People who can't take criticism annoy me (to put it lightly). The worst ones are those who take themselves out of any sort of situation where they could possibly be criticized. Those people are either incredibly weak, spineless people, or they are so incredibly arrogant that they cannot imagine that someone could possibly be disagreeing with THEM! A third possibility: they are both. In the same way that the bully is also a coward, a person who is so arrogant as to believe that their ideas should never receive criticism are people who are spineless and weak and do not actually think their ideas are worth having. The worst thing in the world is for someone to come along and affirm that belief.
If you believe in something, if you truly believe in it, then you should have no fear of defending that belief. And if you are interested in the truth, you won't be afraid to change your mind, either, if you have better information. Perhaps that is what annoys me most about those who avoid criticism -- they aren't interested in the truth. They want to be lied to, to have their delicate egos stroked.
The problem is, what kind of a society do you end up with when people like this are your artists and writers, teachers and leaders?
2 comments:
Like who?
You typically won't find them in public, but I've known several over my life. I know of one person who would just walk out if you disagreed with him for more than 5 minutes. The closest you find in public life are people like Hillary Clinton, who accuses people of being evil if they disagree with her. When you do that, you're really doing the same thing as I was describing -- it just allows you to be in public life.
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