Critical thinking and colostomy bags

115270 original

Criticism: The act of making an unfavourable or severe judgment or comment. Something I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of and something many performers at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe will be dreading – but not quite as much as they may dread being ignored.

One of the quotes on my flyers and posters this year reads: “Comedy’s answer to a burst colostomy bag”. High praise indeed and something I take as a great compliment – although I’m not entirely sure it was meant as such.

But a review in the press is a very different animal to the way we may find ourselves critiquing something we are perhaps not too fond of to our friends in the pub.

Our pattern of Western thinking has been heavily influenced by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle: ‘The Gang of Three’ - so called after their habit of loitering menacingly around the gymnasium showers, hands on hips and wearing nothing but disapproving, predatory scowls. Socrates believed in argument and most of his arguments, as written up by Plato, ended in no positive outcome.

He thought it enough to simply pick holes in other’s thinking without offering any positive or constructive ideas of his own. And this has left us with our obsession with criticism and our belief that it is far more important to point out what is wrong than to offer any useful ideas of our own.

In thinking terms, Socrates is a truculent teenager smashing plates on the floor. “Socrates” asks the maker of plates, “Why not help me to design and manufacture stronger plates?”

“Nah,” replies Socrates, smashing another plate, “I’m happy just destroying yours”.

But, of course, being critical doesn’t necessarily have to mean being negative. It can be the analysis or evaluation of something – giving us the chance to be constructive or even, heaven forefend, positive.
 
And, after all, what’s so bad about a raw stoma spritzing blithe ordure from a breeched crap-sack? Nothing.