The Psychology of Criticism

I would like you to get a piece of clean paper. Look at it clearly and answer my question, “what do you see?” I bet your answer would be “it’s clean”, or “it’s white.” Now, I want you to put a big dot anywhere in the paper using a pen. I ask you again “what do you see?” I hope you would understand soon what I mean when you answer my question.

Everyone has their own weaknesses. Same goes about strengths. Our weaknesses and strengths are within us everyday - on actions we do, words we say, things we don’t have and do have, things we abhor and adore, our past experiences and future goals, our habits and likes – who we are. And who we are is defined by ourselves and by other persons by judgments, opinions, facts and experience. Do you still remember what you answered in my latter question?

The paper is who we are. The clean surface represents the good things we do. These are our virtues. The dot represents our vices. Vices are the most perceptible/observable qualities while virtues are just virtues we own. They’re like invisible coatings. I wouldn’t wonder if on the latter question, you mentioned the dot first before the clean surface or maybe you didn’t even recognized that there still a clean surface. I also had the same answers when asked the first time.

This is the sad part of life. A norm that is biased, unreasonable and shameful. In response, we just say “well, you can’t please everybody…” Yeah, right. But you see and experienced the effects. You became conscious on several things. Become dissatisfied, unmotivated and sometimes, in denial.

When you do well, you do good, period. When you do badly, you do the worst… and so on and so forth…

There are so many unreasonable things going on here. I am bad at some points but I am trying to be better on some points too. Can’t that be enough?