Deconstructive Criticism

My father-in-law is building a new house. His old house is … old. And it has major issues resulting from its age. It has served well but is past its day and needs to be replaced. But, he is going to live in the old house until the new one is constructed. Then he is going to demolish the old one. The order is important. I wrote it down – “Don’t tear down your house until you have a new one built to live in.”

The reason I wrote it down is because I was thinking about the tendency we have to point out the inadequacies or the problems with things and how easy it is to tear down existing structures or ways of doing things, and how often we do this without anything really substantial to offer in place of them.

Let’s face it - it is not that hard to identify imperfections, weaknesses or problems within any system or structure. What is hard though is creating and developing new systems, structures or ways of doing things that actually represent major improvements in addressing all the issues of life.

It will take at least a couple of months for Howard to build his new house. I suspect his old one will come down in a matter of minutes. I think there are probably a few different elements that are necessary for criticism to be considered truly constructive in nature. But one of them certainly should be a healthy measure of respect for the efforts put in by those who have laboured before us.