A form of nostalgia

[andrewducker]

A person should be careful with advice. Specific advice is not offensive. General advice is offensive. Telling someone to get a job, or that they should take better care of their life, or get help, without any specificities is to call someone incompetent without providing anything useful to them. It's a kick in the ribs, disguised as advice.

- eatsoylentgreen here.

I went into a massive lull on giving advice. The last few times people have come to me with problems I've ended up teasing their beliefs out of them, reflecting them back, and trying to help them decide what they actually want. And then, after a friend said "If I didn't want your advice I wouldn't have posted where you could see it and left comments on." (or words to that effect) I've been tacking back towards offering more of my own perspective on things.

And I think that the quote above captures something important - that different advice is useful for different people. That some advice is useful in general - but even then it's very unlikely to be useful or true _all_ of the time. And knowing when to break a rule is always the tricky bit.

I think part of me feels that if the correct course of action is obvious then my advice isn't needed. And if it's not obvious then my advice is unlikely to be that useful without knowing the situation in detail.

Of course, most people aren't actually looking for advice, they just want someone to talk to while they work things out for themselves. And that, I seem quite good at.

Comments

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I dunno - I don't think general advice tagged as general advice is offensive. Mainly this is based on having learned to tag it in order to avoid offending people, but when I tag it, it seems to work out all right. And that "Wear sunscreen" song sure made a hit.

But then, most of the problems that I feel moved to respond to are ones where the answer may be obvious if you are familiar with a particular bit of informational trivia and it is applicable in your case (and unless the person says they are and it isn't, I have no way of knowing unless I ask; and being too lazy and/or busy to engage in long, didactic comment threads, it usually seems more prudent to simply post "here are some general facts which may or may not be of use to you"!)

[nickys.livejournal.com]

I agree.

unsolicited advice may be offensive, depending on context, but if someone has asked for advice (either in person or by posting a request for it where a person can see it) then being offended at them taking the trouble to respond is rather inappropriate.

General advice may or may not be useful.
It can be very useful if somebody's stressed out and just not seeing the bigger picture - one doesn't have to be incompetant or whatever to occasionally need the obvious pointed out.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

It's also a useful ability to be able to accept advice. Other peoples' perspectives are kinda vital if you don't want to make whacking great mistakes.

(Not that I'm perfect at that by any stretch of the imagination.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It seems like, if someone's genuinely unaware that, say, they need help, then telling them that is useful. But if they know that, but CAN'T for some reason, then telling them AGAIN is normally counterproductive and often makes them feel awful. Whereas, say, telling them how to get help, and that it's not that hard, and finding out what's blocking them and trying to fix that, and helping them to do so, is helpful.

But I think the second case is more common. I think that if someone asks you for advice, they NORMALLY want to talk through the issue, and if you ask the obvious and insightful questions, will eventually reveal the obvious choice. However, sometimes, the right answer is obvious.

I normally wouldn't tell someone whether to break up or not, or whatever, partly because I don't want the responsibility, and partly because they won't do what I say unless they come to the conclusion myself. But occasionally I happen to be fairly sure, and say something like "I wouldn't normally tell you what to do. But you asked for advice, so stop worrying and do X."