Part of listening to criticism is understanding that if you are doing something wrong, insensitive, or inconvenient, the resulting frustration may cause another person to become a bit irrational. And even if they are being highly irrational, hostile, or even just downright wrong, they may still have a point worth recognizing.

Criticism should be calm, coherent, rational, and compassionate. But when it fails at any or all of these, we should still be able to extract as much usable information as possible.

This does not mean we should stand around while people try to literally pummel us to death for getting their name wrong. But it does mean we should always be aware of the two-way responsibility in criticism.

There are some typical ways people moralize that strike me as weird.

"Holding to account" is all too rarely a discussion about *how*. Usually it's about *whether*, leaving "accountability" as some sort of blank check to the one "holding to" or else to a society's preconceptions. Just because a behavior is "unacceptable" does not mean that whatever retaliation feels preferred is automatically right. I often think of a hungry lion escaped from a zoo. We know this is very dangerous to humans (and other animals about our size), and the lion may already have injured or killed someone. Yet a tranquilizer dart is more practical and defensible than causing the lion suffering. I've yet to hear a convincing argument as to why dangerous humans are so different. Why do most of us seem not even to question our positions here? There are many ways to "hold to account," and sadism (including the normal amounts of it that make retribution seem appealing) is an extremely important force to consider with utmost caution.

"There are consequences" is particularly bizarre. Every single person knows that the universe is full of consequences. This much is not a debate. To say "there are consequences" before creating a consequence is strange; this particular "consequence" may be your choice rather than a natural consequence. It actually sounds like a way to hide from accountability for the form of punishment a person chooses to apply. Yes, there are consequences. Many! Obviously! But no, if, as is implied, free will exists, then my free will to punish (and *how* to punish) an offender is not a natural consequence, but rather my (fallible) choice, for which I must take full responsibility. If free will does not exist, then every choice ever made has merely been a direct consequence of its inputs, and morality perhaps ought to take a different tenor as a commentary on the motions of particles and the complex results of these.