The Limits Of Unendurable Criticism

He went item by item through the editor’s evidence. I disputed all of it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The basic facts, the details, it was all wrong. I then questioned Marko. Who the hell is this editor? Loathsome toad, I gathered. Everyone who knew her was in full agreement that she was an infected pustule on the arse of humanity, plus a shit excuse for a journalist. But none of that mattered, because she’d managed to wriggle her way into a position of great power and lately she was focusing all that power upon…me. She was hunting the Spare, straight out, and making no apologies for it. She wouldn’t stop until my balls were nailed to her office wall.

-Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex. Spare.

So … I was reading Prince Harry’s autobiography.

My feelings about Harry have always been a mixture of sympathy and irritation, and reading Spare did not change that in any measurable way, but it did remind me of something I had been meaning to write about for some time. Harry grew up in a goldfish bowl, with his every move watched by the media (he minces no words in describing his feelings about the paparazzi, as you can see above), and subjected to a storm of savage, ruthless and often quite sadistic criticism whenever he made a tiny mistake. It was a much better read than I expected, but the very strong impression I got from reading the book is that Harry had been criticised so heavily that he could no longer tell the difference between reasonable criticism and de facto bullying, and consequently he rejected any and all pieces of criticism regardless of the source.

It struck a chord in me, because I made a tiny mistake at a former workplace that led to me being scolded by no less than six different people, and by the time number six rolled around I was ready to kill. And when I made the mistake of saying that I had had enough, I was told I had no right to complain.

When faced with criticism, or scolding or rebukes or whatever, and these are repeated time and time again, I think most people run through this sequence:

1st Scolding – Acceptance – “Thank you for letting me know.”

2nd Scolding – Irritation – “I got the message. Thank you for letting me know.”

3rd Scolding – Exasperation – “I got the message. You can shut up now.”

4th Scolding – Anger – “SHUT THE F*** UP RIGHT F***ING NOW!”

5th Scolding – Rage – “I’M THE VICTIM NOW! F*** YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE ON!!!”

This leads to two separate points:

First, there is a limit to how many times you can make the same criticism before people get sick of hearing it.

Second, there is a limit to the number of times you can criticise someone, even if each successive criticism is different from the last, before they get sick of you.

The incident I mentioned above was a minor safety violation. There was no real danger and it would have gone unnoticed if someone hadn’t spotted me. Perhaps I deserved to be told not to do it again. But I could not go back in time and retroactively prevent myself from committing said minor safety violation. No amount of scolding could give me the power to make sure it never happened. And with each successive scolding, I got more and more exasperated. It turned from a reasonable discussion to outright sadism, and I lost all respect for them.

I think this is fairly universal. No matter what you did, from something minor like leaving the toilet seat up or something major like a very serious crime, there are limits to how much criticism you can endure before you just lose the ability to take it. The more you have your nose rubbed in your failings, the angrier you get and the less inclined you become to listen to further criticism. And when that criticism is entirely valid, this causes problems.

For example, a great deal of criticism aimed at Prince Harry in the last few years pointed out the hypocrisy of lecturing commoners such as myself on climate change while at the same time taking private jets everywhere. It is not unreasonable to question the sincerity of anyone who points to a crisis while at the same time doing things that make the crisis worse, or demanding sacrifice from someone while declining to make the sacrifice himself. But judging by his book, Harry is unable to realise that this criticism is entirely valid and not listening to it only undermines his case.

It is also true that no one likes a critic. Well, sort of. A good critic, when it comes to writing, is worth their weight in gold. But a critic who constantly repeats criticisms that cannot be fixed easily, if at all (in the absence of a time machine), is one who is fundamentally incredibly irritating. The more you criticise, the less anyone wants you around, which is … unfortunate … if the criticisms you are trying to offer are entirely valid. Like I said in an earlier post, by the time the critic had an important point to make, he had already spent all of his social cred and everyone generally ignores him. Donald Trump would not be so popular today if his critics hadn’t spent the last thirty years criticising every Republican candidate they didn’t like, to the point that Republican voters got sick of it and just stopped listening.

On a personal level, it is quite reasonable for your wife to complain if – on your wedding night – you forget to put the toilet seat down after using it. If you kept making the same mistake over and over again, your wife would be entirely justified in being annoyed. But if you did it once, and your wife kept banging on about it for the next ten years of marriage, your marriage has problems. And if that was happening, I would recommend divorce.

But we have the same problem on a much greater scale.

There is much to criticise in the world, but there’s a limit to how much people can actually do about it. There is no way to change the past. You can learn from it, and you can use what you have learnt to avoid making the same mistake again, but you cannot go back in time and change it. Nor can you go back in time and change a mistake made by your ancestors, nor can you accept criticism levelled at you because of what your ancestors did. It is fundamentally irrational to blame someone for the crimes of their ancestors, even if they were genuine ancestors, and doing so proves that you cannot be taken seriously. And when you have genuine valid criticism to offer, this is really unfortunate!

A great many problems in the world today stem, I think, from people becoming unwilling to listen to any more criticism. No matter what the criticism is, there are limits to how much people can take. They get angry, and this anger blinds them to valid criticism. Worse, this means that very real problems are not fixed because people shift their mindsets from ‘this problem has to be addressed’ to ‘addressing this problem guarantees more criticism’ and then refuse to do anything to address the problem.

There is a fundamental and yet unspoken quid pro quo in criticism and that is that when you address a piece of criticism, the critic lets the criticism go. This is not always easy. On one hand, if someone points out a spelling mistake that mistake can be easily fixed; on the other, problems that need long-term commitment to be tackled cannot be fixed instantly, no matter how loud or obnoxious the critic. And, like I said, something that has been done cannot be undone. The more you try to make someone feel guilty about something they did, even when it was genuinely their fault, the more they will grow annoyed with you. And when it really isn’t their fault, when it happened before they were born, why should they listen to anything else you happened to say?

It’s really easy to criticise. It is a great deal harder to actually solve the problem. And it is very easy to criticise the problem-solver to the point he just gives up.

I’ll let Dale Cozort have the last word:

“If you look around the world you’ll notice something.  The real dead-end basket case countries and regions are usually the ones where old injustices or perceived injustices are most remembered and most important to people.  [SNIP]  None of this is to say that ignoring history is good, or even that ignoring old injustices is good.  The reality though is that both the villains and the victims of history are for the most part dead, or have one foot on the banana peel … [SNIP] … The other reality is that dwelling on those old injustices tends to lead to situations where the guys who would normally be holding up convenience stores end up running around with AK-47s and RPGs in the service of one side or the other in the dispute.

“When that starts happening on a major scale, anyone with brains and/or money heads for the nearest exit.  You end up with a downward spiral as jobs evaporate and people fight ever more bitterly over the remaining scraps of value.  And of course a whole new generation of injustices are created, which will undoubtedly be used to justify the next round of victimizations.  ‘Get over it’ isn’t the perfect answer.  It does have some downsides, but it does work.”