issue 208 小菜求猛拍~~

aliceweishUID: 2756120

  topic: "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 their social values? The speaker supposes so by claiming that the clothing style and way of act tells people’s attitudes and thus helps define a society’s value system. I agree insofar as the behavior or clothing people choose partly illustrates the society’s value orientation. At the same time, however, clothing and behavior best demonstrate the life style people choose at their own will and there exist better ways to get deeper understanding about a society’s values and ideas.

  I concede that the speaker is on the correct side of the issue when it comes to the easiest way to tell how a society looks like by checking on how its people talk, act and dress. In determining whether a society favors decency of life or the freedom of individual, one should of course consider the way people dress and what words and gestures people use in their daily life. For supporting examples, one needs look no further than the difference between westerners and eastern people when it comes to greeting their friends. By shaking hands for a few seconds, the easterners demonstrate their unwillingness to get too close to each other, even if they have known each other for a long time. On the contrary, however, westerners don’t feel awkward to kiss a stranger even it is the first time they are introduced to each other. This gives some light to the core value difference between the two societies where easterners are more conservative while westerners are more open to physical contact. Moreover, the common existence of distinction between the two culture groups helps sociologists to trace back to the varied origin of the people there.

  While we must take clothing and behavior into account when investigating the whole picture of a society, at the same time we should be circumspect about judging a society only by its ‘appearance’. After all, changeable as they seem, appearance and behavior are too vague an indicator of a society’s value system which stays unaffected for a relatively long time. In the huge wave of internationalization, it is common that we find it harder and harder to tell which country a person comes from only by his or her appearance and behavior. A case in point is the business people. As is shown in various media, business people dress and behave almost alike all over the world. Whether it is in Asia or in Europe, people appear on business occasions in white shirt, black suit with something tied to their neck called a tie and speak English as if it is their mother language. Moreover, with the advent of information age, teenagers have access to various media where a certain job is tied up with a specific image. As a result, youth all over the world now simulates one another in their dress and behavior, making these two factors even worse indicator of a society’s values and ideas.

  Lending further credibility to the statement that appearance and behavior make bad displays of a society’s value is the existence of other indicators. There is no denying that a society is not the mere gathering of a group of people but the organic fusion of social groups. Knowledge about a society’s family organization, interaction between social groups, social status of various ethnic groups and how the society maintains sustainable development also matters a lot in the study of a society, since these aspects combine isolated individuals into a mixture. In a word, it requires more than investigation into the superficial level of its people to draw the whole picture of a society.

  All in all, what approaches we take to a better understanding of a society changes with the time. Despite the attitudes and interests behavior and appearance may reveal, the modern times necessitate much more beyond the superficial level to draw a wholesome picture of a society. Moreover, as a combination of various social groups and ethnics, a society possesses more facets than we apparently see. If we fail to account for social connection between social groups, we only see separate groups rather than a synthesis; if we overlook the social arrangement in family, we will commit a fallacy in omitting the fundamental unit of a society. In the final analysis, appearance and behavior are playing a smaller role in revealing a society’s values and ideas while other factors can make up for their place.