Slingshots, Plans, and Criticism

In the study of writing, sometimes called poetics, one thing to keep in mind is that speaking came before writing. Writing was invented for practical reasons, mostly related to business and bureaucracy, and only later was adapted for the recording of stories.
So why do we speak? There are countless reasons. Among them: we speak to share information, to cross reference our thoughts and beliefs with other people’s thoughts and beliefs, to externalize judgments, initiate actions, and to entertain.
Defensive. It’s an adjective we attach to people we are afraid to criticize. Why are some of us, myself included, afraid of judgment? Judgment or criticism is an implicit attack on someone’s life choices or lifestyle. In America, we put a great amount of weight on our ability to independently manage our lives. No one is perfect, however, and we can only pay attention to so many things at once. That is why we are inclined to accept criticism, but only when it is offered politely.
There is a Chinese tale about a prince who decides to go to war. The prince is reported to have said: “Anyone who criticizes [my plan] dies.” One of his vassals wants to criticize his decision to go to war, so he walks in the garden three days to meditate on the issue. When he returns from the garden, he tells the prince “in the garden there is a tree, and on the tree is a cicada, singing away. Next to the cicada is a praying mantis, bending its body, about to eat the cicada. Behind the praying mantis is a bird, stretching out its neck, about to eat the praying mantis. Beneath the bird is me with my slingshot, about to shoot the bird. Now each of these creatures sees the profit in front of it and is blind to the danger beside it.”
This story addresses one of the functions of criticism: to reveal to someone an aspect of their environment that they didn’t account for in their plans. The art of war says that one relates all of the factors of ones situation using planning, and in that way one may understand any given situation. It also says that planning is profitable only when one is a good listener.
The tale about the cicada and the mantis represents a kind of courtesy. Criticism is, in a sense, a kind of posture. The vassal can not be in the position of “critic” in relation to the prince. Likewise, in friendships, people have different expectations about how they should relate. With some of my friends, it is a relationship of mutual support and encouragement. With my brother, however, things sometimes lapse into criticism. This is because of the age and intimacy of our relationship: we feel comfortable calling each other out because we know that tomorrow we will still be brothers. Relationships may be said to have a vocabulary of postures that depend on factors of intimacy, gender, age, and culture.