A Few Observations on Advice and Criticism

This is not an essay where I give advice ... but do I make a criticism?

Throughout 2024 especially, I have received a lot of advice. Advice is an opinion offered as though it is worthy of being adhered to. I sometimes enjoy receiving advice and sometimes I ask for it explicitly.

In many ways it seemed like an aimless year for me. It was the first year that I barely had a plan for what I was doing. I wasn’t in school (I haven’t been in school for several years, and don’t intend to return), I wasn’t employed. It seemed I had no direction. I was traveling and trying to find “things” and sometimes I was figuring out what I was trying to find as I was trying to find it. At least I was not under the illusion that journeying would enable me to “find myself” as though I were a pair of lost keys, as though such a revelation would be absolute and final.

I met many people on my journeys who changed the course of my life in subtle yet significant ways. I have experienced many moments of encouragement and of discouragement. I had aims and aims changed and many aims did not come to fruition. When expectations were not met I sometimes thought of myself as a failure. I conflated the execution of goals I set with my worth as a person. I felt certain species of freedom, and felt certain limitations that only certain species of freedom can exert. And as I mentioned, I have received a considerable amount of advice which I have been reflecting upon this last week especially.

Many whom I have come into contact with have had an opinion about the way that I should live my life, the way that I am living my life, and about my roving about the United States in search of something while sometimes in search of finding something worth searching for. Often times they are explicit about how they feel, sometimes they are silent but their demeanor reveals much, sometimes they are not judgmental, sometimes they are incredibly understanding and kind, sometimes my own perception or projection of how one may think or feel reveals more about my own perception of myself than any comment from them could. A miraculous feature that I have observed is that in the majority of the experiences I have had receiving advice, it has usually not been a conversation. It has been as I phrase it: me receiving advice.

So, I feel quite able to make a few observations about advice, now that I have received so much of it. However, I do not feel more able or more wanting to impart advice to anyone, now that I have received it in droves. Therefore, do not misunderstand this essay as an advice column or a surreptitious way of actually giving advice now that I have been endowed.

Plenty of the advice I have received has been given without any warning. This does not bother me necessarily, it is just so. A lot of the advice I have received seems like and is possibly “good advice.” And sometimes I have received advice about matters for which I have expressly requested guidance. Whatever the instance, I have listened without rebutting or defending myself in some dire effort to espouse my own considerations or to help my advisor know where I am coming from. And upon reflecting upon the advice I have received, I have realized a significant generalization which I think is fairly apt:

Most advice may fall into two main categories.

The first main category of advice is the kind given based on what the person giving advice did not do. This kind of advice may stem from regret, from what did not occur, from what could have. An advisor may often encourage or discourage one to do what they did not do. They presume that if had they done something that they did not do then their lives would likely be better. It is too late for them, they may posit. “But you are still so young!” they may quip. From such people I have heard “get a steady job,” “do what you love,” “travel the world,” “invest in the stock market,” “have many lovers,” and “settle down and marry.” This is not what certain people did and they are not in an exactly enviable situation later in life in certain respects, ostensibly because they did not do thing x or y or z. They may even be jealous that you are doing the thing that they did not do.

The second most common category of advice I receive seems to come from people who speak with authority from their experiences, suggesting that they consider the paths they chose as ultimately successful at least in the respects to which they refer. From such people I have been advised to do many different things than the regretful advisor, and even some of the same things as the regretful. For example, I have been advised “get a steady job,” “do what you love,” “travel the world,” “invest in the stock market,” “have many lovers,” and “settle down and marry.”

I am not always merely guessing intent here when I divide advice into categories. I often know based on what the advisor voluntary reveals to me about their life whether their advice comes from a place of regret or of satisfaction.

The more advice I receive one might assume that the problems I face in my life become more limpid or that my life ahead has clarified from illuminating information and opinions. Reader, do not be dismayed to scan that I have not yet found this to be so. Instead of the path becoming more clear with more advice I—perhaps understandably, perhaps incredibly—have become more confused with all of the advice I receive from so many different people.

This may be because:

—I receive different advice from a wide range of individuals who are quite unique and worthy of emulation in certain respects.

—I receive advice from individuals who in some respects I want to emulate, yet who have developed aspects of their life which I do not wish to emulate and sometimes actually wish to avoid.

—I receive advice from individuals whom I love yet who in many aspects I do not wish to emulate.

—I receive advice from people who know me yet I sense that they do not seem to understand my desires, nor do they inquire about what my reasoning, desires or visions are before, during, or after their advisement. Most often an attempt to understand the reasoning or story of how I got to where I am is not made, as though it were irrelevant to the importance of advice being given.

—I receive advice from people who do not know me and whose advice seems impersonal. Although based on my elucidation in the previous paragraphs, the advice may be personal in that the advice is likely in conversation with the advisor’s own memories.

—Receiving so much advice and being receptive to so much of it has made me question whether I really understand myself or my own desires, whether I am too impressionable or aimless, or if I should take any advice which came from someone who did not take an interest in understanding how I got to where I am and where I want to go (much of it).

I don’t wish to be unfair to advice givers. As I wrote in the first paragraph, I sometimes really enjoy getting advice and sometimes ask for it. It may well be that the easiest way or only way of relating to others is through the self.

I suppose when using discretion about what advice to accept or reject one might only take the advice of the person who is successful in the domain that the corresponding advice is given. For example, one may be willing to take financial advice from someone who has become financially stable or successful because of a proven understanding of finances.

Might there be a more nuanced approach than giving advice for someone’s future without knowing their past? Does knowledge of a person’s history, present, and aspirations matter for an advisor? I think so. But I’m not certain, nor do I know yet what the greatest approach for good advice-giving may be.

My admission of not knowing what an alternative may be to the paradigm of advice I criticize leads me to the next point I want to make, which is an observation about criticism and problem solving—two distinct yet fusible fields. Reader, don’t be upset with me that I have pointed out a conundrum and then have suggested that there might be a better way and then have failed to posit what a better way is!

I have heard many people repeat a platitude that goes more or less like this: “if someone is going to make a criticism about something then they should suggest an alternative.” I agree that it is more constructive to point and then to suggest then it is to just point. But criticism is not required to be constructive, unless it is specifically mandated to be “constructive criticism.” There are some who would posit all criticism must or ought to be “CC”. I do not imagine this as a necessary goal.

Being able to just point at a thing and interpret it is quite important, is it not? Maybe it is a dying art. While I see where the request for alternatives and solutions comes from, I do not agree that this conflation of criticism and alternative should always be upheld, especially since not all criticisms demand alternatives. Not everything is a “problem” to be “solved.” It is one of those statements that may seem to be totally true because it is repeated often and does have some truth about it.

At the risk of becoming too tangential, that platitude is kind of akin to “desperate times call for desperate measures,” which I overheard someone say at a cafe the other day. It struck me as a ridiculous statement, and I understood the context. In any context, desperate times probably call for more reasonableness, not desperation.

But I digress…

A well-known foundation for art criticism is the process of description, analyzation, interpretation, and evaluation/judgement. I am not aware of a fifth element which is “solving” or “suggesting an alternative,” although likely it exists in some coteries and may be growing in popularity. Such an addition risks conflating the subject of critique as necessarily a broken subject/object, a problem to be solved instead of a thing to be described, analyzed, interpreted and evaluated. One could argue that if one is to be knowledgeable enough to criticize then one must be knowledgeable enough to present alternatives. Perhaps…but ability doesn’t require action. Criticism and the presentation of alternatives (if alternatives are even applicable) are interrelated but separate processes.

Also, anecdotally I can fervently say that there are many times when the “constructive criticism” I have received from editors or peers in poetry workshops was much less helpful than just learning their observations. Why should someone devise alternatives to a poem which they have just experienced, a poem sometimes they haven’t even attempted deeply to understand? This anecdote may be applied to objects of criticism that are not poems, that are not art.

Whether the topical platitude about the inseparability of criticism and alternatives is intended to be a way of silencing people who have criticisms, I do not know (I suspect a less nefarious intent). However, it may have the effect of silencing the people who assimilate this statement who are capable to observe and criticize but not “fix.”

I do not conflate criticism with other actions which are often conflated with criticism such as accusation, attack, and complaint. Accusation, attack, and complaint are not criticism. Associations are not necessarily synonymous! Criticism is an art onto itself.

I can point out to a chef “this spread is not very good because it is too acidic.” I do not think any chef would suggest then that it is up to me who made the criticism to solve the problem. I probably don’t even know what the ingredient is that is making the spread too acidic, because I do not know the recipe.

In summary, I do not think that it is imperative for someone who made a criticism to necessarily devise an alternative as a requisite for making a criticism. There are worthy criticisms that many people can give for things which they do not understand well enough to fix, but their criticisms or observations are astute enough to draw attention to a problem that does need the attention of someone who can fix it with considerable accuracy. That is if the object of criticism needs fixing at all.