to inspectinto their minds, in the same way, when we refer to a county, it is theappearance and behavior of its people that come into our minds first andtreated as the main logo of the society. Like French, are famous for theirbeautiful and fashionable dress, showing their romantic trait; while Germanusually try their best to do a job perfectly. Indicating they’re prim andmeticulous. In some Arab countries, woman wear clothes only with their eyesoutside showing woman’s low social status. Apart from the above, in our dailylives, people’s appearance and behavior can partly reflect their attitudes andinterests. Like the professors in the university, always wears simple and withtheir glasses, while the popular singer often wears gorgeous. It is rarely tosee a professor have the same wearing with a singer.

But,as a Chinese proverb goes “ You can not judge a person only by his outlook”, wemay draw the false conclusion
about theideas and values only by the observation of the way people look, dress, andact. For an example, some persons, are wealthy enough but pay little attentionon outlooks, maybe you would take him for a
blue-collar worker only by his appearance. And in some circumstances,people’s personality maybe confined to the objective conditions. Like in a bigenterprise, people are acquired to dress the same. To a country, we can notknow much precise and exact information about a country by observing itsnational grand ceremonies because people in those activities act more aspolitical symbols rather than independent individuals. You probably will notconnect the excited and happy crowds engaged in celebrations of theestablishment of North Koreawith their deprivation of freedom of speech by totalitarianism.

Wecan not tell a society’s ideas and values only by people’s appearance andbehaviors. Value is a person’s perspective and evaluation of his surroundings.The importance and priority of them reflect his/her system of value. But thisonly exist in his/her mind. So it is obvious appearance and behavior can notfully indicate a person’s value.

Insum, in some respect, the way people look, dress, and act reveals theirattitudes and interests, but a society’s ideas and values can only be tellthrough the contact with the people in this society or gradually involved inthis society.

zy0921UID: 2738668

同求拍，第一篇，写了一个小时，中途不停查字典……先在这里谢谢了！

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."


Do people's appearance and behavior reflect ideas and values?

The speaker has two claims: one is that people's attitude and interest can be told from the way they look and act; the other is that appearance and behavior of people can reveal a society's ideas. Both claims seem to have merit, however, in my opinion, they amount to unfair generalization.

To begin with, I concede that people's look and act can sometimes reflect their inside world. For example, a person who wears loose jeans probably like hip-hop while a formal style may belong to a classic fan.The behavior of giving up seats to the old on bus may show that a person is respectful and genteel whereas a person's moral may be doubted if he/she behaves rudely to old people. Nevertheless, not all of the values and attitudes can be observed from appearance, as a old Chinese motto says, “as sea cannot be measure by a bushel, so can a man not be known by his look.After all, values and insights are minds rooted in people's brain which cannot be measured accurately. A paradigmatic example is the political view of a person. It is observed that some of the communists wear rather austere while others look richly ornamented.The fact that they share something in common cannot be noticed merely by the outside look. Moreover, a person who works crazily may show that he/she is material and seeking nothing but money or that he/she loves working and wants to contribute meaningfully to the society. In short, The way people look, dress and act can rarely reveals their attitudes and interests.

Moreover, regarding the second claim, I agree that sometimes it is true you can gauge a society's value by looking at its people's appearance. For example, British gentlemen and ladies usually behave with decorum, revealing that they values respect and virtue; Arab woman's dress almost cover all parts of the body except eyes is a sign of their attitudes that women should not be social and the only person they should be intimate is their husband.

Having said that, there are more important factors influencing people's dress or act than a society's values than the society’s values. First and foremost, weather cannot be neglected. The fact that Russians wear a lot is not the indication that they are anti-social and recluse but they are afraid of rigidity. Likewise, the people who live near the equator wear a little, which does not tell they are too open.

Secondly, human beings are gregarious animals who seek conformity to a certain extent, thus they tend to wear "uniform" to show that they are not outliers. A telling example is during the period shortly after Qing dynasty, men like to wear Western-style formal dress rather than Chinese tunic suit. It does not reveal that people at that time value a Occidental culture but just they tend to be in harmony with others when they see this kind of dress is prevailing.

Last but not least, in some oppressed society, people do not have the freedom to wear what may reveal their value. Therefore, a so-called the society's value is nothing but the ruler's value. During Qing dynasty, men are forced to shave half of the hairs and make braid using the rest. Although they are not willing and resistant in the first place, they have to since they will be sentenced to death if they break the rules.


To sum up, while the outward appearance can reflect inside to some extent, it does not tell much about a person, let alone a society.
Appearance and behavior of a society's people may be just because of weather, a sense of conformity, a rule and so on, which cannot be used to tell the ideas or values of the society.