A follow-up to Tuesday’s post about creativity and the place of constructive criticism in communities. I happened to read this piece by the philosopher Julian Baggini about the importance of complaining in a society that wants to be just and fair.
Constructive complaints are not just an effective tool for social improvement, they reflect a distinctive capacity we have as human beings for seeing beyond the present to new possibilities. This is the link between complaining and creativity.
Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be.
The kind of constructive complaining that Baggini discusses is not the same as simply having a moan. A good complaint always has a moral aspect.
I think most people associate complaining more with moaning, whinging or relatively trivial consumer matters than they do high principle. That’s partly, of course, because as a matter of fact, many of our complaints are just kvetches. We moan as ice-breakers, to bond, to express frustration, or simply to express our values. But as a practical activity, I think complaining has become too associated with rights of contract. We live in an entitlement culture, in which, if anything goes wrong, we look for someone to blame, someone who is legally responsible. Trip up in the street and the thought soon arises: who can I sue? Your insurance company will tell you never to admit responsibility if you hit another car, even though usually one party is responsible.
Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint. Constructive complaint requires only two things: that what you are complaining about should be different, and that it can be different. It sounds simple, but too often our protests fail this test. Most commonly, as anyone who deals with public complaints for a living will tell you, many of our objections just don’t get the facts straight. If I had a penny for every time I had been castigated for writing something I never actually wrote, I’d have £823.87 by now (and I can almost hear the next penny dropping as I write).
Wrong complaint comes in numerous other varieties. To take just one, there is the contradictory complaint, whereby our objections demand incompatible things. For instance: complaining that first-past-the-post hands power to parties with only minority support and then complaining when a coalition partner compromises on major issues. You can, of course, complain that the partner has compromised too much on the wrong issues, but to demand no movement on any issue of substance is incompatible with the complaint that governments in the UK should reflect the electorate’s wishes more proportionately.
This example is a good one because it shows how easy it is to complain sloppily, but also how important it is to get the complaint right. There is a lot to object to in the programme of this government, so it matters that we do not waste our energies making ill-informed, contradictory or otherwise mistaken complaints. So we should not listen to those who tell us we should complain less and be more “positive”. Rather, we should make complaints that are principled and thought through. A good society depends on its best complainers.
Jean-Paul Sartre bases his whole existential philosophy on this insight. He uses the language of ‘negativity’. The miracle of human existence is that we are not trapped in the present, we are always looking beyond – not just to what will be, but to what might be, what could be, what should be. We are always conscious of what is ‘not’, and our understanding of the reality in which we are presently immersed is determined by how we envision a reality that has not yet come to be. This reaching into the future is part of what makes us human, and part of our essential nature is to be dissatisfied. It doesn’t mean we are never happy, just that happiness will always (in this life) be provisional.
The most creative way to complain is to offer up your complaint and or critisism and also to offer up a creative soloution or alternative outcome wherby morally both parties benefit. Not always easy. Just this week I have experienced sharp practice in a large store, I polietly explained my greivance and then kindly suggested that they should reconsider their soloution, other wise I shall take my very valuble life long custom else where, and I shall. If they comply we both benefit.
Sometimes a little like your minimalist traffic signals blog, I often wonder if we were not restricted by set procedures, or if there were less rules, would we in thoughtful care, negotiation and consideration for others, rise to higher and better outcomes. But of course for when us humans fall short, those exact same procedures maintain standards.
My nanny used to always say “More flies are caught with honey than with vinigar”. :o)
John-Paul Sartre sounds interesting. Sometimes presently, lawfully and even by our own morals we are trapped, even if we can look into the future or past at what could or should be. Sometimes this is not based on negativity, but on a great even happy positivity. Even though our minds are free to fly beyond those trappings, our morals which are formed by our life long learning, education and beliefs, and which once learnt, one does not want to denounce, can indeed stop us from being where those very same morals know we should be. Presently trapped without a doubt!
there is a lot more to complain about the way the last governmant ran the Country and behaved, than there is about the present coalition. Far from having ‘a lot to complain about’ this uneasy coalition is all we have at the moment, and deserve our support in particularly difficult circumstances, the legacy of the last bunch of incompetant hateful self-interested in-fighting posers who ruined the integrity of parliament and threw our money at any cause they cd think of. That’s what I call a complaint!
Baggini’s discussion applies not only to society as a whole, but also to smaller sections of society. Anyone working with people such as Priests Educators are in a ‘revolutionary’ position. They have the potential to change society, perhaps in only very small ways by sowing the seeds of change in parishioners, patients or students. By making informed, well thought out complaints, they can help make others more aware of social injustices and why and how they might be altered to the benefit of all.
Mag’s reply reminds me of an old manager I worked with who, when faced with criticism from senior managers, would make constructive suggestions in such a way that it sounded like the senior manager had actually thought of them himself – an artform in its own right and one I have, sadly, never seen repeated elsewhere!