Criticism

Should we criticize people and or opinions they have? After much thought put to the matter and ‘tough deliberation’ (although it was only 10 minutes), I decided that the answer is both a yes and a no.

We should respect others peoples’ actions and opinions. You wouldn’t like someone coming up to you and slapping you just because they did not like the way you felt about something. However, if the thing that you did is indeed wrong, you should just accept the criticism, learn from your mistakes, and act differently in the future.

If you are the one who is criticizing another person, stop and think before you act. Is what the other person is doing that unacceptable and wrong that you have to tell that person off? Put yourself in that person’s shoes. Would you get angry if another person told you off for something that you did? Remember that you must put your perspective from the other person’s point of view, not your own. You would naturally say that it is right to criticize the other person as you are not the person that is being criticized.

You might not know it, but the person who is doing the thing that you think is wrong may have a good reason for doing it. For example, if you are in a car driving to a hospital to see your dying relative whom you are very close to and you are scolded (hopefully not in hokkien; get what I mean right?) by another driver for cutting into his way, how will you feel? If you are a normal person (which you should be unless you are not a normal person [wait that was kind of irrelevant]), you would most likely think that this person is being very unreasonable. You are rushing to see your dying relative and some overly-sensitive guy can’t even cut you some slack.

However, if you were the one who is criticizing the person who just cut into your way, you would probably feel that the person who cut into your way is being stubborn and rude. The driver who had his way cut into would feel like it is unfair; why should he get his way, how can he just cut in like that? I have already been in this lane for so long (this is usually the case every morning during peak period at the portion of road just before Bukit Timah Plaza).

This shows the different points of view that each driver has towards a certain situation. The driver who cut in would think that he should not be criticized as he was just trying to get to the hospital as fast as possible to be with your loved one during the person’s dying breath. On the other hand, the driver whose way had been cut into would very likely think that they were right to criticize the other driver as they had wrongfully had their way cut into.

This brings us back to the main point. If we criticize people, it should be because we care for them, not because we want to upset them. When you criticize a friend, you might think that it is for that person’s own good. The friend might take it differently. The friend might think that you don’t want to be his friend and just want to upset him.

If you really care for the person, criticize him out of the good of your heart. Whether he or she chooses to accept the criticism, it is his or her own choice, not for you to decide for him or her. If he or she gets angry over it, it shows that he or she is not really your friend as he does not accept criticism which is for his or her own good. As I have stated earlier in this post, whether we should criticize has both a yes and a no as an answer. After all, it is a philosophical question.