Keiran King: The value of criticism

Keiran King, Online Columnist 

It’s a choice that affects who we marry, what we do, where we
live, and how we dream, yet few of us ever think about it — do you accept the
world as handed to you, or seek to change it?

What's around us seems pretty permanent — streets and stores,
doctors and dancers and decorators, buses and books and biscuits and bank
accounts, misery and mirth and mystery and mischief and murder.  It's a big, messy, complicated universe, and
the easiest thing, the obvious, practical, pragmatic thing, is to fit in. Go to
school. Make friends. Listen to your parents. Fall in love. Get a job. Make
more friends. Fall out of love. Buy a car. Fall in love again. Move. Rent a
place. Get married. Get promoted. Have a kid. Buy another car. Have another
kid. Mortgage a house. And so on.

Trouble is, after about 80 years of this pablum, you die having
affected few and changed nothing. Proof? Every funeral. Your legacy is hot,
stifling boredom — a grandchild waxing about your smelly chair to apathetic
half-strangers. That knowledge, the long foreshadow of future heart failure,
should galvanise you.

There is another way. Cheat death through your ideas. Almost
everyone in the history books, from Ayn
Rand to Zeno, got there with their mind. And by their
example, accepting the world is a useless strategy. Progress is born of
dissatisfaction. If you want to be somebody, start with a long, hard,
discerning look at the world, or at least your tiny corner of it.

Steve Jobs hated his phones, which led him to
the touchscreen and app ecosystem that has transformed our daily lives. Jimi
Hendrix was chronically restless, trapped by genre and form, which
made him extend his instrument to the amplifier. Dead at 27, he continues to influence
musicians today. Constantin Stanislavski filled notebooks
tearing down his own theatrics, out of which sprang the 'method
acting' that fills movies a century later. He wrote: "The task
of our generation [is] to liberate art from outmoded tradition, and to give
greater freedom to imagination."

Indeed, this is the goal of every artist, scientist, writer,
philosopher, anyone who wants to move us forward and make her mark.
Liberation.  Exploration. Freedom of the
imagination. In his new TV show ‘Cosmos’, American
astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gives us the straightest
path there: “Test ideas by experiment and observation. Build on those ideas
that pass the test; reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it
leads, and question everything.”

Over the last six weeks, this column has explored Tessanne-mania, childbearing, the Vybz Kartel trial, the Oscars, poverty and the Bible. Many have engaged these essays, but
a minority of readers, at varying levels of umbrage, have hurled a
self-defeating response: “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say
anything at all!” It breaks my heart, but they’ve got it exactly backwards. If
anyone should stay silent, it is those among us so feckless they offer only
mindless praise. (Brand Jamaica! God is God! Blarf snarf!) We have become a
nation awash in sycophants, expert at elevating mediocrity and eliminating
dissent.

Criticism, paradoxical as it may seem, is a deep form of
affection. Would you rather nine friends who always say you look great, or one
who tells you to ditch the flats, swap the earrings and, wrinkling her nose,
reminds you to brush your teeth? Far from an outrage, unblinking honesty is to
be cultivated; it is the province of every unspoiled child. We stop speaking
out because we learn how to curry favour and influence instead, and call it
growing up.

Every human being deserves dignity by default, but no idea
does. It must be earned, by laymen and laureates alike, through exposing itself
to the light of critique, and surviving. This column is intended as a breeding
ground for larval ideas, not just the ones I put forth, but the thousands more
that spring up in responses and conversations around the country.  Nothing should be out of bounds — not sex, not
God, not whatever bundle of beliefs you've kept carefully wrapped in darkness.
Look out. It's a brave new world, but it's ours to change
together.

 Keiran
King is a writer and producer. His column appears every Wednesday.

Email
feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and yell@keiranking.com.