Criticism: is it ever really constructive?
nava December 2nd, 2009
I want to preface this piece with two statements. The first is that I am referring specifically to criticism among peers, friends, and loved ones; not institutions (this can range from parents-children and teachers-students to courts of law, spiritual assemblies, etc.). In those specific areas, I think it is well-understood that criticism has an established place and, though the form of it should be edifying, and “constructive” rather than harsh and tyrannical, it is the role of institutions to guide and sometimes correct. My second prefatory statement comes in the way of a disclaimer: although this blog is called Bahá’í Perspectives, every piece we submit is subjective and represents the views of the author rather than any authoritative view of the Bahá’í writings. With respect to the following article, this is truer than ever. This piece represents merely my thoughts on this topic based on what I know of the Bahá’í writings and my interpretation thereof, but is not a subject I have explicitly seen dealt with anywhere in the Bahá’í teachings, so it is more like the perspective of a Bahá’í than a Bahá’í perspective.
***
About eight months ago a close friend of mine organized a small informal dinner with a married couple who are well known and highly respected. She wanted them to talk to us about marriage and share some insights with us which they have gleaned after over thirty years of a healthy marriage. In the course of the evening the husband made a statement that blew my mind and that I frequently revisit and meditate on (hence this post 8 months later). He said that when he married his wife he vowed to himself that he would never criticize her. (That’s right—never). He said something along the lines of “I married her because she’s an intelligent, mature woman. She has a relationship with Bahá’u’lláh and she’s accountable to Him [not me, he seemed to imply] for her actions. She brings herself to account each night and doesn’t need me to tell her how to improve. Even if she does something that really annoys me, I don’t tell her. She’s smart and I know she’ll figure it out.” Mind blown.
How could you be married to someone for thirty years and never criticize that person? I just could not wrap my mind around the amount of self control that would require. And is it even a good thing? The next day I had lunch with a large group of people and I brought this statement up. It led to a very heated debate about whether criticism in a marriage is a pivotal element of its functioning, and spilled over into a discussion about whether friends and family members should criticize one another.
After giving it a lot of thought, and admitting freely that I think it is very difficult to put into action, I agree with him. I think the crux of the matter is that human beings are accountable before God, not one another, for their actions. Additionally, every human being is fallible and has limited perception. Often the things I have been praised for have ended up being behaviors I should have actually curbed, and likewise, things I was criticized over ended up being behaviors that were positive. Because none of us know the context of one another’s lives—not fully—and we are not able to see all the nuances. More importantly, even if someone is wrong, why do we need to point it out? It is one thing to have an open and earnest conversation with someone and quite another to criticize each other and tell each other what to do.
The gentleman’s wife agreed with her husband’s approach and told us that in her opinion a lot of Western cultures have a strong culture of constructive criticism but most “constructive” criticism is actually quite destructive.
Another young mother was giving me advice once on how to encourage more positive behavior from some of my students and she told me to always point out the ways they have improved and outline the further progress they can make, rather than criticizing them. She said that with her own children she has seen that when she points out their “bad” behaviors, they seem to embody those traits even more, but when she speaks to them from the perspective of ‘this is where we are currently and here is where we can continue to progress’, their behavior improves.
We have to be so careful as human beings not to crush one another with the things we say, even when we think we are being helpful. Because at the end of the day, our role is to love, support and encourage one another, not modify each other’s behavior and pass judgment on one another.
… Each of us is responsible for one life only, and that is our own. Each of us is immeasurably far from being ‘perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’ and the task of perfecting our own life and character is one that requires all our attention, our will- power and energy. If we allow our attention and energy to be taken up in efforts to keep others right and remedy their faults, we are wasting precious time. We are like ploughmen each of whom has his team to manage and his plough to direct, and in order to keep his furrow straight he must keep his eye on his goal and concentrate on his own task. If he looks to this side and that to see how Tom and Harry are getting on and to criticize their ploughing, then his own furrow will assuredly become crooked.
~ From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi
On no subject are the Bahá’í teachings more emphatic than on the necessity to abstain from fault-finding, while being ever eager to discover and root out our own faults and overcome our own failings.
~ From a letter written on behalf of The Universal House of Justice
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- General Interest , Society
- Comments(14)
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Wow- what a timely piece!
I am going to include this on my blog entry today- I hope you don’t mind.
Mahalo nui loa!
Excellent!
thank you for this wonderful post. very inspiring.
Thats A LOT (of valuable) perspective! Thank you so much for posting it.
Liz, thank you for asking; you are absolutely free to post this on your blog as long as you credit Bahai Perspectives. Thank you so much for the warm feedback Liz, Raha and Hediyih.
thank you very much!! i really liked this post. it makes me really think and reflect.
I am impressed. Never viewed it from that perspective. Will also include it in my blog (with credits
). Thanks for sharing.
Hmm very interesting post. However i wonder just how definable “constructive critism” really is. Our views on how constructive constructive crit is are largly formed by our experiences receiving it. I recently graduated from an art/design course at uni where we where encourged to develop relationships with each other within which we can both give and receive crit. What developed was much the same approach as the mother you mentioned; praise and look at where we are at, followed up with looking at where we can go, how it can be improved.
It seems to me that this approach could be more correctly called encouragment, which brings up another question, what is encouragement?
What i find of particular interest is; considering how are social interactions will change as successive generations learn to employ the tool of consultation more widely into our lives, and, additionally how the transformative effect of consultation impacts our interactions outside of consultation.
Can anyone else see the idea of constructive critism disappearing to be replaced by encouragement and consultation
I absolutely love this article! And I also agree with Kian’s quote at the bottom that the term “constructive criticism” could be phased out and replaced with encouragement and consultation. I think the word “criticism” itself has negative connotations.
Thanks to all of you for spreading your light so that others may benefit!
Thank you so much to everyone for all of the warm and encouraging feedback. Kian I love your postulation and hope that it becomes a reality– if our roles are to support and encourage one another then it makes sense that criticism would be replaced by encouragement and consultation and you suggest. The consultation element is also key, and we know that consultation is earnest and frank, but doesn’t have to be ‘critical’ per se.
I liked this very much it given me a fresh perspective on how to handle some issues i’m having in my own personal life. Thank u
Hello nava,
Thank you very much. This comes to me as a very inspiring posting – and it gave me much food for thought.
You write: “am referring specifically to criticism among peers, friends, and loved ones” and it seems to me that in this context seeing the one positive quality amongst 9 shortcomings is so much more “constructive” than paying attention to the short-comings that it rightfully deserves all our attention, especially since it can be quite challenging and pointing out faults often just ammounts to a cheap way of elevating oneself above the other.
Then you excempt (for good reason, I think) releationships like “parents-children, teacher-students, courts of law, spiritual assemblies” which require one side to guide the other.
However, there is another context in which – to my present understanding – the approach of having a “sin-covering eye” is quite wrong. It is a case in which overlooking a “shortcoming” would not be a challenge but the cheap way out and would be due mainly to a lack of courage and engagement. A few quotes come readily to my mind which point into that direction (there are many others).
“Bind ye the broken with the hands of justice, and crush the oppressor who flourisheth with the rod of the commandments of your Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.”
(Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 52)
“…(be a) haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of oppression…”
(Baha’u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 93)
“If ye stay not the hand of the oppressor, if ye fail to safeguard the rights of the downtrodden, what right have ye then to vaunt yourselves among men? What is it of which ye can rightly boast?”
(Baha’u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 191)
The foundation of the Kingdom of God is laid upon justice, fairness, mercy, sympathy and kindness to every soul. Then strive ye with heart and soul to practice love and kindness to the world of humanity at large, except to those souls who are selfish and insincere. It is not advisable to show kindness to a person who is a tyrant, a traitor or a thief because kindness encourages him to become worse and does not awaken him. The more kindness you show to a liar the more he is apt to lie, for he thinks that you know not, while you do know, but extreme kindness keeps you from revealing your knowledge.
(Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i World Faith – Abdu’l-Baha Section, p. 412)
Now, what do we do when we live in times (like ours) in which lies, deceit and (self)-deception have become so embedded in the very fabric of society, that they are as omni-present as the very air we breath? Wouln’t it be helpful to have somebody actually pointing out to us things that go awry instead of having to figure them out all by ourselves – every one individually? Wouldn’t it be required of us to call a lie and to call deceit what we are seeing to be lies and deceit?
It seems to me that the first challenge is to become aware of what is actually going on – and this in itself is already a huge one. The 2nd challenge is to position oneself to what we have become aware of. The sin-covering eye is not a blind eye, it is an eye that sees and chooses to cover something less important for the sake of bringing to the fore something more important. The 3rd challenge then is to deal kindly with each other. Being kind seems pretty meaningless if it is done for the price of being unaware.
Then there is another aspect: When pointing out something with one outstretched finger, 3 fingers are pointing back at us, and thus calling something lie, deceit and self-deception is always a tall order for ourselves… it might be tempting to be terminally nice instead.
This is a timely piece and quite fitting that I came across it today, because I had a training session where our trainer said that ‘constructive criticism’ does not exist. The word criticism has a negative connotation to it, making the other person receiving it feel inferior and not very good about themselves. She suggested we not label it constructive criticism rather feedback give with positive language to encourage the person to improve.