Issue 208

even207UID: 2998418

Issue 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."

2011/2/1

The speaker states that we can judge a society’s ideas and values through its people’s appearance and behaviors because it is people’s manifestations and actions that reveal their thoughts and ideas. I agree with the author broadly. Now, if I invite you or convert you to possess the same opinion as me, I should first prove you the following two statements: firstly, the relationship between society and its people can be reworded into the vocabulary of multiplication and division in algebra, that is to say they can form a certain equivalency through certain accounting but after all they are equal: the one can represent the other. Secondly, people’s appearance and actions can speak of their ideas and values rather than contort or opposite their minds and thoughts.

To begin with the first assumption, human society is constructed by human beings and the surroundings. Regardless the surroundings, for it is out of our topic, any human groups are consisted of individuals, from the smallest family to the most populous country. Thus, when referring to the study of the society, individuals inevitably become the first object. Similarly, the image of a certain society can be regarded as the average of its various kinds of people; and a typical kind of individual is the intensified miniature of his society. We cannot say everyone in a society is just the same but more or less he will carry some of the characters which are shared by the whole society. For that matter, the people’s appearance and behaviors is a mirror to the society but in what way?

Next, we come to the second presumption: people’s appearance and actions speak of their ideas and values. Admittedly, our dressing and behaviors are not presented to ourselves; we use clothes, words and actions to communicate with other companies. Therefore, we may say that appearance and behaviors are one of the forms for human beings to converse with each other. We call it forms or media. Without such media, we are not able to expose our inner world, express our feelings. Primitive tribes use smoke signals for exchanging information while civilized ones start to write their philosophical thoughts on the nature the existence. For a closer one, the twenty-seventh President of America William Howard Taft would probably never become a president in nowadays America for it is now a time asked for show business from actors to presidents: the radiating image is far more important than glittering ideology while Howard Taft himself was unfortunately with a body of three hundred pounds. A wisdom president with clumsy body represented a nation with rational and critical thinking; while a well-dressed playboy-like president is a sign for amusing and corruptive culture. In that case, we put “appearance and actions” and “ideas and values” into the same system of culture. The former one stands for the media of culture while the latter one represents the content. The media conveys the content, so people’s appearance and actions speak of their ideas and values.

We mainly estimate a society’s culture by what its people value, however, there’s always something they don’t accept or not realize that reveal the potential and also essential part of the society. For example, Koreans are strongly oppose that they share some characters with the Japanese but it is just the furious resistance that reveal the most similar part in their natural instincts.

In sum, although there are other elements that reveal the society’s ideas and values, people’s appearance and behaviors remain to be the most significant one. Appearance and behaviors act as media of culture while social ideas and value play the role of content. For that matter, the media speak mainly, if not wholly, of the content.