miljacicHi osgood401,
well, hmm… here’s another quote from that book, to kinda summarize what I meant to emphasize:
“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotions, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
And that’s that. People are not creatures of logic. And who would thought – neither are me or you. Not even the ones with very high IQ’s, and the very intellectual ones, and the very intelligent ones, and even the very intelligent intellectuals with very high IQ’s. So you try to live in a world like this one is! We need wisdom often even more then the power of the constructive critical analysis.
Everything that you said about criticism stands in terms of technical truth. But that’s not enough.
Or let me put it differently…
“criticism when it feels needed” is infinitely better then “no criticism at all”
BUT
“criticism when it feels needed + wisdom of its delivery” is infinitely better then “criticism when it feels needed”
This is what, I think, the long term experience shows, no, screams at everyone: if one wants to learn the truth and then debate with people, it is foolish and wasteful (even extremely wasteful) not to take the “wisdom of delivery” part seriously. That’s a whole different subject that needs to be studied also.
From yet another angle, if people are like this, why torture them with our own ways of thinking of how they should approach truth? Why not bring them closer to truth using their own ways of dealing with life? Lion eats meat, sheep eats cabbage… feed them with their own food and only then you’ll be able to lead them, otherwise they’ll starve and won’t be able to follow you even if they wanted to.