ISSUE208 求爆菊,留链回爆,嘎嘎

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第一次发习作,求狠拍,求爆菊

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: 687          TIME: 00:44:00          DATE: 2010/7/9 23:45:22
Can we figure out a society's ideas and values by obersving the appearance and behavior of its people, as the author claims? In response to the issue, we need to analyze the proposition thoroughly from dialectic perspective. Admittedly, the way people look, dress, and act reveals some attitudes and interests of them. However, a society's universal ideas and values can hardly be told by observing the appearance of its people due to its unfeasibility.
First and foremost, there is no denying the fact that people disclose part of their minds and thoughts through their living habit and style. Definitely, individual's behaviors are controlled by their thoughts and attitudes; therefore their behaviors can serve as illustrations of their inner spirit. Consider, for instance, artists tend to dress differently with normal people in respect that they regard the way of dressing as a medium to convey their emotions and imaginations. In like banner, one can easily tell the difference between a professor and a rock star, for their manners and way of talking are totally different. Furthermore, people who belongs to different social groups with different social status tend to behave in different ways. Undoubtedly, that's the way they keep a sense of identity and show their political and religious attitudes. An apt illustration involves in antient China, only those who have been permitted by emperors could wear clothes decorated with the images of dragons and pheonixs. Thereupon, these kinds of clothes had become the manifestation of their status and authorities. Another example aptly demonstrate the issue involves in modern society, people who support one specific political party are likely to wear T-shirts with the logo of the party or images of the leader to show their political attitudes. Accordingly, the way people look, dress and act are good illustrations of their attitudes and interests sometimes.
However, we have to realize that by observing the people's living style is not always a reliable way to tell their attitudes and interests. More often than over, people's living style is decided by their habits and conventions rather than their serious attitudes and deep interests. Even some people do not care about their living style at all; thus to figure out their attitudes by clothes or behaviors are somewhat impossible. For instance, eminent scientist Albert Einstein never tried to make him "like a scholar", not mention to disclose some inner attitude and thoughts. It is said that once he was mistaken as the driver by the students who attended his lecture due to his way of dressing. Whereupon, it is somewhat unreliable to tell the people's characters by his behaviors. Furthemore, in modern world shaped by accelerating globalization, more and more people tend to behave in like manner. For instance, youths all over the world wears jeans now; thus we can not justifiably conclude those who wear jeans are cowboys or miners of western America.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, to observe the appearance and behavior of its people is neither feasible nor reliable to tell a society's ideas and values. First, we need to have a clear definition about ideas and values. Ideas and values, in their broadest meanings, refers to the way people observe and interact with the society and world. They are inner psychological system of individuals; therefore we can hardly thoroughly recognize one's ideas and values by his behaviors. Furthermore, a society's universal ideas and values are abstrated from every individual's which represent the marrow of the culture. Even assuming we can figure out the charaters of individuals by the appearance and behavior, it is almost impossible to get the society's universal values in respect that every citizen has his distinctive thoughts. Thereupon, the best way to figure out a society's ideas and values is to analyze the social system from more thorough and systematic perspective.
From the analysis made above, I strongly commit to the notion that even though we can tell parts of individual's attitudes and interests by observing their appearance and behavior, it's unfeasible to get the overall values of a society by doing so. The best way should be valuing the culture in thorough perspective.

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