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题目: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."
In recent years, the topic of how to know ideas and values about a society is so hot that people varying from personalities as well as backgrounds tend to observe this same issue from diversified perspectives. A widely accepted viewpoint claims that an efficient method is to observe the appearance and behavior of people in that society, for we can learn an individual's attitude and interest by his looking, dress and action. In taking various factors into consideration, I fail to persuade myself to agree with this point of view totally and reckon that it might be hard for as to learn the kernel principles of a society only by things on the surface such as peoples' appearance or behavior.
First of all, I have to concede that some traditional customs such as clothes are significant symbols of a historical period. As their technologies were not as developed as ours, our ancestors lead to a slower life speed than us, and they preferred to looser clothes for it is not necessary for them to attend so many formal occasions such as meetings or speeches. In other words, it is possible for us to get some social information from people's wearing in different centuries, as the Asian old saying "The more delicate people wear, the higher progress their society has reached".
Nevertheless, it is a mission impossible for us to learn all the important features of a society only by observing the appearance and behavior of its people. The price may be too high to afford if we put too much emphasis on things on the surface thereby overlook phenomena that are harder to feel about. My history teacher in high school used to tell us that "learning history has something similar with chatting to a shy girl: she would not show everything in her mind to you". I think the principle of studying a society is just the same: it is not so difficult to see that people want you to see, but they always want to conceal their really opinions.
At last, none of us is able to give a clear definition to a society's ideas and values, for everything in the society inevitably has some relation with the two word "idea" and "value". That is to say, when we find it hard to explain something to our children, many parents would choose to take out "ideas and values" to end the discussion. What's more, if we try to learn about ideas and values about even an individual, we have to spend some time staying his life until he can trust us and tell us his real thinking. However, our society is constructed by billions of people, which means no matter how hard you work, your time and energy only allow you to understand a very minority of people in this world.
To sum up, learning a society's ideas and values is a subtle and complicated problem that may not be thoroughly solved by such a simple proposal as observing peoples' figures, dresses and actions. Some long-term communication with the residents of a society may serve as an indispensible step if we want to comprehend the society profoundly.
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