Rec | CRITIQUING SOMETHING/SOMEONE ONLY FROM A PLACE OF UNDERST...

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Critiquing something/someone only from a place of understanding

A brief anecdote to preface this (skip to get straight to the philosophy): Today a team member and I (building a business) met with an expert in his respective field to ask some questions. After a little explanatory back-and-forth, it was clear he had a complete lack of knowledge of our sector, and had only understood the description of our project on a superficial level. Nonetheless, he proceeded to spend most of the time “pushing back”, and therefore was unable to offer much insight that we could use. ———— Critique/judgment without understanding is invalid – period. This is confusing to some critics/would-be critics/people because they conflate the accumulation of knowledge with the skill of understanding. Let’s say you’re a music critic – you know lots of stuff about many kinds of music, many eras, etc. One day something comes along your desk, you pop it on, and it sounds a bit odd. You’ve never heard of the artist before… it sounds vaguely similar to something you know of – sure, let’s compare it to that, I guess. In this moment, you may not realize that you have a blindspot. Maybe you don’t yet understand the cultural or aesthetic movement this piece of music is born from because it doesn’t overlap with your breadth of knowledge (even if it’s very wide). Your prior knowledge may inform your ability to understand, but it doesn’t replace it. A real critic will take the time, as their duty, to understand as best they can before they make any critique. Anyone else isn’t a real critic. This goes for everything and everyone, not just professional or expert criticism. It’s true on an individual level, a social/cultural level, a political level, etc. Now especially, everyone’s a critic – and that’s both great and terrible/terrifying. Criticism/judgment are perfectly valid and useful forms of human expression if and only if you seek to understand beforehand. So, we can think about that from the perspective of giving criticism and, of course, receiving it. Being open to criticism is a massively important quality to develop, but if someone hasn’t made an effort to understand you/your idea, their critiques can go into the trash can. 🚮 ———— 🩵🩵

@solomonki

Jun 4, 2024

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smart ≠ wise

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@solomonki

Jul 17, 2024

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@deardoveswings

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