Let's hear it for the builders
Joan Westenberg in We Don't Need More Cynics. We Need More Builders:
Cynicism is the cheap seats. It’s the fast food of intellectual positions. Anyone can point at something and say it’s broken, corrupt, or destined to fail. The real challenge? Building something better.
Yes, yes and a thousand more times yes. And then there's this:
Creating is harder than criticizing. Much harder. This fundamental asymmetry shapes our intellectual landscape in profound ways.
A single person can identify problems in a system that took thousands of people years to build. They might even be correct about every flaw they identify. This criticism, while occasionally valuable, is not equivalent to the work of building. The cynic’s contribution, while real, is orders of magnitude smaller than the builder’s.
It's human to be the cynic and criticise. I know I do it all too often, even if I try to improve. This call to arms from Joan Westenberg is inspiring and makes me want to redouble my efforts to focus on creating instead of criticising.
The world has enough critics. What it needs are builders who can see problems clearly without being paralyzed by them, people who can maintain hope without succumbing to naïveté, and people who can engage with reality while working to improve it.
Let's get to it!