Do you "do praise"?

David Murray has an interesting Brit-looking-around-and-back-home post about the Scottish (British?) tendency to avoid praise and encouragement. My (American) wife has long suggested that this tendency exists in her husband and in the culture at large. David says:

Scots don’t do praise. Of God, yes (a little), but not praise of one another.

Instead, we specialize in pulling people down, thinking the worst of others, and puncturing anyone who achieves anything. We can’t let a compliment pass without balancing it out with a criticism, and woe betide anyone who makes anything of life: “They’re just full of themselves!”

Where did this come from? Well, there’s no question that the cynical “build ‘em up to pull ‘em down” media is partly to blame. The evil envy of rabid and rampant socialism has also eaten away at much goodwill and gratitude towards achievement and achievers. But I’m afraid that a distorted Calvinism has also contributed to this soul-shriveling cynicism.

See it all at HeadHeartHand Blog.