Life

Every time I write social critiques, I feel sick.

I’m told I’m good at it.  I should keep it.  Do it again.  Share it.  Publish it.  But every time I write social critique, I feel sick.

I don’t know if critique is the solution to every thing.  I don’t know if critique is the solution to anything.  I don’t know if critique is really needed and I think that’s why, every time, I feel sick.  I don’t know if all of me believes in it.

I just started a question about the commenting on certain bodies.  Call it a critique if you must.  I started a “critique” on bodies.  On comments on bodies.  I started a critique on the power given to a body.  I stopped short of critique.  I didn’t finish it.  I stopped short as I started feeling sick.

I’m reading critiques on certain bodies and comments on critiques on certain bodies and how necessary they are.  We need critique.  It’s how we move forward.  We don’t learn without critique.  This critique is essential.  We need the awareness.

I don’t think my body is buying it.

I probably would’ve wanted to agree, but I don’t think my body is buying it and it’s rejecting critique.  It’s not completely buying we need this critique.  And I’m in agreement with it; in fact, I was critiquing the critique, but then it said stop; no, you— stop.  This is still a critique.  We don’t need your critique.  I don’t think it’s buying we need the critique any less than we need the critique of critique.  I think it’s rejecting all critique.

My critique of critique was going to argue I have never been saved by critique.  My life has never been saved by critique.  Only endangered.  My life has only ever been saved and inspired by more life.  I live for more life and am inspired by life.  I am driven by life and more life.  Never critique.  Critique might make me think, but I am driven by life.  And come to think of it, I think most people are saved by life.

I’m trying to understand if my body is simply afraid of being a “know-it-all”, one who “knows too much”, who “talks too much”, who has “too much to say”, who loves to “argue” “too much”, who has too much to say.  I’m trying to understand if the critique of the critique of critique is valid or if it’s simply a fear.  But I’m willing to entertain myself.  Let’s entertain my instincts.  Why is critiquing critique so sickening.  Why is any critique so nausea-inducing.

We need this awareness, she said.  It’s essential we have these discussions in order to deconstruct our own narratives, she said.  Why did that stop me?  What made it click?  Why did body say No, and why did that make me go, see, we don’t need your critique, and critique of critique is no different.  Let’s have this discussion.  Let’s look at our narratives.  Something about that sentence, my disagreement with that sentence, made me tell myself, and that’s why we don’t need your critique either, the reasons you disagree with her exist for you as well.  Let’s look at the narratives and subjectives.

Adjectives (essential): 1
Imperative suggestions (need): 1
Implied necessity and connection (in order to): 1

Low count, but still strong. The meanings are strong.

Need and essential, we ignore, because they’re building up to the real point, in order to.  The only of these that truly matters is in order to.  Anything’s a need and anything is essential.  The point is what it’s for.  We need it for what, it’s essential for what, in order to do what.  What is it for?  It’s to deconstruct our own narratives (and save lives, as indicated in the greater paragraph).  This, I think, is the crux of my discomfort.  I’m yet to buy the connection between the means and the goal.  I do it myself, critique, if only out of habit, it’s a human thing, but even in my own critique, I’ve not yet bought the supposed connection between the means and the goal. I see no proof of the end to your means.

I think this sentence is the sentence that made me go that’s not how we deconstruct narratives, that’s not how we learn, that’s not what inspires us, which made me understand for the first time why even my own words can make me feel ill.  I finally articulated that's not how we learn.

I’d like to think I know this; I don’t use “critique” to help students learn, I don’t respond to “critique” when someone’s "helping me" “learn”, and judgement of good or bad has never really helped anyone learn.  It’s helped them learn as far as training (conditioning, developing culture), but it’s never helped them learn. Not truly, in the greater sense of learn.  And they said it themselves: their life was saved by representation, by seeing more of themselves, by seeing life and the living of life.  That was ultimately how they learned.  Life is inspired by more life.  Living is life.  Learning is life. This is how we learn.

I don’t know what’s my point.  But I think the point is.

• My life has only ever been saved, inspired, or propelled by more life.  It has only been saved by the witness of life.  By representation of self and want, not critique of don’t want.  That has never helped me live.  Made me think, not live.  Different things.
• I don’t like critique because a part of me agrees.  I am talking too much.  Why am I talking about anything.  You talk and you talk.  Why are you talking.  There are things to be doing.  You talk and you live and you do and you live.  You talk and you talk, I guess to document things, but what if there was just more do and more live.  What would happen then.  You sit in lessons with your students and you hand them a marker, you hand them a pen and you give them the board and you let them do things because you already know simply talking won’t do anything so you do and they watch, and you talk while you do, but ultimately you both do the thing and that’s how they learn.  That’s how you help them learn.  You say you want to help, but when have you ever helped by critiquing someone, what has that ever done.  That’s never how you’ve helped a student and that’s never how you’ve helped yourself or anyone.  That may be the beginning, but never the end.  The critique is for you and you know it is and that’s why it’s making you sick. It’s inherently dishonest and you can’t sit with it.  Once you pass the point of awareness and understanding, the critique is for you.  You’re emotionally processing, you’re cognitively processing, you’re documenting thoughts.  You are processing and documenting thought.  That is for you.  The awareness is there.  It is already done.  When you continue, the critique for you.  You want to be strict in your awareness.  It is for you.
• An exception to a “rule” is a disproof.  If there is a supposedly universal rule, any exception to this rule, or rather, claim, is a disproof.  If one thing is supposed to be the only example of "good", and you find other examples that do not look like that thing, you have your disproof; that is, in fact, not the only example of “good”.  Thus, representation is powerful.  Disproof after disproof.  The living of life provides disproof after disproof after disproof.  Thus, representation saves lives.  It saves lives because it provides disproof to universal claims, to ruling claims, to dominant claims, and it deconstructs our narratives.  We deconstruct with life. Critique is the theory, but proof is in life.  The living of life and witness of life is the practice and the proof of disproof.  Critique deconstructs, but life deconstructs.  The living of life is how we deconstruct. Life is the proof.  Life is essential.
• Be the change you wish to see in the world, so they say?  Lead by example, so they say?  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so they say?  I think too much of me knows we observe behaviour more than we do words, we learn from observation and behaviour at least as much as we do words, and no matter how I love my words, I can’t ignore that knowledge.  At least, if not knowledge, I can’t ignore the belief.  I like my words, I like using words, and I’ve always known the power of words, but I know the power of behaviour.  I know what observation does.  Using words is what I want and I still know what observation does.  I know what critique beyond critiquing does.  I know what critique beyond awareness does.  And I can’t deny that I know that.  No matter how much I want to use words, I can’t deny that I know that, and my words make me feel ill.
• Whenever I really start critiquing, I know something is wrong.  I know something is off, and I’m dealing with something else, because long, extended critique is for the self, so it becomes a matter of what need am I serving for self and why does that need exist at all.  But whenever I’m deep in critique, I know it’s for the self.  And I can’t even bring myself to deny this knowledge when it comes to critique of critique.  To a point, it’s all for the self.
• I don’t know what I learned, if I stopped the critique, if this isn’t somehow still a critique, though I’d say it’s more analysis, but I feel better now, (sorry, I suppose I still served the self,) and I think I’m going to enjoy life.  By that, I mean, I think I’m going to go on enjoying the life and less critique, learning from life as opposed to learning from critique, whenever possible.  Because I’m not sure the critique helps me anyhow.

This is kind of an aside, but I’m reminded of the idea “people don’t change”, which I haven’t agreed with, but added caveat to.  As I put it, “I don’t know if cognition is sufficient to overwrite emotional memories” August 10, 2025, circa 3:22 am.  People don't change by way of cognition. By way of intellectualisation. Most learning is emotional. There is other sensation beyond pure cognition.  That’s what makes us learn.  It’s the attachment to how we learned.  It’s why behaviours learned from traumatic experiences are so held onto.  It’s why people have difficulty unlearning responses to emotional events, events through childhood, events in meaningful relationships, events that could’ve scarred them, events that made them feel something.  That’s how we learn.  We learn and we learn.  That’s how we learn.  We learn when there’s something to it.  More than cognition.

I’m not convinced cognition is enough to overwrite emotional memories and emotional memories are how most of our behaviours are learned.  A sense of wrong and right, a feeling of validation, a look of approval, a hint of I belong somewhere; they hate me here.  That’s how we learn.  Cognition is useful, but not all of how we learn.

A person can change, but cognition may not be enough to overwrite these memories, the memories that made them first learn.  Memories overwrite memories.  Emotional memories overwrite emotional memories.  They make us change.  They make us learn.  Simply telling someone what to do won’t make them learn.  If you’ve been a student in a school, you know being told is not how we learn.

They could go to a therapist, talk to someone for years who offers new ways of thinking, different modes of cognition, and they may even change behaviour because of what they’ve been told, but they’ll change behaviour against their nature.  There’s an inkling to respond one way, they catch it, they stop it, they remember what they were told, what they’ve worked on, and they follow what they were told.  The initial inkling is still there.  Cognition only changes behaviour.  But I’m not sure it motivates change, changes of nature.  I think emotional memories do those.

The conversations can go on all they want, but until there is a new feeling experience, a significant feeling experience, the nature goes on.

We live for life and feeling and more life.