Often, one’s initial evaluation, upon meeting someone for the first time (“first impression”) is judgmentally and erroneously, founded upon one’s stereotypical evaluation of external features, such as verbal tone, extent of eye contact, and facial expression with reference to past experience with others. Such customary reflexive and experientially reductive appraisals based upon recalled subjective criteria and vulnerable memory, in our view, would not seem to be creditably useful.
Painted portraits cannot be considered as faithful to any reliable standard of objective description since they vary with the temporal conception and portrayal of traits of the human persona. The mysterious, subtle smile of Michelangelo’s “Mona Lisa” may intend to portray a sentiment, indeed, not common to the modern woman. Oscar Wilde’s (sole) novel, “The Face of Dorian Grey,” evokes a gothic personal portrait of the protagonist which bizarrely alters to reveal his true, disguised, character. Victorian novelists, such as Dickens and Trollope, articulate, in substantial detail, the facial and other external physical features of their created characters to convey their intended persona and designated place in the fictional composition. Such authors’ style of stereotypical character description, while brilliantly recounted is, inarguably, dated.
We would thoughtfully suggest a radically conceived, perhaps revolutionary, alternative protocol which we have empirically determined to be more rational, perceptive and factually adept. Rather than relying on a subjective and factually unsupported impression hazarded on an impulsive personal reaction to observable features (such as eye contact, tone, posture, personal expression, dress and posture, perhaps presence and style of mustache or beard and other temporal features), we would recommend the exercise of one’s concentrated essay at an accurate “first impression” of a newly met individual by the observation his chosen vocabulary.
As bizarre as our novel proposition may, at first, appear to be, we would, nevertheless, emphatically caution the reader to be alert to, and wary of, any newly introduced individual who noticeably omits to employ such words as, empathy, sympathy, beneficial, societal, appropriate, aesthetic, sensitive, considerate, equitable, principled, racial, moral, equitable, considerate, deferential, aesthetic, appropriate, and other positive and principled choices from the Nation’s lexicon.
It is empirically inarguable that utilized words are the spoken, overt replication of inner thought and, accordingly, comprise a more rationally indicative revelation of innate persona than a subjective judgment construed from traditionally perceived physical stereotypic appearance. Dishonest and reprehensible individuals have little empirical or personal use for beneficial and positive choices from the Nation’s lexicon in the course of their innate avoidance of its traditionally acceptable standards of rectitude.
It is, of course, wise and prudently necessary to compare the specific observations attained by way of our recommended mode of “first impression,” with later actual, empirical experience regarding the contextual person; however, in general matters of “first” or “early impression,” it is rationally appropriate and eminently fair to fashion one’s early estimation of character based upon appropriate rational criteria.
In sum, we suggest that the early evaluative process of a newly introduced individual encompasses a sensitive attention to the prescient nature of his chosen vocabulary rather than a biased and subjective judgment based upon experienced or stereotypical external standards.
-p.
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