Issue208 决战830拍砖组tm 作业

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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."
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If we go to different countries of this world, we will find relatively or totally different looks, dresses, and acts of their local people. Observing this phenomenon, some people say that it is the society’s ideas and values that determine its people’s appearance and behavior. As to me, although I partly agree with this assertion, I still find other factors are the dominant ones that help people to tell much about a society’s ideas and values.

To be frankly, it is quite natural that people will appear or behave with the reflections of the society’s ideas and values because they were born, grew up in this society, which determines they will be marked with the society’s specialty. Especially when people receive the education designed by this society, such ideas and values will be deepen in people’s minds. Demonstrations of people’s look, dresses, and act, which are the direct ways to survey the information, can help citizens from other places understand these ideas and values better. For example, on the beach of western countries, girls will wear bikinis to show their curvaceous figures and exotic vigor. While in the eastern countries, especially countries like China, Myanmar, Vietnam, girls will feel shy and even fear to wear that. That mainly because that western society advocates people to be free no matter in clothing, communication or speaking, while some eastern countries esteem traditional things as the highest moral that girls should particularly behave or dress elegantly.

However, it is incomplete to know a society’s ideas and values only by observing its people’s appearance or behaviors. Those ideas and values are formed and lasted in quite a long period, which contain a lot of abundant things and cover many important aspects that can’t be explained or understood only by one angle. Literature, for example, is another important element for us to know a society’s values and ideas. Leo Tolstoy, the best well-known writer in the world, wrote <War and Peace> to showed his antipathy against the tyranny of the Russian government at that time. Although he was one of the small group to express his feelings by publicizing his books, it stands for a wish that the whole society of that time had for liberty and free.

Another important element to show a society’s ideas and values is law and disciplines the government set to control its citizens. As we all know, law keeps being modified with the development of the society and with the improvements of people’s minds. Previously, we didn’t have detailed laws to accuse those criminals who conduct sexual harassment to females, because at that time, women hasn’t got their equal social status as men do. But right now, we have laws to execute strict penalties to those bad guys since the contemporary society is more focusing on protecting women and has recognize the important roles of women during current times.

In summary, although it is true that people’s look, dress and act will reflect a society’s ideas and values, it is not the only element having such effects. If we want to know a society better, we should have multi-dimensioned views to observe it including knowing its literature, laws, policies and so forth.(533 words/ one minute overtime)

[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-8-17 at 13:06 ]