We ought to criticize less, or not at all. When you point one finger at someone, four more are pointing back at you. Why do most people give up on Walden? Because Thoreau, with a certain mischief, packed the harshest criticism into the very first chapter. Most readers pick up Walden expecting a soothing book about a man living alone by a lake — and it is nothing of the sort. The book is dense with metaphysical musings, takes aim at all manner of social conventions, and brims with the author’s own opinions and judgments. If your values happen to align with Thoreau’s, you’ll love it; if you resemble the people he’s criticizing, you’ll hate it — unless you’re open-minded enough to take the criticism on the chin.
I love the book. But it also has me wondering whether we should stop criticizing altogether. Criticism is easy: we bring our most rational, most clear-headed minds to bear on the not-entirely-rational lives of living, breathing people, and that in itself is unfair. No one lives a fully rational life. In fact, we are never more rational than when we’re lecturing someone — or passing judgment on them.
Here’s an experiment: the next time you lecture or criticize someone, write down the values you’re preaching. Later, once the moment has passed, sit quietly and ask yourself honestly — how many of them do you actually live by? Whatever we express to the world is what we most aspire to, most long for, and often it’s objectively right, too. Take the personal taglines people put on WeChat. If someone’s tagline reads “stay rational,” odds are they aren’t. Likewise, if it says “no spiraling, no late nights, early to bed and early to rise,” that person in real life almost certainly spirals, stays up late, and sleeps in.
We wrap ourselves up like gifts and present ourselves to the world, announcing what we stand for — never suspecting that solitude will bring the whole display crashing down. Why do people dread being alone? Because the self that shows up in solitude is the truest one, and we would rather not face it — much less endure the boredom. Boredom lays our inner thoughts bare, and few of us are willing to sit down for an unguarded conversation with ourselves.
Thoreau criticized plenty of social conventions, but to his credit he actually lived by most of what he preached, and in the book he reflects on his own flaws and shortcomings as well. He lived through an era of sweeping change, when society genuinely needed someone to stand up and name its problems. I have no doubt that if Thoreau were alive today, he would have even more to criticize. The finest minds have never stopped criticizing society — and society has grown more restless and less happy all the same. So what is criticism itself for? The wise become clear-eyed without anyone’s criticism; the foolish will never wake up, no matter how much of it they hear.
Could it be that the only thing criticism accomplishes is proving that we are among the few clear-headed people left in a restless age?
Comments
Of course, Thoreau's views have their limits too. Take his jab at the telegraph: he mocks it by noting that the first news Americans might hear through it would be that some important figure across the ocean had come down with some illness — proof, to him, that technological progress hadn't actually made people any happier, and had merely fed them a few random scraps of other people's trivia to no purpose at all. But the telegraph brought humanity real social benefits as well. The same goes for the railroad: he criticizes it at the start, yet in later chapters he also describes the good its growth brought — it was one of the ways he told time while living at Walden Pond, and its sounds enriched his solitary life too.
Then again, here I am criticizing right now — and criticizing criticism is itself a form of criticism. So don't follow my example.