An Ironically Critical Blogpost

My apologies for the inherent irony in this blogpost. 

As of this past Wednesday the World Wide Web is 25 years old. What have we learned in a quarter century of an increasingly interconnected world? It seems we've had a revolution in cynicism. Read the comments beneath any online newspaper article, blog or youtube video and you'll see what I mean. We're programmed to be hyper-critical. It's as if there's a contest to see who can make the most original, most cutting insult. We criticize for the sake of criticism. It's not a question of gauging the value in an expressed idea or a piece of art; it's a question of ignoring or abolishing that value. Our natural setting is negative. How is this bad. Not how is it good or beautiful, but how can I put its overall value into doubt.

Now, criticism is important, by all means. After a stint in a Gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was understandably critical of the Stalinist regime. Today, likewise, as modern governments antagonize their own citizens, as corporations exploit their workers around the world, we have a duty to stand up for them. But does this cynicism really have to be our first instinct for everything we see or hear? Why do I have to come out of a movie and quickly try to think of reasons why an awesome film was terrible? Why do I have to not trust anyone at their word? Or when I read someones controversial blogpost, why do I feel it's okay to write it off as complete nonsense because they had the audacity to carelessly use a split infinitive. Really? They're wrong because of grammar? We're even critical of the critics. It can go on ad nauseam.

Lately more and more I've seen critical perspectives on inherently positive practices and  widely recognized "good" people. Whether it's Mother Theresa's views on suffering or Gandhi's treatment of his wife or the damaging effects and colonial attitudes of missionaries, we can find the dark side of anything. Yes, they were in fact people. Yes, people have shortcomings. But does that mean we throw their positive contributions in the trash as the works of self-interested monsters? 

I have a confession. I've been to Haiti. I even went on a short-term mission trip to Romania in my youth group days. I know these trips have no measurable benefit to the countries visited. I know they often do more harm than good. I know that, as a young white rich child, going to the developing world has caused my sense of Western superiority and my messiah complex to balloon beyond repair. Sometimes I'm actually embarrassed to tell people about it. That doesn't seem right to me. Honestly, is it better to do nothing? Is the right thing just to stay home and eat Wendy's takeout and watch the Big Bang Theory? If nothing else my trip to Romania made me see the world in greater detail than I possibly could have if I had just stayed home. I saw that people live differently than I do. I don't have a monopoly on the right way to think and to be. My trip to Haiti showed me that the world doesn't consist of rich happy people and poor sad people. There's no line in the sand. Poor people aren't sad by definition. Nor vice versa. That in mind, I don't think these trips were a waste of time. I didn't change the world. But I changed.

I acknowledge that the criticisms of these practices are important. They make us face the fact that the old things aren't working; we need to try new things. But I worry that this constant criticism will have the opposite effect. We should be encouraging young people to change the world, not telling them that everyone who has ever tried to do so was wrong.

Just a thought.