208. "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."
Attitudes and interests are intrinsic factors that largely impact on a person’s look and dress, thus it is a wise move to explore the former two through observe the later ones. But appearance does not always accord to ideas, which are pretty intricate. Thus much more discretion should be carried while we try to reveal attitudes and interests through look and dress, especially when we broaden such method to study a society, which make situation even more complicated.
Attitudes reflect classification and evaluation of objects and events, so does interests, and the two naturally contain a person’s preference of look, dress and act. When it comes to a nation’s ideas and values, it works in quite a similar pattern. Comparing appearances and behaviors of different territories help us identify particular cultures Traditional dresses in eastern, western and Islamic world are rather distinguished, so does their original cultures. Western countries are relatively much more open, thus people from them dress in colorful and glitzy styles. People from Islamic territories are subject to their strict religious traditions, as men wear hats and in some place women have to hide their faces with black veils.
However, it is deep heart where ideas and values develop and evolve, rather than the appearance or behavior. Thus in many cases, to obtain the messages from one’s heart merely by his external features is not reliable. We may commonly consider a person well dressed to be decent, but don’t forget examples as Van Gogh. He wore rather poor and behaved rather crazily, as cutting his own ear, while he actually maintained sincere passion to lives and surroundings, which was realized by people after his death. Besides, 1960s Vietnam War stirred up spread anti-war sentiment, bringing forth Hippies with long hair, beards, and brilliant weird clothing, living in communes, sometimes taking drugs. A glance on such a group of people may purely invite our sentiment for their coarseness and self-destruction. But regarding text of that period, sympathy would appear if we truly understand their full of contempt to the fame and wealth. Moreover, some persons just conceal their true identity and ideas by appearance and behaviors. Like rich people may wear austere dresses, stingy person can be generous sometimes to please others.
Actually, practical studies on psychology and sociology have shown some feasible methods like to investigate economic conditions, works of art, living conditions of common people, to name a few. Compared with the method author applauds, these may be more inclined to discover the latent tides of society. Moreover, combine the observation from several method benefits a lot to reveal more profound spirit of society, more than an individual.
To conclude, to understand a person or a society’s idea and values by observing look, address and act is not a bad propose, as long as we keep cautious enough when associate intrinsic factors with appearance. To fulfill this, we are expected to discard prejudice, and try to understand the background influencing people’s behavior. Besides, if we can combine other sound methods to, the hidden tides in a society would become much easier to reveal. |