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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:25
How To Handle Criticism
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So in the category of, I'm pretty sure I've done a podcast on this, but apparently I haven't, a friend of mine sent me a question, how to handle criticism?
How to handle the criticism?
And it's a very important question.
If you want to do anything in this life, and particularly if you want to do anything involving the moral improvement of mankind, you may run into the odd stitch or two of criticism.
I think that's natural, and I think it's healthy, and I think anybody who wants to propose a Improvement of mankind should be subject to the very strictest amounts of skepticism and perhaps even hostility.
That seems to me entirely right, because if you suggest a moral improvement to mankind and you get it wrong, if you get, say, a French Revolution instead of an American Revolution, or if you get communism instead of capitalism, well, the lives of hundreds of millions of people hang in the balance.
So yes, we should be enormously skeptical towards anyone who claims to improve the moral standing of mankind.
Morality is the third rail, not just of politics, but of life itself.
And anybody who claims a revolution in ethics should be subject to the most withering, sandblasting scrutiny and skepticism.
And I certainly welcome that approach, since what I'm playing with is the very essence of society down here in the dungeons of ethics.
It's really important that I don't get my wires crossed, and it's really important that people are as skeptical towards me as they would be to any potential benefactor or catastrophe maker of mankind.
So if you're going to do anything important, then you're going to be criticized.
Of course.
I mean, you can't lift up a finger in this world without 10,000 people screaming at you that it ought to be a thumb.
It has nothing to do with you, everything to do with them.
So I think before we talk about how to handle criticism, I think we should talk about what criticism is.
Now, I am a dictionary called Steff.
Me-ism is my language definition, so I'm going to talk about what I define as criticism.
You can take issue with it or correct me if you want, which would actually be entirely in line with my definition, but this is what I work with.
That to me is the attempt to help you achieve the values that you claim.
Criticism is an attempt to help you achieve the values that you claim.
And criticism is thus morally neutral.
I mean, you could be critical of somebody not using the right garrotting technique to shiv a homeless guy.
That doesn't mean that it's moral.
But obviously, if somebody's trying to shiv a homeless guy, he wants to kill him, and criticism is an attempt to correct the person's behavior or thinking in order to get him or her closer to achieving the goals that he or she claims or states or shows that they want to achieve.
So if you say, I want to pass this test, I want to be really proficient at playing Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano, then criticism is that which is aimed at helping you achieve the goals that you state.
And thus, you know, criticism obviously is morally neutral.
Now that's criticism.
It's a very close cousin called verbal abuse.
is that those actions are destructive of your desire to reach your goals that are undertaken for the sake of anxiety, avoidance or status seeking on the person who's criticizing or attacking you, right?
So, attacks versus criticism.
So, if criticism is somebody's legitimate and valuable and helpful attempt to get you to achieve the values that you want to achieve, that you claim you want to achieve, then there are some preconditions necessary for criticism to be accepted.
Criticism that is not accepted is just somebody doing soliloquies to an empty theater.
Criticisms that are rejected are I mean, ridiculous, embarrassing, futile, silly, embarrassing.
And I don't know that there's any greater scorn or contempt that someone can pour on another human being than refusing to even take any interest in the criticisms that are being offered.
I think that's important to understand.
So, how do you know whether somebody is Criticizing rather than attacking.
Well, do they know the goal that you're trying to achieve?
Number one.
Do they know the goal?
All criticism begins with empathy.
It doesn't mean sympathy.
Sympathy is when you agree with somebody else's emotional state.
Empathy is simply when you correctly perceive somebody else's emotional state.
Empathy is necessary but not sufficient for sympathy.
Right?
So empathy is a guy wants to rob me.
I get that a guy wants to rob me.
I see from his emotional state and body language that he wants to come and do me harm.
That's empathy.
You're correctly identifying with somebody else's hostility.
Sympathy is when you actually Like you agree with and wish to relieve the other person's emotional state.
So this person's crying, I'll give them a hug and that's sympathy.
So, the first question that I ask myself when somebody has a criticism is, does the person show empathy?
In other words, have they asked questions before they have offered up a criticism?
That's sort of the first thing.
Because criticism without empathy is simply self-masturbatory abuse, hopefully in the aforementioned empty theatre.
I mean, who cares?
It's nothing to do with me, nothing to do with anyone, just that person attempting to open up your mouth wide and drop the little worms of their venomous self-discontent into you so that they feel slightly better about themselves.
It's a way of getting you to drain the abscesses of their own self-hatred.
It doesn't have anything to do with you other than as a poison container, literally a toilet they can take their emotional shits into and You are wise to have absolutely nothing to do with anybody like that.
That's just licking a leper.
So that's the first question I ask.
Does the person have a deep understanding of the goal that I'm trying to achieve?
That's important.
That's number one.
Number two, do they have A deep and wise understanding of the methods by which that goal is to be achieved.
Somebody says, I may correctly perceive that you want to climb Mount Everest.
That does not mean that I have a deep and wise understanding of how that can actually be achieved.
If you want to climb Mount Everest, and I see you putting on scuba gear, I can say, I don't think scuba... in fact, I know that scuba gear is not what you need.
If you're going to go down the Mariana Trench, I guess you need a scuba gear, plus a bath escape, but if you want to climb Mount Everest, scuba gear is not the way to go.
Well, that's a criticism...
Based on a correct knowledge of your goal, but it is simply a negative.
Like, don't do that.
I know that.
I know that.
You shouldn't be naked.
You shouldn't be wearing only a kilt and an Olivia Newton-John headband.
But then you say, well, what should I be doing?
Well, I don't know.
I don't know exactly.
I assume, you know, you need a Sherpa, the Bones of Sir Edmund Hillary and oxygen tanks and, you know, a suicidal sense of achievement.
But I don't know exactly.
Like, I'm not wise in how you climb Everest, but I know that scuba gear isn't going to do much for you.
So, if somebody wants to criticize me, then my first question is, does that person have a good understanding of the goals that I'm trying to achieve?
And do they have a good understanding of the methodology by which those goals should be achieved?
That's number two.
Number three is, do they have not just a theoretical but a practical understanding of how to achieve the goals that I want to achieve?
I mean, theory, I don't know.
I mean, I hate to say it, but theory, who cares?
I mean, theory doesn't matter a whole lot, and everybody gets that.
I mean, everybody understands that.
I may be very good at reading Lee Strasberg's work or Ute Hagen's work on acting, but that doesn't mean that I know how to act, right?
Knowing the history of art does not make me an artist.
So theory, I mean, who cares, right?
All that matters in the achievement of things in this world is practice, practice, practice.
Like that old joke, some guy comes up to a New Yorker and says, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?
He says, practice, practice, practice.
Because it's very easy to pontificate from a chair, or an academic chair for that matter.
It's very easy to pontificate about how the world should be run and everything that should happen and so on.
But I don't really care that much about Like, you know, people who've not been in the free market, please don't talk about them.
I'm just making it tougher for everyone else.
else.
The people who've...
Anyway, so theory is only of some value.
Now, the criticism, the self-criticism just popped into my mind that I was talking about parenting before I became a parent.
But that's not true.
That's not true that that was pure theory.
You see, people think that you need to be a parent in order to know how to raise children, which is nonsense.
Until your child becomes an adult, you have far more experience of parenting by being a child than you ever will have of being a parent.
It's like saying, well, I can't say that women shouldn't lie unless I'm a woman.
Well, that would be nonsense, right?
There's universals and universals.
Now, of course, if for my first 18 years I'd been a woman and then done a very exciting Revolving door, Superman switch.
Superwoman, Superman switch.
Then people would say, well, you lived your first 18 years as a woman and therefore you have something of value to say about femininity or whatever.
So, of course you can talk about parenting because we've all had 18 years of being parented in one form or another.
So, anyway, I just sort of wanted to point that out.
18 years of experience, if you think about it well, is more than qualifies anybody to talk about anything.
And we all understand that.
Like, so people who come out of MBA who've got no experience don't really make that much.
But once they've proven themselves and they've, you know, got real experience under their belt, the salt and pepper factor, as we used to call it in the software field, Well, that's sort of a different matter, and that changes things, the equation considerably.
Reading books on a marriage doesn't make you an expert on marriage.
I mean, I've been married for 10 years now, and I think I'm pretty good at knowing what makes a marriage work, and because I thought deeply about it, and talked a lot about it with my wife, talked about it with lots of people on the show, I'm pretty good at doing podcasts.
3,000 plus of them all told, so yes, I think that's got some experience.
So, I mean, the whole purpose of this is criticism and the acceptance of criticism is an incredibly intimate state.
This is why I really don't care.
I mean, fundamentally, I can't express how little it registers on me that strangers criticize me.
Because it means that they don't understand how criticism is a very intimate act.
Criticism means that you must get close to someone, and criticism means that you must deeply understand and agree with their goals.
Otherwise, criticism is more likely to be sabotage.
than it is to be helpful, right?
I mean, it's the old thing that if someone comes into your house and says, I'm going to kill your wife, where is she?
You know, she's at work.
You'll say she's not, she's somewhere else because you don't want to help that person achieve his goals because you don't achieve, assuming you don't, hopefully you don't agree with his goals.
So if some stranger slags me or whatever, I mean, it absolutely does not register.
I I mean, I guess they think like they're heaving a big rock into a pond, but to me it just disappears without even a ripple.
It doesn't register.
Simply because the person doesn't understand what criticism is.
All they know is that they try to use criticism to hurt someone, but in order for that to work, you have to have some respect for the person who's criticizing you.
And if you don't have respect for the person who criticizes you, they're like a bird attacking themselves in a mirror.
That's all they're doing.
I guess they get other people to agree with them, but if it doesn't land on the person it's intended for... Anyway, it's just silly.
So if somebody comes and criticizes me, then the first question I ask is, do they have empathy?
Well, to have empathy, you can really see that in the form of the criticism.
Empathy means that you ask some questions of the other person before you attempt to change their behavior.
So does the person know what I'm trying to achieve with my life or with the particular action I'm trying to do?
Does the person know my goals?
Does the person agree with my goals?
Does the person have a deep knowledge of the methodology to achieve those goals?
And does the person have actual, practical, tangible experience in the achievement of those goals?
This is all before I even bother to engage one single brain cell in whether or not the criticism has any validity whatsoever.
These are the barriers which any potential critic must overcome in me, and I would submit in any rational person, These are the barriers that any critic of mine must overcome before I'll even bother imagining or thinking of looking at the content of what it is that they have to say.
And this is why, you know, for me, like, I'm sitting in this glorious sun-drenched study, and, you know, very far away, over the hills and mountains, if I squint, I can see a few people waving placards, and that's about it.
That's as far as the general trolley criticism comes from me.
I mean, what can I say?
You have to have rational standards.
Otherwise you're going to be prey to every idiot who comes along with a megaphone.
You have to be responsible for your health, for your life.
Make sure that you have standards by which people can be able to criticize you.
Now if someone's in your life and they criticize you a lot, and this is almost always the case because they're family, I mean, why would you choose somebody who just criticizes you a lot?
I mean, how the hell is that supposed to help anyone?
I mean, it doesn't, right?
Then, there are some important things to examine and to become assertive in your own life.
There are some important things to examine.
So, first of all, you say, okay, well, how do I feel after this person has criticized me?
If I do not feel motivated for improved excellence, then There's a problem.
Because if criticism is supposed to help you achieve your goal, which the person agrees with, understands, and has practical experience, then you should feel motivated to pursue that goal.
So if you want to go climb Everest and there's some guy at your dinner party who's climbed Everest ten times, Then clearly he's going to tell you all about how to climb Everest and you're going to be like, damn!
I am really ready to go do something stupid and self-destructive for the sake of vanity and boredom.
Sorry.
I'm so ready to go climb that mountain because it's there.
What a ridiculous answer.
Anyway.
You're going to feel enthusiastic about it.
Because that person has just saved you a whole lot of time, effort and danger by pointing out how things can be achieved.
How you can achieve the things that you want.
They have practical experience, they've saved you a lot of time and so on.
So in the early days in business occasionally we have some guy come by who was really helpful and useful in getting us to understand certain things and save us time and money and energy.
I felt a huge motivation to go and achieve my goals because I had just been given 50 shortcuts on how to achieve my goals.
So goals are that much closer and so on.
So that's the important thing.
Do you feel closer to and more enthusiastic towards achieving your goals after being criticized.
If you do, then that's important to understand.
It doesn't mean the person is always right, but it does mean that that's an important emotional experience to process.
Certainly if you feel depressed and self-hating and exhausted and debilitated and so on, then you've just, you know, you just got venom-sax-zinged, right?
You just got used as a poison container and probably without even the courtesy of a reach-around.
Obscure reference.
Maybe too obscure.
Not that obscure.
So that's another important aspect to understand about criticism.
Now the second question to ask is, does this person understand my goals?
Criticizing someone in the absence of understanding their goals is just completely ridiculous.
It's completely ridiculous.
How do I get to Carnegie Hall?
Here's a scuba tank.
What?
The hell are you talking about?
I just asked you, and my goal is to get to Carnegie Hall.
What on earth does a scuba tank have to do with anything?
So if you don't understand what people's goals are, then criticizing them is simply a masturbatory act of shitting on their dreams, or their self-esteem.
Alright, so you'd ask someone, what are, you know, what are my goals?
You should work harder.
To achieve what?
See, criticism in the absence of an agreement on shared goals is ridiculous.
It literally is ridiculous.
It's like saying, I would really like a piece of cheese.
I bought you some concrete so you can build that house.
Like, what?
No, I really wanted a piece of cheese.
Penguin, you say?
Yes, let's pretend to be penguins.
You're not doing a good penguin.
You know, that's not how you How you work with concrete.
It's like, no, I wanted a piece of cheese.
Like, if there's no agreement on the goals, then criticism is ridiculous.
Now, you may disagree with somebody on the goals or say their goals should be changed or whatever.
That's more of a reorientation, I would say, than a criticism.
You say, well, my goals are to sponge off my parents my whole life.
Well, then you can change the goals if you want.
You can say, well, there's the pluses and minuses to that or whatever.
There's things going to be problematic about that.
But, I mean, that's very rare.
I mean, most people criticize and they don't have any idea that criticism is supposed to help someone achieve good goals that you agree with.
I mean, that's really the point.
I mean, they just nag or whatever.
They don't have an agreement on goals, so they end up just nagging, right?
The kid doesn't want to clean up and the mom wants him to clean up his room.
Well, just nagging.
And they criticize, you need to clean up your room.
Well, you're talking about goals, not achievement, achieving those goals.
Right.
And people avoid talking about goals and simply will talk about achieving goals because they don't want to expose their complete ignorance of the universals that they're claiming.
So, you know, a mom might say, you need to You need to clean your room.
And the kid says, why?
He says, because I like it messy, right?
So this is a big problem, right?
If the mom says, well, you need to clean your room because I like it tidy, then the kid's going to rightly say, well, I like it messy.
So what does that have to do with anything?
Because I, or your dad, pays your bills, right?
Well, okay, so then it's basically a monetary transaction.
I should do something because you pay me to do it, or because you're paying.
So basically it's not out of any goodness, it's simply because you hold economic power over me.
That's also not something.
You should do it because it will make me feel happier.
Well, it makes me feel happier to have it messy.
So why should I do it?
If we universalize making the other person happy, it will make you happy if I clean it.
It makes me happy if it's messy.
So because people have these implicit universals that they don't want to talk about because they're not actually universal – They end up nagging and just they assume that the goal is good and the deviation from the goal is immoral but they'll never explicitly state why the goal is good because they don't want to be caught in the flypaper of imposing universals that they don't want to submit to which they can justly be asked to submit to should they explicitly and clearly attempt to inflict them.
So, I mean, that's the big problem.
People don't talk about whether the goal is important.
They just assume that it is good to do X, Y, and Z, and then you have to do it, and if you don't do it, you're a bad person.
But there's no agreement on goals.
There's no agreement on goals, and the criticism is You know, you need to dress in your Sunday best because I want to look good in front of the neighbors.
Well, parents don't really want to say that.
They come up with respect for the church.
It's like, well, Jesus, you know, didn't even have any underwear, for God's sakes, you know.
He didn't even shave.
Didn't even have the right skin color for his region.
I mean, good heavens.
So, the avoidance of determining, I mean, solving 95% of human conflict is just getting the same goals and the same methodologies and so on.
It's all important.
People will also criticize you in a very overhanded, you know, negative or destructive way because they wish to avoid the lack of credibility I don't know.
There's no good way to say it.
They wish to hide the fact that they don't have any credibility because they haven't achieved what they want you to achieve, right?
So, I mean, this is endless comedy.
It's endless fodder for comedy, right?
For the parents to say, don't do drugs when they themselves smoked marijuana when they were younger.
Or they say, you need to clean up your room.
And then the grandmother says, oh, your mama was such a messy blah, blah, blah, right?
It's just typical.
You know, you need to respect me when the mom doesn't respect her own parents or whatever it is, right?
Or it's simply afraid of them, which is not the same.
Respect and fear are opposites, right?
Anyway, so in these kinds of situations, it's really important to understand What criticism is and why, you know, the vast majority of criticism is not criticism, but merely a form of leveling, merely a form of verbal abuse and so on.
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