Summary and Response: The Decline of Neatness

Summary:

In this article, Norman Cousins is talking about the issue of the climate of untidiness; the situation is as he said:” the sloppiness virus has spread to all sectors of society.”

The first example is the change of wearing style. People nowadays like blue jeans that are far from clean and intact, reflecting the conception of desperate conformity. He thought what they try to do are no more than the same style they want to keep away from. Another sloppiness takes form of speech. Cousin consider that the tidiness of language is as important as dress, for English is one of the best derivation in the world when it comes to linguistic treasure. Nevertheless, not only people communicate in incoherence sentence, but also speech itself goes beyond the slovenly to violent. The overflow of improper speech leads to offhand attitude toward cruel-related incidents. Cousins argues that people are becoming relentless and neglectful of all brutality and violence due to such TV and movies.

Overall, these phenomenon in consequence affect human relationship badly, which can be easily found everywhere. People’s recession of emotion and overexposedness of privacy affairs makes them senseless toward things. Finally, Cousins concludes that he demand not for Victorian attitudes, although he wish people’s sloppiness will disappear and go back to their own track.

Response:

Sloppiness does make people become more arbitrary in many aspects. People speak with segment, incoherent phrase; sometimes even use language as a weapon to insult others. Their minds are going away from respect, worsen people’s relationship. However, I wonder about the definition of the word “slavish”. If pursue sloppiness is really a kind of slavish uniform, why it is?

Personally speaking, slavish conformity means someone who doesn’t really know what they are doing, just to follow the trend because many people are doing or elders tells them to do so. In this case, Cousin’s thought may mainly attributes to the phenomenon he had seen before. Moreover, the cutting-edge media affect people hugely since they are young; violence, sex, and bloody TV or movies are the cause to changes their minds. From these two circumstances, it seems plausible to conclude this kind of person as slavish conformity. However, another question comes: Can gracious things improve people’s emotion and relationship? I think it depends. If adult people are easily affected by both things, then the world must be promiscuous. One don’t need put on a set of rule toward people to hope what they ought to be, not everyone inwardly share the same thought. In addition, as soon as the sloppiness totally disappears, there will come out another kind of sloppiness: perfectness.

People are different, as a saying goes: “It goes all sorts to make a world.” As standpoint diverse from person to person, we should try to judge people as a whole, not by what they behave outwardly. It is impossible to change the world to Utopia-like society, neither past nor future. Who knows, maybe some people in the corner who look sloppiness, watch violent movies possess more wisdom than average people.