Achievement coddling and ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ seem like cultural attributes of WEIRD countries, but they exist for good reason. Most people don’t want to hear (or can’t handle) personal critiques, especially in regard to something they are still learning.
But I’ve learned from experience if you ask people for their honest assessment of your work (and make clear what are the standards that you hold for yourself), you are likely to receive that honest feedback - and oftentimes people will not hold back. They just need reassurance that you’re genuine about improvement and won’t take it personally.
But since you brought up the desire for criticism……you should trim and streamline your writing style to a more cohesive narrative. The voice, ideas and convictions in these pieces are phenomenal, but I sometimes have to re-read them to understand your underlying message. This unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness style works better in stand-up, but I find that the best writing tells a focused, clear and linear narrative (with a large heaping of the author’s personal style).
Genuinely thanks for the feedback on my piece, and for sticking to my work even when you can't decipher what I am saying in one go. I have been slowly improving and adapting my writing style here, it is a work in progress. Each piece usually takes me a whole Sunday, if not the whole weekend, and often early morning before work kicks in. My ambition is that the more I write, the crispier my editing will become and more I will be able to synthesize my ideas without overcomplicating them. Writing more succinctly is tough; I struggle with the refusal of 'killing my darlings' that many writers do, i.e. once I write something I am emotionally invested in, I hesitate to edit for clarity even if it means a wider audience will be able to enjoy it.
For simplification, you could try reading Hemingway. Do you know the (possibly apocryphal) story about the world's shortest short story?
Your English is extremely good, especially with our crazy spelling. But if you want nits picked, you used assent (agreement) when you meant ascent (climb) and it's an Overton window not overtone (but even this native has to look up what it means every time I come across it).
Finally, please don't change your accent. It's very attractive and matches your personality. And I suspect "foreign" will be taken more seriously than many native accents; we are a strange island race, don't forget.
Ichiro Suzuki said something similar. When he came here from Japan to play baseball mid career, he started succeeding very quickly. He set the single season hit record one year. When he got close to 3000 hits (for perspective, there are only 33 men in the history of Major League Baseball to cross 3000), someone said that if you counted his hits in Japan, he would beat Pete Rose (who leads all of MLB history with 4400, a number that will never be crossed).
Pete, who had earlier been supportive, said that Japan league simply couldn’t compare to MLB, as the pitching was grossly inferior.
Ichiro said in response that he had figured it out. When you aren’t a threat, he said, everyone praises you. When you are a threat to their legacy, they tear you down.
Anyway, hope this helps. It doesn’t get better even at the highest levels.
FWIW, I'm shocked you're not an English native. I would never have guessed, from your writing. Your skill with writing in English is in fact quite high and it's not detectable that you're not native to the language. And not to be a total asshole about it, but I graduated first in my class in law school and my whole life is funded by people paying me a lot to read and write all day and be persuasive by manipulating the English language. So I'm not the worst judge, and perhaps you could try just actually believing some of the things people tell you.
Thanks, I believe your good words and those of other people. Perhaps you've read my most self-deprecating pieces, but I have healthy self-confidence levels. But I want to be better. Much better. Some days, I am impatient, but mostly, I toil at the things I want to improve for my long-term goals: my writing and my eloquence when I speak, either to an audience or on live TV/radio, being the main two things bugging me at the moment.
Was going to make the same comment. Don’t know what you sound like but I can’t tell from your writing that you’re not native. Can’t even tell you’re not an American (is that insulting? not sure).
I'm not sure this article, the way it's articulated, would achieve the very thing you wish to achieve. In fact, I think it'd further perpetuate the habit you railed against.
There are many distinctions you could have made, for example, the distinction between activities people do with the aim of achieving expertise and that which they do with the aim of self-experimentation. Or the distinction between a talent/skill with a low ceiling and that with a high ceiling. Or the distinction between persons with limited capacity for self-exertion and those with almost unlimited capacity for same. Or the distinction between that which is expressly and specifically demanded and that which is only implied or expected.
That you have a high threshold for embarrassment and a capacity to shrug off the most trenchant criticism would still not make people with fine sensibility give critical feedbacks without pause...
Except I missed it in the article, you didn't mention that the very thing you seek so much can be almost everywhere and every time obtained when requested in a manner that is specific and directed.
That's a good point about making a distinction between activities, but even if an activity is a mere hobby, improvement and skills add to the enjoyment.
I don't think feedback can always be obtained. Especially in British culture, people find it very uncomfortable to deliver negative feedback. Also, giving advice or criticism requires self-awareness and critical thinking, again two things solely lacking in a lot of people including those in position of authority. To know why you don't like or approve of someone's performance you need to be aware of your own biases, values, tastes etc. Not be a slave to vibes and your own gut instincts.
Oh man, this piece cracked me up. I recognize this drive, even if I've lost some of it over the years. Keep the ambitious fire burning, even if it makes the rest of the world seem a bit crazy in comparison.
I like this energy. It has been forcibly removed from our culture for too long, leaving us with many who crave unearned attention and participation awards. But no excellence.
It is frustrating to genuinely want honest feedback/opinions and know that there is no one you can ask who will actually be honest with you.
yeap, I always say, don't freak out when you receive negative feedback even if it is unfair and you disagree with it, at the very least it shows you how a third person views you and you don't know when you'll next get that insight
Another good piece. Again, I can relate, as much as my adult life has been developing my foreign languages skills to the extent that natives greet me as one of them who has just suffered a minor brain injury. Nonetheless, I always thought that if anything was what made me cultural royalty, looking beyond my culture and being open to other language traditions. I think you'd be surprised that many of the Brits and Americans you look up as cultural royalty consider speaking a language as ancient as Greek to be the definition of chic and that monolingualism is not a place a lot of Brits feel comfortable to be in, even if it does mean people think we sound serious. Most of them also admire your achievement in learning any language at all. Un accent n'est pas la guerre, as the French might say.
Thanks James. I am quite proud of the fact I got to learn ancient Greek in high school, without needing to go to a British boarding school or study classics at uni. Speaking another language certainly adds cultural value to one's life; you get to inhabit two completely different words. Still, I like complaining from time when I listen back to myself and I sound so painfully foreign. Doing political commentary on tv - while something I chased and enjoy and am grateful for - is certainly challenging my self-confidence - hence why I am grateful for the existence of prolific public intellectuals like Zizek who sound as fresh off the boat as I do.
I like Eddie Izzard's description of English as 'open source'; it belongs to everyone now, and as such an accent when speaking it is the merest of small beer. Conversely, when I've asked a question at a German language Q&A there's often been a real sense of 'Who is this and how do they know our language?' Indeed, I once read that the Chinese had a proverb to beware foreigners who speak Chinese, though that has certainly not been my experience when using the language!
Competition is acknowledged to the point of banality; ambition and toil are thought of as an unalloyed goods; laziness and poor performance are swiftly punished. The entire society, paupers to billionaires, behaves according to the mores of a single cutthroat striving middle class. The result is exactly what you'd expect: disproportionate Ivy/Oxbridge/Big 4/Magic Circle/whatever entry rates, tremendous wealth and efficiency, dangerous levels of autism.
It can be a fantastic corrective for Europeans in the right doses. You'd also make good money, most of which you'd even get to keep after tax, if you can imagine such a thing.
Find a competent senior figure trying to achieve something difficult and unpopular, and offer them your aid and loyalty in exchange for mentorship
Basically impossible to get useful instructive feedback any other way. Especially for softer/subtler skills. Everyone’s either endlessly lovely because they’re unthreatened, or keeping mum
Deeply resonant. Your reaction to Paglia is my reaction to this article (and also my reaction to Paglia). Look on the bright side, at least you have a popular Substack and people want you on TV. You could be ME… an even bigger loser!!! And as a native English speaker, I don’t even have an excuse!!!!
it also gives you some distance from those parts of yourself I imagine, and makes you sound less self-obsessed which I find becomes tiring quite quickly. Thanks.
Achievement coddling and ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ seem like cultural attributes of WEIRD countries, but they exist for good reason. Most people don’t want to hear (or can’t handle) personal critiques, especially in regard to something they are still learning.
But I’ve learned from experience if you ask people for their honest assessment of your work (and make clear what are the standards that you hold for yourself), you are likely to receive that honest feedback - and oftentimes people will not hold back. They just need reassurance that you’re genuine about improvement and won’t take it personally.
But since you brought up the desire for criticism……you should trim and streamline your writing style to a more cohesive narrative. The voice, ideas and convictions in these pieces are phenomenal, but I sometimes have to re-read them to understand your underlying message. This unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness style works better in stand-up, but I find that the best writing tells a focused, clear and linear narrative (with a large heaping of the author’s personal style).
Genuinely thanks for the feedback on my piece, and for sticking to my work even when you can't decipher what I am saying in one go. I have been slowly improving and adapting my writing style here, it is a work in progress. Each piece usually takes me a whole Sunday, if not the whole weekend, and often early morning before work kicks in. My ambition is that the more I write, the crispier my editing will become and more I will be able to synthesize my ideas without overcomplicating them. Writing more succinctly is tough; I struggle with the refusal of 'killing my darlings' that many writers do, i.e. once I write something I am emotionally invested in, I hesitate to edit for clarity even if it means a wider audience will be able to enjoy it.
For simplification, you could try reading Hemingway. Do you know the (possibly apocryphal) story about the world's shortest short story?
Your English is extremely good, especially with our crazy spelling. But if you want nits picked, you used assent (agreement) when you meant ascent (climb) and it's an Overton window not overtone (but even this native has to look up what it means every time I come across it).
Finally, please don't change your accent. It's very attractive and matches your personality. And I suspect "foreign" will be taken more seriously than many native accents; we are a strange island race, don't forget.
Ichiro Suzuki said something similar. When he came here from Japan to play baseball mid career, he started succeeding very quickly. He set the single season hit record one year. When he got close to 3000 hits (for perspective, there are only 33 men in the history of Major League Baseball to cross 3000), someone said that if you counted his hits in Japan, he would beat Pete Rose (who leads all of MLB history with 4400, a number that will never be crossed).
Pete, who had earlier been supportive, said that Japan league simply couldn’t compare to MLB, as the pitching was grossly inferior.
Ichiro said in response that he had figured it out. When you aren’t a threat, he said, everyone praises you. When you are a threat to their legacy, they tear you down.
Anyway, hope this helps. It doesn’t get better even at the highest levels.
powerful story that, thanks for sharing
FWIW, I'm shocked you're not an English native. I would never have guessed, from your writing. Your skill with writing in English is in fact quite high and it's not detectable that you're not native to the language. And not to be a total asshole about it, but I graduated first in my class in law school and my whole life is funded by people paying me a lot to read and write all day and be persuasive by manipulating the English language. So I'm not the worst judge, and perhaps you could try just actually believing some of the things people tell you.
Thanks, I believe your good words and those of other people. Perhaps you've read my most self-deprecating pieces, but I have healthy self-confidence levels. But I want to be better. Much better. Some days, I am impatient, but mostly, I toil at the things I want to improve for my long-term goals: my writing and my eloquence when I speak, either to an audience or on live TV/radio, being the main two things bugging me at the moment.
Was going to make the same comment. Don’t know what you sound like but I can’t tell from your writing that you’re not native. Can’t even tell you’re not an American (is that insulting? not sure).
Here's a more nuanced take on the subject by Paul Bloom: https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/discouragement
I'm not sure this article, the way it's articulated, would achieve the very thing you wish to achieve. In fact, I think it'd further perpetuate the habit you railed against.
There are many distinctions you could have made, for example, the distinction between activities people do with the aim of achieving expertise and that which they do with the aim of self-experimentation. Or the distinction between a talent/skill with a low ceiling and that with a high ceiling. Or the distinction between persons with limited capacity for self-exertion and those with almost unlimited capacity for same. Or the distinction between that which is expressly and specifically demanded and that which is only implied or expected.
That you have a high threshold for embarrassment and a capacity to shrug off the most trenchant criticism would still not make people with fine sensibility give critical feedbacks without pause...
Except I missed it in the article, you didn't mention that the very thing you seek so much can be almost everywhere and every time obtained when requested in a manner that is specific and directed.
That's a good point about making a distinction between activities, but even if an activity is a mere hobby, improvement and skills add to the enjoyment.
I don't think feedback can always be obtained. Especially in British culture, people find it very uncomfortable to deliver negative feedback. Also, giving advice or criticism requires self-awareness and critical thinking, again two things solely lacking in a lot of people including those in position of authority. To know why you don't like or approve of someone's performance you need to be aware of your own biases, values, tastes etc. Not be a slave to vibes and your own gut instincts.
Ok then - v funny piece and well written but a bit too long
thanks Stephen, one my shorter ones actually but I am working on quality/quantity
Oh man, this piece cracked me up. I recognize this drive, even if I've lost some of it over the years. Keep the ambitious fire burning, even if it makes the rest of the world seem a bit crazy in comparison.
thanks Ryan, I fully plan to keep on at it
I like this energy. It has been forcibly removed from our culture for too long, leaving us with many who crave unearned attention and participation awards. But no excellence.
It is frustrating to genuinely want honest feedback/opinions and know that there is no one you can ask who will actually be honest with you.
yeap, I always say, don't freak out when you receive negative feedback even if it is unfair and you disagree with it, at the very least it shows you how a third person views you and you don't know when you'll next get that insight
Another good piece. Again, I can relate, as much as my adult life has been developing my foreign languages skills to the extent that natives greet me as one of them who has just suffered a minor brain injury. Nonetheless, I always thought that if anything was what made me cultural royalty, looking beyond my culture and being open to other language traditions. I think you'd be surprised that many of the Brits and Americans you look up as cultural royalty consider speaking a language as ancient as Greek to be the definition of chic and that monolingualism is not a place a lot of Brits feel comfortable to be in, even if it does mean people think we sound serious. Most of them also admire your achievement in learning any language at all. Un accent n'est pas la guerre, as the French might say.
Thanks James. I am quite proud of the fact I got to learn ancient Greek in high school, without needing to go to a British boarding school or study classics at uni. Speaking another language certainly adds cultural value to one's life; you get to inhabit two completely different words. Still, I like complaining from time when I listen back to myself and I sound so painfully foreign. Doing political commentary on tv - while something I chased and enjoy and am grateful for - is certainly challenging my self-confidence - hence why I am grateful for the existence of prolific public intellectuals like Zizek who sound as fresh off the boat as I do.
I like Eddie Izzard's description of English as 'open source'; it belongs to everyone now, and as such an accent when speaking it is the merest of small beer. Conversely, when I've asked a question at a German language Q&A there's often been a real sense of 'Who is this and how do they know our language?' Indeed, I once read that the Chinese had a proverb to beware foreigners who speak Chinese, though that has certainly not been my experience when using the language!
As a foreign born, career and achievement centered woman in America, a lot of that piece resonated with me :)
thanks for reading Beatrice :-)
You should consider spending a few years working in Singapore
Why?
Competition is acknowledged to the point of banality; ambition and toil are thought of as an unalloyed goods; laziness and poor performance are swiftly punished. The entire society, paupers to billionaires, behaves according to the mores of a single cutthroat striving middle class. The result is exactly what you'd expect: disproportionate Ivy/Oxbridge/Big 4/Magic Circle/whatever entry rates, tremendous wealth and efficiency, dangerous levels of autism.
It can be a fantastic corrective for Europeans in the right doses. You'd also make good money, most of which you'd even get to keep after tax, if you can imagine such a thing.
gosh I am not sure I would enjoy that though, I have an artistic/romantic nature that complements my craven ambition- I need space for both
In London you can have it all but it’s harder
Find a competent senior figure trying to achieve something difficult and unpopular, and offer them your aid and loyalty in exchange for mentorship
Basically impossible to get useful instructive feedback any other way. Especially for softer/subtler skills. Everyone’s either endlessly lovely because they’re unthreatened, or keeping mum
Good luck, rooting for you
Deeply resonant. Your reaction to Paglia is my reaction to this article (and also my reaction to Paglia). Look on the bright side, at least you have a popular Substack and people want you on TV. You could be ME… an even bigger loser!!! And as a native English speaker, I don’t even have an excuse!!!!
How did the fight go?
knocked her out 3rd round
Good Jesus...what a beast.
thanks, I hope I manage to escape that dreaded genre, but I think I am close to it
hmm interesting, so you could have like two different people representing two different aspects of your personality
it also gives you some distance from those parts of yourself I imagine, and makes you sound less self-obsessed which I find becomes tiring quite quickly. Thanks.