Something that has always kind of surprised me is the number of people who don't seem to be able to reason out the difference between the kind of criticism people should be able to graciously accept and the kind that the offerer of it has no business expecting the target of it to graciously accept.
Not all criticism is equal. I'm perfectly fine with what I see as "appropriate" criticism, and that is criticism by someone like a supervisor in the work place, a teacher/instructor in the classroom/course setting, or criticism I request if/when I asked someone for their thoughts on one thing or another.
I'm not in the least
bit interested in the criticism of someone who appoints himself critic,
advice-giver, input-offerer, etc. on anything I do or am in my non-school or
non-work life or on anything on which I have not requested someone's opinion.
A good part of the
time people who "have opinions" about how/what someone else should do
things are people who don't have a clue about what the other person is dealing
with; and people who, if they faced all the same factors that the other person
does would do the exact-same thing, would do things the exact-same way. Then, too, there are those times when two
people are so different, what one does that's right for him wouldn't be right
for the other person. So either way,
unsolicited criticism (outside work or school and offered/imposed by someone
whose role is not supervisor or teacher) comes from people who, for one reason
or another, don't know what's they're talking about (no matter how superior,
informed or educated they imagine themselves to be).
Good interpersonal
skills tell people who have them that unsolicited, inappropriate, criticism
isn't acceptable. Good reasoning ability
tells people that they can't/shouldn't have an opinion about someone else
because they can't have all the information about that person's inner or outer
situation, and therefore are not capable of offering an opinion based on
everything that goes into what someone does.
So, people who directly express criticism of other individuals lack
interpersonal skills and/or sufficient reasoning skills; and therefore, are
most often people who really aren't in the position of knowing any better than
the other person what that other person should/could be doing. The ego of people who feel free to offer
unsolicited criticism is bigger than it ought to be when they appoint
themselves critic of others, and respect others so little that they believe
their own opinions are superior.
So, in the school or
work setting (or where someone asks because he values the input of the other
person), only a blockhead would have trouble accepting criticism
graciously. Other than that, it's those
who criticize who are most often the clueless blockhead.
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