Criticism

The act of criticizing someone undeniably carries a hefty negative connotation. 

Many of our preconceived notions of criticism entail personal feuds or grudges, scolding, chastising, humiliation, ridicule, and the shame, embarrassment, fear, or resentment that these actions inevitably precipitate. 

But why is this? If we think about it, offering constructive feedback to others is perhaps one of the greatest, most generous contributions we can make in someone else’s life. It is the act of sharing our wisdom, of connecting the lessons learned from our own experiences with those of others, of implicitly declaring our belief in the value of each of our individual perspectives of life. 

When we criticize with a sense of interpersonal resentment, when we seek to belittle or disparage others because of who they are or what they represent, what are we really doing? When the criticism becomes personal, when it becomes about teaching someone a lesson, when we predispose ourselves to hate someone—the very essence of someone’s existence and being—and not what they did, what is it that we’re trying to do? No one consciously and actively chose in their childhood precisely which personality traits and characteristics they would take and ultimately what type of person they would become. So are we leading a crusade against the circumstances of their upbringing? Their family members and friends? Their parents? The parents of their parents? Are we shaking our fist at God or the universe because they conspired to create such a flawed being capable of making such terrible mistakes? When we’re all a work in progress as imperfect, flawed, and defective beings, what grounds do we have to hold negative feelings against anyone without being hypocritical? 

And when we receive criticism, why are we so inclined to feel fear, shame, or often resentment in return, when it is precisely what we need to improve as human beings? Why do we not merely judge the criticism based on the validity of its points and not on the person saying it or how they are saying it? If it’s not useful based on our analysis, then we can simply let go and move on. And if it is useful, we have all the more to gain. 

There is nothing rational about assigning negative emotion to the giving or the receiving of criticism. So the question I wish to posit today is this: what is the ultimate social function of this interconnectedness between emotion and criticism? Do we need to be scolded, humiliated, ridiculed, or chastised—causing us to feel shame, fear, or resentment in the process—to learn the important lessons of life? Is there something about the inherent nature of heated conversations and deep-seated grudges, something about the shame and embarrassment we inflict that enables progress in and of itself, thus rationalizing a seemingly irrational, shortsighted, impulsive act? To what extent are these tendencies innately built into our psyche, and to what extent are they cultural? 

Should you scold and potentially hit your child to teach them a lesson after they tried playing with fire?

Should you hold a grudge against coworkers that don’t do their fair share of the work?

Should you be angry at your spouse if they cheated on you? 

Should you send angry tweets to a divisive public figure that propagates toxic ideologies that you vehemently disagree with? 

Should we publicly decry and humiliate child predators, war criminals, or human traffickers? 

There are no easy answers to these questions—no way to circumvent the need to understand the minute nuances of each and every significant or insignificant situation we will encounter in our day-to-day life. No—I don’t believe that it is feasible to fully depersonalize criticism; as humans, the constraints of our psychological design make it nearly impossible to extricate the feelings from both the criticism we give and receive alike. But what we can do is ask ourselves how to better criticize, how to evoke the emotions we want to evoke, and how to stimulate positive change while working within the confines of the human psyche. The first step is to empathize with the people who are on the receiving end of these forms of derisive criticism—to ask ourselves if the amount of suffering and mental distress we will inflict is worth the apparent value of teaching them a lesson. 

It is when we neglect to ask ourselves these questions—when we impulsively and indiscriminately criticize according to our own whim—that we risk degrading our relationships with one another in an already chaotic, uncertain world. We have the potential to devolve from productive civil discourse into senseless and angry banter, from teaching your child to be an upright, respectable human being into inflicting lifelong childhood trauma that will sap them of countless opportunities in life, from offering a helping hand to someone in need into pushing them to the brink of depression or suicide.