In the Noah Baumbach film Greenberg (2010), the title character has nothing better to do than write letters of complaint: “Dear American Airlines, I’m not much in the habit of writing letters of complaint. I think I could have lived, and did, with the distance between your rows. But my issue isn’t with the lack of leg-room, but instead the quality of the buttons on the seats …” And so on: “Dear Mayor Bloomberg, I write as a concerned citizen who has finally had enough of the abominable traffic noise that has engulfed the city …” And so on: “Dear Starbucks, in your attempt to manufacture culture out of fast-food coffee, you’ve been surprisingly successful for the most part. The part that isn’t covered by ‘the most part’ sucks …” Ad nauseum: “Dear Hollywood Pet Taxi, you would think that a vehicle made expressly for the transportation of animals would have a soft floor. You were given very high marks in the Yellow Pages, my next letter, by the way …” Greenberg’s neurotic bleating is funny because of what it says about our age. Nothing lives up to expectations. So we complain. And that becomes a habit.

Have we become chronic complainers? Has complaint become our default mode of expression? Do we live in a culture of complaint and entitlement? Or does every new generation have its gripes about the way things are? And does every old generation have its gripes about how things have changed?

Several factors make us more likely to complain these days. Norms of decorum and politeness have become more lax. There are fewer inhibitions. We’re less deferential towards moral authorities who tell us to endure our difficulties with gladness. Quiet struggle is no longer seen as a virtue. In our confessional media-culture, praise goes to those who vent their “anger issues” in the open. People now complain as a way to express their opinions and to joke around. And it’s more socially acceptable to complain as a way of deflecting attention away from our own actions and responsibilities.

All of this has an effect on political discourse. The way we talk about politics is less about being constructive and more about tearing down. Offering practical suggestions is hard work. Complaining is easy, especially if it’s about wayward politicians and celebrities. That’s why pundits—those who issue opinions at regular intervals under intense time pressure—are mostly traffickers of complaint. Does all of that make the political culture too reactionary? Or is the rise of complaining necessary and healthy?

Before answering those questions, know that complaint isn’t just about expressing dissatisfaction. It’s also one of the ways we bond with each other.

I notice that whenever I go to an English pub to watch a football (soccer) match. A player will inevitably approach the referee to complain about a call. Just as inevitably, someone in the pub will start yelling at the television: “Oi! Stop your whinging! I can’t stand these players who are always whinging!” This complaining about complaining is never done ironically, even when that same person goes on to complain about the officiating. Yet it serves it’s purpose. It signals allegiance to a football team. It also signals membership in a clique, a clique of fans who never vent their petty gripes. Au contraire: in their minds, members of the clique only complain about genuine injustices. What people complain about is one way to tell members apart from non-members, as well as reinforce the acceptable views of the clique.

We also use complaint to bond with strangers when facing common difficulties. A few months ago, I was stuck in five hours of queuing at an airport. The system had broken down. Travellers complained and apportioned blame in response. Here, complaining helps us voice our frustration while breaking down the social barriers that usually prevent conversation between strangers. A complaint is shared. There’s agreement that the situation is unfair … and should never have happened … and is an intolerable burden … and the staff aren’t doing enough … and they’re quite rude … and, and …

The social-psychology of complaint interests me because I study workplaces. Workers use complaint to signal what’s acceptable behaviour and what isn’t. Workers complain about painful work experiences in a bid to elicit sympathy from others. Sympathy is important because we want some sort of confirmation that we did the right thing and “they” (the blameworthy) did the wrong thing. While complaining, we communicate all sorts of information about what to watch out for and how to cope. Workers also use complaining to gather information. We complain to coax others to share their views on a subject, especially to see if there’s agreement. And, of course, workers will also complain to undermine others. For example, it may be unwise to attack another’s agenda head-on. Instead, it’s easier to complain about smaller details until the larger agenda loses support. Or it may be easier to complain about those who champion an agenda until they lose credibility. Thus, complaint isn’t just a call for change, but a way to defend the status quo.

Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests by Julian Baggini (Profile Books, 2008), pp. 148.

Julian Baggini has written a book about complaint that deliberately side-steps the social-psychological reasons for complaining, the part I find most interesting. Instead, he focuses on the substance of complaint: what people complain about and how they complain. Baggini laments the debasement of complaint into knee-jerk moans and quibbles about trivialities. Too many complaints are easy, throw-away gestures. A once-noble form of expression has lost its seriousness. Complaint is no longer about things that matter and, thus, it can’t be the impetus for societal progress. And so Baggini tries to rejuvenate the term by critiquing idle complaint and describing its beneficial forms.

For Baggini, complaint is “a refusal or inability to accept that things are not as they ought to be” (p. 2) and is directed at someone or something. This definition has three dimensions. An utterance can’t be considered complaint unless it has (a.) been expressed to someone or something. Even if muttering a complaint to yourself, argues Baggini, it’s as if someone or something is there to take notice (including abstract entities, such as a god or “the universe”). Complaint is (b.) a non-acceptance of something—a dislike, a disapproval, or a sense that something is wrong. That comes with some notion, often implicit, of (c.) what should be. There is a want, perhaps a vague want, that is unfulfilled. Thus, every complaint is about the gap between how things are and how they should be.

We don’t do a very good job of complaining, claims Baggini. How do we do it wrong? What are the forms of bad complaint? Let’s go through the author’s list of “sincere” complaints (as distinct from rhetorical complaints we don’t really mean).

• Impossible Complaint. Complaint is a problem when it’s about matters that can’t be changed or remedied. The activist-minded Baggini is quick to point out that we shouldn’t overestimate the extent to which things are unchangeable. Religion is singled out as perpetuating myths about the futility of change. That instills moral resignation and defeatism. But we shouldn’t just make the opposite assumption, that anything is possible and we should strive for unreachable ideals. Some things are impossible. We are constrained by limits. So we shouldn’t complain about something because it doesn’t live up to an impossible ideal. Expecting the impossible is unreason­able. And it can lead to injustice, such as when idealists try to violently enforce some vision of unattainable perfection.
• Contradictory Complaint. A complainer may moan about something while in one mood, yet complain about the opposite while in another mood, as if the world should revolve around the complainer’s mood swings. Moreover, complaints may ignore inevitable trade-offs or demand incompatible wants. According to Baggini, these contradictions often happen unknowingly when we’re not specific enough about the target of our complaints.
• Self-defeating Complaint. A proposed remedy may defeat the purpose of a complaint.
• Self-serving Complaint. We may complain for selfish reasons while claiming a point of principle. For example, a complainer may object to the environmental harm caused by a nearby construction project, yet the opposition is really motivated by the personal inconvenience caused by the project. This NIMBYism (“Not In My Back Yard” selfishness) is often voiced as a complaint.
• Nostalgic Complaint. A complainer may insist that life was so much better in the past … and that newfangled technologies are inferior to old ones … and that we should go back to the old ways of doing things. Such thinking is flawed when it’s based on a mistaken recollection about how things really were back then. If a change is bad, then its demerits should be debated instead of making vague appeals to a mythical past.
• Misdirected Complaint. Complaints may be levelled against the wrong target, sometimes the safest or most convenient target. For example, disliked minorities are often scapegoated in complaints about societal problems. The complaint may also mask what the complainer is really peeved about. For example, the complainer may know that it’s socially unacceptable (“politically incorrect”) to complain about something. The complainer may choose a different target or complain about the same target on different grounds.
• Paranoid Complaint. Some complaints rely on completely implausible assumptions, such as vast cynical conspiracies.
• Conformist Complaint. Some people complain about others simply because they’re different. The differences may be about taste, background, character, appearance, opinion, and so forth. For example, we may complain snobbishly about someone else’s taste in music. Even those who genuinely value societal diversity, Baggini reminds us, will complain in this conformist way.
• Empty Complaint. Some complaints are about things that just aren’t true, can’t possibly be true, or can’t be known.

These complaints are pointless and fallacious. Avoid them, says Baggini, to “declutter” our minds. Many are peeves about trivial matters that are blown out of all proportion. And many are easy gestures to make; it doesn’t take much thought to bleat about something. Complaint has become a type of leisure activity whereby we look for safe things to complain about with others. And complaint is part of our daily rituals (such as complaining aloud while reading the newspaper).

Although Baggini rails against these bad forms of complaint, he claims that they can be justifiable if cathartic. That’s a weak argument for two reasons. First, catharsis—the release of negative emotions in order to purge them—is mostly a failed idea. Psychological therapies based on catharsis have a miserable track record of success. And cathartic therapies often create an unhealthy emotional dependence on the therapy itself. Complaining in a fit of anger, getting an irritation “off your chest” in a bombastic way, may be exhausting. You can’t keep that up for long. But all that spent energy gives the complainer a false sense of overcoming an anxiety, frustration, or grievance. And it will reinforce the habit to complain. Second, all kinds of complaint are emotionally satisfying in some way, which explains why we grumble so much. Baggini’s refusal to look at the social-psychology of complaint means that he is ignoring these other emotional satisfactions. Why should catharsis get a pass? Baggini argues that cathartic complaint can help us avoid self-loathing and unreasonably blaming ourselves. Really? Cathartic complaint doesn’t help us become more self-aware. It doesn’t give us a sense of proper perspective. And venting your spleen by blaming others can lead to the opposite problem: a failure to accept personal responsibility for your actions. Baggini acknowledges that last point, which is why he doesn’t push his catharsis argument too far.

Baggini agrees that our culture encourages a sense of entitlement and grievance. He claims that we’ve become too accustomed to settling disputes through legal means and expressing grievances with legal-sounding arguments. We no longer appeal to moral or ethical principles when complaining—the “moral status” of complaint has declined. People are more likely to express their sense of entitlement by appealing to rules and procedures. I would argue that we also see this in bureaucratic organisations. Lazy bureaucrats are quick to point out that things are wrong because they violate some rule or convention. They’re less likely to complain based on some higher principle or goal.

Baggini’s argument has merit. But litigiousness isn’t the only reason why bad complaints are the norm. There are many other aspects of modern society that lead people to be self-centred complainers. For example, the nature of our consumer economy encourages us to play the role of picky and demanding customers. And various aspects of pop culture, such as the sensationalist news media, provoke us to moan about all sorts of spectacles. Plus, complaint breeds complaint: the more complaining we witness, the more we express ourselves using complaints; the more complainers there are, the more socially acceptable complaining becomes. The Ancient Stoics (notably Seneca and Epictetus) tried not to hang around whiners because they thought that complaining (like other vices) is contageous. Their raison d’etre was avoiding the mental disquiet that comes from being a discontented complainer. It’s safe to say that the Ancient Stoics, if alive today, wouldn’t be spending their time on Twitter and online comment forums.

Baggini argues that we shouldn’t waste our time with bad, self-centred forms of complaint. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t complain. To the contrary, he thinks we need to be better complainers in order to change the world for the better. A good complaint is: (a.) about important problems, (b.) based on ethical principles, and (c.) acted upon. Baggini also argues that we should reflect on our complaints and ask what they say about ourselves. Returning to the film Greenberg, this type of reflection is the one thing the lead character can’t do. Its the main reason why everyone else in the film thinks Greenberg is such a jerk.

The rest of Baggini’s book is devoted to a web survey about what we tend to complain about, as well as our attitudes towards complaint more generally. I won’t discuss these findings because self-selecting surveys of web surfers are meaningless. Baggini’s admits to a few methodological weaknesses in this approach. But he argues that there are still lessons to be gleaned from the data. He’s wrong about that. Don’t publish web surveys as if they’re genuine studies. Just don’t. They’re valid in only a hand-full of cases. Polling may be getting harder and harder; that is, more and more expensive. Research firms are scrounging around for a cheap method to sell to easily satisfied clients. Web surveys are that method. If Baggini is to further the field of “complaintology”, as he calls it, then he’s going to have to do better than a straw-poll of stray web-surfers. Obviously, I think that shoddy polling is something worth complaining about.

All told, there’s much to agree with in Baggini’s book. Yet the role of healthy complaint isn’t quite settled in my mind. The bad complaints he discusses should be avoided, as should a longer list of logical fallacies and acts of pettiness. I also agree that political apathy is a problem, with idle complaint serving as a poor substitute for democratic involvement. Baggini notes that complaint can serve as a “social lubricant” from time to time, but I think it’s far more complicated than that. I’ve already mentioned the need for more discussion about the social-psychology of complaint. Several downstream issues deserve our attention, too. For example:

• How does petty whinging affect our mental well-being? I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes us emotionally resilient these days. (I’m conducting a research project on the subject.) Much stress and anxiety is caused by our tendency to be bothered by minor frustrations. We need to be able to “roll with the punches” with mental toughness and grace. That doesn’t mean we should be complacent. But we need to know more about how complaint relates to emotional maturity. The wisdom of the Ancient Stoics has something to offer on that count, it seems to me.
• How does the pressure to be positive all the time relate to complaining? Chronic complainers are increasingly stigmatised in America’s go-go/can-do workplaces. Complainers are suspected of being nay-sayers and obstructionists. Barbara Ehrenreich does a great job of describing the pressure to be positive in her book Bright Sided (2009). I’d like to know more about the conflict between these knee-jerk tendencies to be positive and negative. Given that criticism is a necessary part of organisational life, more needs to be said about how complaint fits in. Surely, it can’t be limited to the suggestion box and other maligned half-measures.
• How does complaint relate to social cohesion? The activist-minded Baggini encourages us to act on our complaints if those complaints matter to us. That would make our politics more conflictual and in-your-face, to be sure. The social scientist in me wonders about the role played by idle complaint in helping people in diverse societies get along. Societies are becoming more diverse, urban, and crowded. That comes with more frustrations. How can the resulting complaints be channelled productively to remove frustrations, while also minimising the potential for social conflict?
• How can organisations better respond to complaints? It’s often said, for every customer who complains, there are ten other disgruntled customers who stay silent but take their business elsewhere. Governments and businesses have a stake in listening to complaints instead of shutting them down. If commercial interests are getting so good at “mining” our personal data for insights, I wonder why they don’t do a better job of “mining” all the complaints being made. Complainers are mostly thought of as a problem because they increase the cost of commercial transactions. Complaints are also considered a threat to an organisation’s brand. Some companies will mark people as complainers in their customer files in order to better “handle” trouble-makers. There seems to be a lost opportunity to treat complaints in a more constructive way. Perhaps companies should start by thinking about how expectations are set in the first place.
• Finally, how does complaint relate to being a critically minded person? As my comments suggest, I’m not so bothered by complaint that isn’t tied to action. Intelligent complaint can be valuable in its own right, just as any form of criticism can be if done well. Baggini implicitly discounts the value of this form of learning. More needs to be said about how complaint can be used to make us more inquisitive and sceptical thinkers.

For all of these reasons, I think the definitive book about complaint has yet to be written. Baggini’s Complaint is a good start, however.

Review by Peter Stoyko

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