My Middle Test

I thought my writing's middle test was easy enough. I only confused about the run ons's part. It was so difficult. I forgot what the mark that i had to use there; the semicolon or comma.

Actually i didn't learn hard before the middle test. I only read the book few hours before the middle test began. I knew it's good but i felt so lazy. I couldn't help it though. And the result was the penalty of my laziness. I only got 60. Good but not good enough ._________.

Don't blame on me. I got so task that i had done before the middle test. That's why i didn't had enough time to learn and felt o lazy. i had learned hard enough for the final test. I hope it's better than the middle test.

Movie and Novel

Cinema and literature… These two words have a opposing each other for quite a long time now. Since the beginning of the XIX century cinema has produced a great number of films. Some of them are worth of the spectator’s attention, some of them are not but nevertheless nowadays it is hard to imagine a person that does not know “what’s new” in the movie world. Literature is a complete different world. It is a world that in spite of its openness and accessibility still remains unreachable for the majority of contemporary people. We are not to analyze the reason of this phenomenon but it is important to say that a movie does save time in comparison with the book. This “time saving process” of course in the first place influences the quality of the “product” and as a result we have endless amounts of poor quality movies that are claimed.

As every production, movie-making needs “raw-materials”. Books become a perfect never-ending source where film producers borrow or sometimes even steal the ideas of writers’ imagination. People, as it has been said before, do want to save their time, but they also want to stay educated and get acquainted with the works that are considered to be “the classics”. Therefore the only way to get acquainted with the most stunning literary works is through watching movies made form these books. Only a few producers have an aim to truly show the reader what the book is about, making their movies truly objective. This fact makes the contrast between films and books even bigger. The “immortal” books have inspired many producers to make films out of them, unfortunately quite a few can state that their filming had a successful result. Of course for a person that has not read the book the film might seem rather good and sometimes even splendid. “Yes, yes, now I know what Hemingway (Shakespeare or anybody else) meant“, - is usually heard after the film. A film becomes the reflection of the book. But thought it is sad to mention, a garbled reflection with rare exceptions. No one will argue with the fact that it is very hard to do a one-year novel in a two-hour movie. This is primarily due to a set of external and internal difficulties.

The “charm” of the books lies in its ability to give the reader countless hidden and revealed messages. One single reader will get only one combination of messages from the book; another one will get another combination. Therefore, no reader gets the same “pattern” of the author’s ideas and this pattern is unique for every reader.

A film presents just of those patterns, but it still does put a tag on the book. The only thing that can reflect the book perfectly is the book itself. Otherwise people face difficulties in understanding the movie. Producers, like no one else, know what these difficulties are about and dedicate their work into their elimination. They try to convert a product of the word-dimension into a product of a visual-dimension and this process has a lot of barriers.

One of the major difficulties in making a movie out of a book is that it is hard to make words into image and sometimes it results in a movie with poor quality. This is a theorem that does no need any other proof except watching existing movies and therefore it becomes an axiom.

One of the most important fields concerning this problem is the media field. Books deliver their core with the help of words; the book-descriptions create corresponding imagination responses in the brain of a person. So it may be even said that the book does not only penetrate a man through his consciousness but it actually shapes the book-based consciousness of this man. In this case the person becomes the media himself, creating a magnificent effect on the reader. The contents of the book becomes an integral part of the reader: not just the author’s perception of the world, but also the readers perception, too. This imposition of two philosophical worlds one over each other produces the “effect of presence” that a film can hardly claim to achieve.

Movies, in their turn, provide visual images that are already given and unchangeable. They represent a product that is all ready for its consumption. There is no need to turn on the imagination or make a deep analysis of what is being observed, because the producer has processed everything for the viewer. In other words, the information is already been “chewed”, so the spectator simply needs to open his mouth and eat it. So generally, the reader’s personal opinion is replaced by the producer’s perception of the books contents. These difficulties are impossible to overcome even with the help of the latest contemporary video techniques, equipment and effects.

No matter how good the movie based on the book is, it always has it ownbuts… It may be good, but it will be always unilateral; always the producer’s personal interpretation and perception of the book. A book, literary, is a sequence of words that produces a unique effect on the reader. The words appeal to the imagination and the imagination complement it with all the necessary attributes taken from the book-descriptions.

A film is a sequence of image, sound and only then words. The focus is taken away from the meaning to the words. Words are visualized, but the main controversy or difficulty is that as soon as the word becomes visualized it is not a word any more. It becomes just an image and sometimes it possesses a small amount of the original message of the author’s word. This is the primarily reason for reading a book before watching the movie. This will make the movie not good, or bad, but different. Reading the book will make it just another opinion on the book. Of course, if it goes about qualitative productions.

The temptation to add words of his own is great for the producer and is ordinarily done. Once in a while the world sees great films made from books, but no matter how objective they try to be, subjective interpretation is the essential quality of a human being. So while a book represents author’s pure thoughts resulting in the reader’s unique interpretation, a film results in a twisted reflection, which is based on a garbled interpretation of the book contents made by a producer.

The difficulties that producers face, prevent them from making a true book-based work, making it just their personal perception of the author’s message. The truth is that a film was never meant to “match” the book, because otherwise the producer’s creativity would not be valued. A movie is just an addition to the book. It is like a review that helps the reader to see other sides of the work. But as a person cannot make any judgments on the book basing on literary reviews, a spectator cannot make any judgments concerning the book after watching a movie on it. Another thing to remember is that: reviews can be bad! So may be movies should encourage people to read books, as they present the subjective producer’s opinion on it. As the film is the producer’s personal interpretation of what he had read it is nothing more that “his personal” interpretation. The spectator has to understand it and take it into account. In order to create the most objective perception, the spectator has to read the book, create a unique understanding of the author’s thoughts and then, and only then he may say, “Yes, now I know what Harper Lee and Steinbeck meant”!

Games and Violence

Computer games have seriously caught the attention of Mass Media and nowadays every channel considers its duty to remind people how much damage these games cause to children and adults. The increasing amount of games with violent scenes sock the society and makes it very aware of them.

It is already common knowledge that violent games cause violence in people. This fact is not even doubted by the majority of people. Every other person says that the reason lies in games being too close to reality. The opinion that games make violent actions normal for the player and therefore make the player pitiless can be often heard. In this case the game is the cause of violence and the act of violence by itself is a consequence. And can real-life violence exist in the reality of a game? Is the transfer of the definition of “violence” with all its peculiarities from one world to another justified only according to the external similarity of these two worlds?

Games originally are entertainment. Contemporary games are very realistic and for this reason they are a source of great experience for the player and develop the imagination. Games are entertainment and even more then that. In addition, the statistics of the New York University lead by Green and Bavelier claim that the player preferring active games get an improvement of some types of brain activity, related to processing of visual information. In particular, game players cope with problems of simultaneously tracking several moving objects at the average level of 30% better then people who do not play active computer video games. The “gaming” violent experience may not be the cause of violent behavior in reality. None of the playing experience will become the priority in making important decisions concerning problems in real life. A game is an abstraction. A player gets abstract tasks and acts according to abstract rules.

Games are also the possibility to be however a person wants to be and to rest from the outside world for some time. But what if a person gets so much excited with the game scenes that he becomes violent in reality? Then, it proves that the games cause people to become violent. Let us stop for a moment right at this point. Those who do not participate in this type of activity usually make the conclusion of presence of violence in the game-world. Nobody will ever hear this kind of statement from those who play, from those who know the rules of the game and understand that it is just a virtual world. A psychologically healthy person will never confuse or connect these two different worlds. A game is a virtual world with visual images very similar to human. These images represent by themselves nothing but simple playing obstacles. A game may potentially give the opportunity to “destroy the obstacles” that may not be destroyed according to the rules but it is more about personal choice whether to do it or not. This leads us to the conclusion that violence is not a consequence but the cause. People who are originally prone to violence may get irritated by games and perform violence in the “real world”. But in this case violence in games is a simple justification of the violent nature of the player.

Games looks like reality but nor real. Gamers must know that. They also must know what’s the best time to play games so it’s not interfere another activities. Every part of the game is just imagination. Please don’t make it real.

Moral Difference Between Hitting A Computer and Hitting A Person

The contemporary reality with its unceasing progress has caused a lot of changes in the life of every single person on the planet. Nowadays, computers surround us almost everywhere. Of course they are primarily there to facilitate our existence and save our time by presenting us ready results of their activity. Nevertheless, their constant presence has created several disputes for the humanity one of which is the inclination of human beings to “animate” computers. Ascribing personalities to computers may be easily observed through the way people talk about computers and even treat then. Computers get names, are punished by turning them off improperly and rewarded by getting new soft or hardware for them. That is to say that if we talk about morality concerning people it may be appropriate to talk about morality concerning computers. Suppose, some person gets mad and punches a computer for not working “right” and then later on when meeting a friend gets annoyed by him and punches him too. It goes without saying that such a behavior towards a friend can be a subject to morality. What about the other victim? Is a computer-violence in this case a subject of morality, too?

Well, as everything else in this world it is rather comparatively. It completely depends of the details of a given situation. If this same person really does consider his computer to be “alive”, then the morality of his action is voidable. And if he does not consider his computer to be “animated” his action is nothing more that a result of his dissatisfaction with the work of the machine. The computer remains being a “material thing” and does not stand on the same level with a friend. And as we all know morality concerns only rational persons and not things. And a thing will not ever substitute a person.

The situation requires a deeper analysis in order to revels all of its “undersea stones”.

A lot of thoughts concerning computers and machines have been said and written starting with Descartes and continuing with John Searle, John McCarthy and others. But nothing and nobody is able to place it at the human’s place yet. Nobody argues that punching a friend is an act of low morality or no morality at all, because we are talking about a real alive person with feelings, to say nothing of the damage that the punch may cause to the health of a person. Aggression addressed to another person has always been criticized by the moral codes. But if we stop at this very point and take a deep breath we will come to the conclusion that punching a computer is also an element of the aggression that is so much criticized by the codes of social morality. And in this case it does not matter whether a person considers the computer to be “alive” or not. We come to the conclusion that every manifestation of aggression is immoral. And this conclusion is canceled by “response aggression” that may be used as self-defense and therefore is not immoral.

So we come back to where we started. The moral difference between hitting a computer and hitting a person also depend on what is understood by “morality”.

According to the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy morality may be used “descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or some other group, such as a religion, or accepted by an individual for her own behavior”. This definition does not reveal objective morality but is mostly focused on the variations of morality that leave our double-ended issue quite unsolved. The morality we talk about need to be completely separated from etiquette and society morality. Morality is always basically what is “good” and “right” to do in any situation. It is often said that high morality is a virtuous conduct presented by people towards…other people. And at this point we stop again. Does a computer fit in the list of the objects of virtuous conduct of a man? Who sets the standards of good and bad towards such a machine as a computer? Finally, a computer is just an auxiliary tool for a human being. So this is the perfect time to enter a new kind of morality – computer morality or if to speak globally AI (artificial intelligence) morality.

Once again analyzing the peculiarity of this question it is necessary to say that computer morality in this case completely depends on the belief whether computer is really capable of thinking and should be treated as a living being, for instance as a friend. Are they conscious or not? And therefore may the immorality of hitting a human being be applied towards hitting a computer?

As we are not the first to raise this question let us turn to the opinions of the people who have dedicated years of experiments to this issue.

John Searle is the man who became famous for his point of view on the problem and his Chinese room argument. It dealt with the belief that computer cannot be conscious. John Searle was the supporter of the opinion that “no computer could ever be made which could really "think" in the way we do”. He showed it through his Chinese room experiment. The experiment was the following: A person in the room has a huge book that is full of Chinese characters in it. Someone else pushes a paper under the door of the room with some Chinese character on it, too. The person has simply to match the character he gets from under the door with the characters he has got inside the book and give away the response that the book suggests. This person does not know Chinese. But the person behind the door will get answers logical to his questions and think that the man in the room does understand Chinese. The person does not understand Chinese or think. The person simply follows the rules or in other words follows the commands. Just the same way a computer does. Therefore the computer does not think, neither. So, according to Searle the “behavior” of a computer is “taking input, putting it through a set of formal rules, and thereby producing new output. Such an interpretation of the work of computers suggests that computers do not think and therefore the question of the morality of hitting a computer falls off.

Contemporary computers do posses intellectual and metal qualities, but nevertheless what they lack is emotional qualities, which are so typical for a human being. Nevertheless, the process of ascribing personalities to computer is in its early blossom and the fruits are yet to come. As John McCarthy states the process of ascribing personalities is the result of the attempts to understand what computers do while they work.

It is not even that we hit a friend or a computer but it is that we can get response for our “I am sorry I was wrong” from a friend and not from a computer… Or we can but we are still not sure about the computer understanding what he is saying. Well, it is common knowledge that a machine does not have feelings. And we still come back to the Chinese room effect. But this opinion is one out of a million and many more a still to come.

Descartes was sure that during our life be all get a lot a false believes and he made it his main goal to select the ones that are “beyond doubt”. This is why Descartes’ First Meditation starts with Descartes assurances in the need to “to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations”. The basic essence of the First Mediation is the Dreaming argument. Its contents is the following: Not depending on whether a person is sleeping or is awake, the person in both cases is not in a good position to state whether he is sleeping of awaken. So therefore a person cannot indicate and sort out any of his experiences as a dream or reality. All the experiences may be dreams and a person can never tell whether this or that experience is not a dream.

According to this argument there is one most weighty conclusion from the basic thoughts: “You can’t know anything about the external world on the basis of your sensory experiences”.

If we apply this argument to the question of morality of hitting a computer we see that, as we cannot observe the computer “thinking” with our sensory experiences it does not mean it does not think. And therefore it can still be immoral to hit a computer in terms of respecting its own way of thinking, which may be damaged, by a hit. Once again we come back to the thought that only the conviction of a person in the fact that a computer does think and it “animated” is a criterion of the evaluation of the morality of hitting a computer compared to the morality of hitting a person.

As it has been already said computers require a different standard of morality: the so-called “computer-modality”. This primarily point out that as the computer and a person cannot be placed at the same step no matter what, then the behavior conducted towards them cannot be evaluated with the same measures. So the morality of immorality of hitting a computer may exclusively be evaluated by the system of values. As we have found out – the problem of morality concerning computers is even more than twofold. This happens because of the major role that computers are already playing in our everyday life. Computers sometimes substitute the outward world for people becoming their friends. As the attitude to a computer is a very personal issue it is very hard to evaluate the act of hitting a computer from the point of view of standard morality. Nevertheless, it is possible to say that the morality of hitting of computer completely depends on the person’s supposition of the computer’s ability to think and sometimes even feel. If a person crosses this line as he does hitting a friend, then altogether it is immoral to hit a computer.

As the computer’s ability to understand and to think is invisible and according to Descartes not a subject for sensory experiences it is very hard to state anything. The objective absence of emotional qualities in a computer will not resemble in the person attitude towards it. And not matter whether the computer understands us or just follows the rules as in the Chinese room argument, we attach it the significance we chose ourselves. And the same works with the friends we chose.

There definitely is a moral difference between hitting a computer and hitting a person. But his difference lies inside each man.

It is up to you to decide what a computer is for you. And whether morality is applicable to the case!

Smoking

"Smoking is cool". That's the opinion of smokers about cigarette. Cigarettes have become part of their lifestyle. It's so hard for them to quit smoking. They smoked at every opportunity. After eat, when hanging with friends and family, at bus etc. Unfortunately they are not aware of the impact of smoking to their health and non-smokers.

By smoking, you can cause health problems not only for yourself but also for those around you. 440,000 deaths occur in the U.S. each year from smoking-related illnesses; this represents almost 1 out of every 5 deaths. The reason for these deaths is that smoking greatly increases the risk of getting lung cancer, heart attack, chronic lung disease,stroke, and many other cancers. Moreover, smoking is perhaps the most preventable cause of breathing (respiratory) diseases within the USA. Smoking harms not just the smoker, but also family members, coworkers, and others who breathe the smoker's cigarette smoke, called secondhand smoke or passive smoke. Exposure to passive smoke can also cause cancer. Secondhand smoke also increases the risk of stroke and heart disease. On the other side, smokers feel they eat more and favors if they eat after smoking. There may be substance in cigarettes that make their appetites grow. Smokers also said they felt more energized after smoking. Young people are especially vulnerable because of pressure from their peers and the image that smoking is clever, cool or 'grown-up'. Just trying a few cigarettes can be enough to become addicted.

Evidence shows people who start smoking  in their youth - aged 11 to 15 - are three times more likely to die a premature death than someone who takes up smoking at the age of 20. They are also more likely to be hooked for life. Nicotine, an ingredient of tobacco, is highly addictive – it takes on average on about six cigarettes before nicotine receptors in the brain are switched on, generating a craving for nicotine which may continue for the rest of the persons life. In less than one packet of cigarettes, a person’s brain can be changed forever from that of a non-smoker to a nicotine addicted smoker. On the other hand, many people say that smoking helps them to feel more relaxed or cope with stress. They feel relax after smoking cigarettes. They also feel happier after smoking. I guess it's the effect of nicotine in cigarette.

Smoking is good for your health. It's also not good for your economic.All smoker to do is quit smoking. I know it's so hard to do but they have to. They must realize that they just burn their money. They may just be aware if their chest is perforated to enter the hose to help their breathing or a family member is ill merea due to constant sucking their cigarette smoke.

The good news is smoking is a risk factor you can control. If you want to quit smoking, it helps to set a quit date. When you choose a date to quit smoking, make it one when it is less likely you'll have added stress. Stress is a major roadblock to any behavioral change. That's especially true when you try to quit smoking. When you first quit smoking, it will be rough. You might feel miserable, irritable, even depressed. But according to the American Lung Association, nicotine clears out of the system quickly. It is usually in the undetectable range within 24 hours after someone quits. Remove smoking triggers. Try icotine replacements. Ask about drugs approved by the FDA for helping smokers quit. Know why you crave cigarettes. And don’t forget to get support or counseling.

Television

Television has become a “member” of almost every single family on our planet. And not just an ordinary member, but a very important one, because the time spent next to it exceeds the amount of time spent together with any other family member. You do not have to apply any efforts to talk or listen to complaints while “communicating” with it. You do not have to play with your little son after a hard working day. You are SO tired! Can anybody respect that?

You can simply turn the TV on and everything is done: kids are quiet, your wife is not complaining and you feel absolutely happy. It is so simple that it has become an integral part of the culture of every family. It is the only time, when a person can forget about all the family troubles and the failures of the day. The sofa opposite the TV set has become the place of “reconciliation and spiritual unity” of the family. And instead of playing together and having emotional talks people prefer to watch an episode from a thriller. It is senseless to deny the all-embracing negative effect the existence of television has brought to our lives. But to make our point of view ultimately convincing we will introduce to your attention certain facts that people do not want to accept and often try to justify.  The base of the tomorrow’s society – are children today. And on the way they develop depends how are world is going to look like tomorrow. The television negative effect facts that are well known to every single parent, but are ignored by them in order to put the responsibility for bringing up kids and showing them examples through interaction on the shoulders of somebody else. Contemporary parents work a lot, but when they come back home they are not eager to spend time with their child, the consequences of this fact are the following: kids are given to themselves and watch everything they want or TV plays a role of a babysitter. Therefore children learn moral principles from the television, where by the age of 16 they observe 100,000 violent acts and 33,000 murders.

The models of life interactions given in the television are very exaggerated and garbled. Children learn that they can gain what they want through being stronger and subordinating other people that they can become popular through killing and that even if you are a “good” guy killing is o.k. Statistics have proved that the growth of time spent next to the TV-set scales up the development of aggression. Many years before the examples of imitation for children were their own parents; now these examples come from hit-thrillers and violent films where the personages imitated are cruel, impartial and often purely negative personages. Nowadays, resulting this phenomenon, children instead of playing leap-and–frog on the open air pretend to be “terminators” and run around “killing” each other. The fact of child’s identification with a “negative” destructive image has a vital impact on the development of his or her personality. Violence becomes an ordinary way of interaction, alongside with anger. Early exposure to sexual scenes may lead to early sexual contacts, with destroy the healthy development of a child. Young people are pressured by such an amount of sexual scenes and these scenes normalize casual sexual encounters. They do not to evaluate what they see – they take it as the reality. All the listed above may cause a trauma to a young consciousness and in combination with the violence may produce an unbalanced and unhealthy conduct. We do not have to go far away for examples when kids get guns and go to their schools shooting their teachers and schoolmates. This becomes a call to get somebody’s attention on them, the result of the TV violence and examples influences that overfills their minds.  Television has also a great influence on the self-image of people watching it. We see perfectly shaped bodies hundred of times per day. All the men shown on the TV screen have big muscles and are handsome, and all the women shown are very skinny and their faces and bodies look like a complete perfection. This has caused numerous eating disorders, especially in the teenage group. Such things as bulemia, anorexia and self-mutilation became a well-spread phenomenon.

 A person, especially a child that spends a lot of time next to the TV-set has a very high probability of damaging the eye mechanics and the ability to focus and pay attention. Another negative influence that is connected with the sight is the spoiling of the hearing due to the shortage of auditory stimulation. Even if the programs watched are not violent, if they are watched per hours may have a deep impact on the personality, causing psychological and physiological problems. All the hidden effects in the films and commercials subconsciously depress children and grown-ups. Another reaction of a child to the TV violence besides his aggression is fair. A child, or a person may become so much scared of what they had observed in the television that it might cause their depression and emotional misbalance. Television prevents children from doing their homework and adults from completing their work, influencing in a very bad manner the school grades and work productivity. It lowers the overage level of physical fitness of a person, breaking the coordination. Children being attached to the TV-set loose the possibility to learn the world through real nature, games, sports, etc. They do not feel the world with all its colors and peculiarities. They do not read, and get acquainted with the unforgettable characters of Robinson Crusoe or Tom Sawyer. They do not learn the messages that a book carries inside. Due to that the personality of a person looses a very important piece and may not by called complete. Television has converted or lives into a nightmare. A nightmare where children kill not only on the TV screen and adults loose their will sitting next to the TV-set eating “junk food”. A nightmare where the time spent by a family next to the TV-set watching a soup-opera is considered to be “family time”. It is a nightmare where violent television performs the role of the parents. What else can be said to show that television destroys the healthy development of a child’s personality.  All the negative effects listed above concern grown-ups as well, but through the special sensitivity of children towards the influences we wanted to show to the full the destructive power of television. It has turned our lives into an addiction that suppresses the beauty of our real life by the violent substitution. And can without any doubts be called one of the worst inventions of modern times.

Television actually has bad side and good side. The bad side is we can be lazy to do another activities. Television has so much interesting programme so people prefer to watch television than to do outdoor activities or sport. The good thing is we can get many new knowledge. Tv channel such as national geographic etc can give us more information about animal. Choose the bet time to watch television. Limit time watching tv. Remember you still have to do another activities and contact with another people.

Fashion and Indentity

For hundreds of years people have put some message in the type of clothing they wore. Long ago people started wanting to stand out from the “crowd” and be different from other people by means of changing their clothing. Some examples of these “standing out” became very popular and were followed by more people. This was the moment when fashion appeared. Nowadays, fashion is sometimes defined as a “constantly changing trend, favored for frivolous rather than practical, logical, or intellectual reasons”. Nevertheless, it is necessary to say that at the present moment fashion has a deeper influence on the life of people and possess more than just frivolous reasons for its existance. Clothing has become an integral part of self-realization of every person. It is no longer just an “external shield” and a frivolous attitude towards it may cause loosing a very important physical, psychological and social aspect of a person’s life. The harmony attained by the combination of the inner world of a person and his “exterior” makes it very hard to say not even being a professional in this sphere that fashion is just about looks. Clothing is basically a covering designed to be worn on a person's body. This covering is a need, a necessity that is dictated by the norms of social conduct. This “necessity” brings a lot of variety into the lives of people and makes their image more complete. It is not about people serving fashion; it is about fashion being a slave of people.

The type of clothing completely depends on the person who is wearing it; therefore it becomes a reflection of his perception of himself, which leads us to the term – personal identity. Lately a lot is being heard about personal identity and its meaning in the life of every single person on the planet. The choice of clothing and accessories (clothing that is worn or carried, but not part of a person’s main clothing) is as important as identification through the color of hair, height, skin and gender. Clothing nowadays is a media of information about the person wearing it. It is a cipher; a code that needs a decryption in order to understand what kind of person is underneath it. The present time offers a great variety of these “ciphers” and therefore gives people a large number of opportunities to reveal their identity. As every cloth carries a strong message about its owner, every owner “nests” a certain value in it depending on his temperament, mindset or today’s mood. Therefore, the clothing of a person is a mean of communication with the outside world. It is the way of telling people about the “state” and the ”status” of it owner.

Communication by its definition is supposed to be bilateral. So if a person carries a strong personal message to the people outside what is the response from their side? The response is the reaction on the clothes the person it wearing. It can be acceptance or complete outcast and a misunderstanding. This especially touches extraordinarity in clothing (a very expressive personal identity) or an obvious lack of taste and vulgarity. Malcolm Barnard in his book “Fashion as communication” makes a great work by outlining cultural roles, rules, rituals, and responsibilities that are maintained and constructed by fashion. Fashion is compared to art. It is like an architector that gives his creation any shape he desires and at the same time is the reflection of the architector’s belonging to a certain social level, a certain psychological condition and so on. One of the questions concerning the communication through fashion is whether the message possessed by fashion is the reflection of the internal or external identity. There are arguments that support each of the sides; therefore it goes without saying that fashion is a “polyhedral being” that intersects numerous internal and external aspects of any personality. The message that clothing contains is basically a way of nonverbal communication with gender, ethical and power aspects.

Clothes have an immense impact on the perception of people around and on the perception of the person wearing them, too. A suit can make a person feel more confident and organized, which would eventually change even the gestures and the manner of talking of the person or for instance wearing jeans after a suit may change the conduct of a person to a very liberal and feeble one. The perception of people around can be very predictable in terms of their reaction on a person wearing this or that style of clothing. Fashion is one of the most powerful means of communication, which sometimes may play a vital role in the life of a person; it especially concerns the cases of getting a desired job. Therefore fashion may not only carry a message, it can also create a “pseudo-message” that is required by a situation the person finds himself in. This can be simply proved by analyzing the reaction of the people on the street on people wearing different types of clothing. The preference is always given to people dressed in “business style”, personifying their dignity and seriousness in everything. This is one of the primary reasons that even the smallest companies make wearing a suit one of their requirements for their employees. The customers feel more confident in such “consultants”. So, fashion is a very keen tool of manipulation while communicating besides its importance in social class, culture, sex and gender relations of people.

Clothing is a fundamental part in the image of a contemporary man or a woman. The image is constructed for various reasons and has various manifestations. Dressing has become a way to create, to reveal and to conceal information from the external observers. Fashion has always been considered to have more of a women based orientation. As soon as women realized that experimenting with their clothing might bring them the results they need they became the most interested consumers and the demand on women’s production increased greatly.

As every person belongs to a definite culture and has the right to reveal it, personal identity may sometimes be replaced by cultural identity. Cultural identity is the type of identity that is related to a certain culture or a separate group. It brings people belonging to a culture definite highlighting differences with other people. Clothing in terms of culture is to reveal either the historical roots of a person or the roots the group he belongs to. The oriental-followers are easily defined from the crowd by the specific collars and style of dressing they hold on to. Demonstrating a belonging to a certain cultural community is the free right of every person like people that freely declare who they are going to vote for. Talking about culture it is possible to mention that nowadays exists ”material culture” that dictates its own ways and code of dressing. The liberation of culture off the borders made the cultural fashion developments increase dramatically. The “freedom of word” has found a place in every single cultural attribute nowadays. Wearing a cowboy hat may not be a sign of being from Texas, but a sign of political preference.

For instance it is very easy to distinguish a European from a Hindu by the style of dressing or an Indian woman from an oriental woman by the distinctive spot on the forehead of an Indian woman and a veil worn by Moslem woman. Fashion has taken the best part of the traditional costumes of every culture and sometimes this leads to propagandizing a definite cultural group. For instance, the brightest example is the increasing interest towards the Moslems and oriental culture nowadays.

Fashion and identity are inseparable companions. Fashion with all its symbolism and attributes form an outstanding base for personal and cultural identification. Identity is a necessary process of a healthy personality as it is a part of self-realization of a person that is so much required for finding a place in life of every person. Fashion has become a tool for achieving harmony with the inner world and a way of revealing or concealing peculiarities. Fashion possesses a specific meaning and the more diverse is the society around us the more fashion-trend will appear and surprise us. As long as it does not hurt people around fashion symbols are acceptable, nevertheless while thinking about fashion and identity it is necessary to remember the ethical side of the issue. Fashion and identity through it still remains a twofold issue but there are a lot of positive aspects one can enjoy and share with other people.