Criticism, as most of the intellectual or business minded world (as well as those positioned comfortably at the rare intersections of the two) will have you know, is an essential, remarkable, and beautiful thing; something without which we might be hard-pressed to progress, and which can serve as a powerful current against the stream of the ego or the group. Even Octavio Paz had a nicely parceled line about criticism:
“What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.”
If this thing is so important, as it demonstrably is, if the scores of books, academic journals, societies, university departments, hell, entire movements are any indication, I’m left with the query as to why it’s such a source of complaint and conflict when trickled down to the realm of every day, of the common man, of the common experience, if such a thing in fact exists.
Many people are eager to note how accepting of criticism they are, yet they expect it to be of a certain brand, marked by various formalities that respect not an actual objective standard of quality but rather the limits of their own ability to separate themselves from the thing being criticised. Nevertheless, the brand is given a name and a semblance of order, and is referred to as “constructive criticism.” Separating this from what is apparently useless criticism (how this can be determined through any means other than the recipient deciding within the appropriate context is beyond me), proponents of this sort of variety pack pat on the back have a number of diverging ideas about how criticism should be delivered, and about what kind of consistency it out to have. Unfortunately, no one has yet developed a pasta sauce-based criticism consistency scale (I’d probably be a chunky style fan), but there may be larger tragedies in the world.
Frequently, constructive criticism advocates talk about a different yet just as ridiculous food “connection.” The “PNP sandwich,” as possibly coined or at least perpetuated by one Scott Berkun involves ensuring that everything negative one has to say is lovingly panini’d in between two slices of, well, bullshit. I remember this number from a writing course taken several years ago; while the criticism part was genuinely useful, listening to the obligatorily whipped-up warm fuzzies of bored college students was about as constructive as a tuba playing tribute to a bird chirp.
There’s also apparently a holy list of things that cannot be criticised, seeing as they are the unique and individual and irreproducible and indefensible babies of people’s inner children, begotten by some mysterious yet highly personal process or other. In some cases, this probably applies to the way someone looks in a particular aspect or how they’ve behaved, but then, these are often the very same elements that are up for criticism, and anyway, you can apply this defense to pretty much anything once you’ve crossed out of the realm of personhood and into the magical land of personality Jell-O.
Taking criticism as it comes, how it comes, and intelligently making use of it or sending it along on its merry way is a skill many of us seem to be losing in favor of trying to dictate how it gets gift-wrapped before it gets to our gullets. If you need any proof that things are really getting bad, you need but watch a single episode of American Idol, Survivor, the Real World, or any other of the perplexingly successful shows that bank on our greed for watching people get grilled.
In Praise of Criticism
Criticism, as most of the intellectual or business minded world (as well as those positioned comfortably at the rare intersections of the two) will have you know, is an essential, remarkable, and beautiful thing; something without which we might be hard-pressed to progress, and which can serve as a powerful current against the stream of the ego or the group. Even Octavio Paz had a nicely parceled line about criticism:
If this thing is so important, as it demonstrably is, if the scores of books, academic journals, societies, university departments, hell, entire movements are any indication, I’m left with the query as to why it’s such a source of complaint and conflict when trickled down to the realm of every day, of the common man, of the common experience, if such a thing in fact exists.
Many people are eager to note how accepting of criticism they are, yet they expect it to be of a certain brand, marked by various formalities that respect not an actual objective standard of quality but rather the limits of their own ability to separate themselves from the thing being criticised. Nevertheless, the brand is given a name and a semblance of order, and is referred to as “constructive criticism.” Separating this from what is apparently useless criticism (how this can be determined through any means other than the recipient deciding within the appropriate context is beyond me), proponents of this sort of variety pack pat on the back have a number of diverging ideas about how criticism should be delivered, and about what kind of consistency it out to have. Unfortunately, no one has yet developed a pasta sauce-based criticism consistency scale (I’d probably be a chunky style fan), but there may be larger tragedies in the world.
Frequently, constructive criticism advocates talk about a different yet just as ridiculous food “connection.” The “PNP sandwich,” as possibly coined or at least perpetuated by one Scott Berkun involves ensuring that everything negative one has to say is lovingly panini’d in between two slices of, well, bullshit. I remember this number from a writing course taken several years ago; while the criticism part was genuinely useful, listening to the obligatorily whipped-up warm fuzzies of bored college students was about as constructive as a tuba playing tribute to a bird chirp.
There’s also apparently a holy list of things that cannot be criticised, seeing as they are the unique and individual and irreproducible and indefensible babies of people’s inner children, begotten by some mysterious yet highly personal process or other. In some cases, this probably applies to the way someone looks in a particular aspect or how they’ve behaved, but then, these are often the very same elements that are up for criticism, and anyway, you can apply this defense to pretty much anything once you’ve crossed out of the realm of personhood and into the magical land of personality Jell-O.
Taking criticism as it comes, how it comes, and intelligently making use of it or sending it along on its merry way is a skill many of us seem to be losing in favor of trying to dictate how it gets gift-wrapped before it gets to our gullets. If you need any proof that things are really getting bad, you need but watch a single episode of American Idol, Survivor, the Real World, or any other of the perplexingly successful shows that bank on our greed for watching people get grilled.