Hi all, like the title mentions this a short essay with a two-fold message. It is posted only to beginners@perl.org (for now) and is about criticism.
1. Handling criticism: ---------------------- People like to criticise other people. Whatever you'll do some people will be unhappy and criticise you: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_miller,_his_son_and_the_donkey . However, handling criticism should not cause long-term offence. See what I wrote about the cognitive therapy approach to handling criticism: http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/909.html (also see the comments), and the coverage and notes in the article's body. Furthermore, there is also the Stoic Road to peace of mind : http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1747.html . And finally, it is important to accept that you are feeling badly instead of trying to fight it: http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Moaning_Lisa 2. Encouraging people to criticise you: --------------------------------------- As I noted in http://shlomif.wikia.com/wiki/Sources_of_Enlightenment#Encourage_Criticism_and_People_who_Offend_You and http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/2ej0ew/saladin_style_an_executive_summary_about_his/ck1tcdg when someone gets offended it's usually an indication that there's a huge of grain of truth that that person does not wish to admit. I don't mind that it's 100% true because "truth" in practical philosophy is both more complicated than a single yes/no or True/false, and because it is dynamic - we must constantly strive to be more and more honest and enlightened or we stop being honest and become cynical. See: * http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/show.cgi?id=larry-wall-all-truth-is-gods-truh * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppets_%28film%29 So you should encourage people to offend you and hurt you as much as possible so you'll grow and become wiser as an individual. 3. Entrust people with power. The main theme of this film which I watched and found wonderful in almost every aspect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_%282014_film%29 (which is a live action/comedy/etc. film exhibiting the usual "Hollywood formula"[1], but still a great, professionally made, and a very intelligent film) - is that people should be entrusted with power, regardless of how young or old they are, how immature or irrational or quirky they seem, or anything else about them. Saladin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shlomif/Saladin_Style ) entrusted the Knights Templar with power, and they started out as murderous, violent, paranoid and often exhibited many mental illnesses (due to stress). As a result, they became peaceful, carefree, happy, mostly sane, respected Saladin as well and were completely unwilling to fight Saladin. OTOH, most of the other history was of people applying the golem effect (see the opening paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect ) to other nations and people and as a result, they disobeying them regardless of how paranoid their measures for trying to control them were. When doing online communications, trust people to speak as they want. If you find one thing they did wrong, use pleasant and soft-spoken words to write and tell them how they can improve. But don't threat or accuse them of being "passive-aggressive" (Whatever that means). Moreover, congratulate them and thank them if they did something right. This will cause a positive feedback loop of encouraging them to become more and more friendly and helpful. <footnotes> [1] - I call it "Hollywood formula" in quotes because it was neither invented nor perfected by Hollywood. I know for a fact that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanakh (= the Jewish Bible) also contains all that and more in a far more offensive way. </footnotes> 4. Don't use force. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamsa_and_Bar_Kamsa for an apocryphical story about what happens when a person uses force. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine noted «Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.», which actually took place. In today's world, however, the concept of burning books and burning humans is usually different: every single tweet, YouTube video, social media post or comment, captioned image/etc. is in essence a book. Furthermore, most people get "burned" - not by actually being physically killed - but by being banned from an IRC chatroom, or from a subreddit or a different forum. So it's important to not use force , except perhaps for people who spam using bots. =============== Sorry if my message was too long. This is now a phase of mine and I wanted to share it. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Funny Anti-Terrorism Story - http://shlom.in/enemy bzr is slower than Subversion in combination with Sourceforge. — Sjors, http://dazjorz.com/ Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
