Principle 46: Stop Criticizing Others

You have little idea what their lives are like

Before the internet, the odds of you facing criticism (outside of your immediate family and close friends) was pretty low. Maybe you cut off someone’s cart in the supermarket and they gave you a dirty look. Or you forgot to signal when you changed lanes and got someone’s angry horn. But mostly we went about our lives without complete strangers telling us how deficient we were.

Enter social media!

Seriously, has there ever been a time in human history when we faced such a risk of being publicly called out for being an idiot (or a criminal)? When people who don’t even know you love to tear you down just because they disagreed with something you said.

Part of that is tribal behavior. And part of it is this:

Substack has people who create things, and it has people who wish they could create things. Even if they fail at creation, they can certainly try to make you look bad in compensation.

But that’s unfair. The fact is I don’t know what a critic’s personal life is like, and neither do you unless you know them personally. Maybe they are facing a terrible health crisis and it makes them angry at the world. Maybe their partner left them and they are lashing out at everybody. Maybe they are off their meds and this is the result.

We simply don’t know each other online as well as we know our family and close friends. Our family and close friends we make allowances for. “Sure, uncle Bob said that mean thing, but his back is killing him right now and it’s affected his personality.”

As Kate Bush reminded us, sometimes we wish we could swap places with someone to understand their point of view. But until that happens, we can only guess, never know for sure.

And even if they have no excuse for what they said, don’t be so critical back. They might be endlessly mean, but you don’t have to be. You don’t have to have the last word. You can let them “win” if winning is what they’d call it. Be above it all. Even if we think we know, we simply don’t know why that person cut us off with car: maybe they are rushing their pregnant wife to the hospital!

Criticize when it is needed, let it go the rest of the time. Don’t be a constant complainer. You’ll be happier in life this way.