Criticism

 Hi

A friend of mine has moved to a city which is an hour away from me. He came over last night and we spent the Friday night and Saturday together. We talked about how he defines himself as a critic and I want to write about what we discussed.

One of the first things we talked about was how the mind of a critic must be deeply rooted into solid foundation of a certain ideology. How it is important to dive deeply to find out where all the roots of the ideas are coming from. If the root of the thought is not well defined, the criticism is invalid. Pointing out wrongness without giving a solution is meaningless and a waste of time and energy.

That's how we got to the second point which is to have a strong foundation, it is needed to write the ideas and talk about them with other people to get to know the thoughts and polish the ideas. It will be like a plant which grows stronger and stronger over time and gives richness to the flavor of the words. The critic must first get even with themselves which means observing thoughts over many years and under different conditions and mental states and getting to know how mind functions and how reality is. As a mentor of mine said to be able to feel how it is to be in other people's shoes. Many people. 

The third point was it is important to talk! sometimes we think our words will make someone unhappy and we suppress ourselves. It is important to have other people's feelings in mind and have a sense of empathy and comment out of love but love has many shades to it. Feeling like no one must be upset is unnatural and either nothing will happen or you will be the one who will be upset. My experience with this is usually when I think something is the end of the world, I build it up in my mind to become too big and at the moment of presenting it to the person, I realize it wasn't a big of a deal to start with and I understand one more shade of reality. Reality is usually very disappointing in these cases.

The fourth point was it is like a sword fight. Both parties must agree upon some ethical terms. Like criticism just for imposing power is just stupid. Criticism can be hurtful and both sides have to know themselves good enough and talk about things that can be improved. Like a project or an art work or a presentation can be improved but pointing out to fundamental things like family, race, color, language, etc. or humiliation are not going to be constructive.