Judgement is inevitable. Not that we want to, we just do. If I want to read a book, I make a variety of judgments in order to choose a particular book. I’m judging covers, reviews, and the other works the author may have created. I’m doing all this analyzing to make a proper judgement that I believe, based on my experiences and knowledge, to read a book I think I would like. It’s not like this is an easy task, but now, for the most part, I know what kind of books I like to read, so I can skip a lot of the analyzation that otherwise would be required, and I can get to actually reading a lot quicker. The first time I was trying to analyze whether or not I would like to read a book, it was probably pretty intensive, to go through all the variables that I believe make a good book. Now that I do have experience, the easiest path would be to make a quick judgement based on my experience, and that would mean I spend less time choosing a book, and more time reading the book. This works, only because I end up reading the book, and that’s the final judgement; there were multiple layers to the judgement, but the final decision in whether or not I read the book, front to back, is if the book is enjoyable. I want to continue with this trend of thinking, exploring all the ways that we do judge, and figuring out whether or not those ways make sense, and once making those conclusions, we can re-evaluate our systems of judgement for the better.
Choosing what book to read is a small example of the type of judgement I do in my daily life. This type of thinking, and thus judgement, can be applied to many things, and I find that I do a lot of judging when deciding what media I’m going to consume, or what I’m going to do, or what I should say. My judgement stops me from brainlessly watching content on YouTube. It does this by harshly judging the content on the site so that I don’t want to watch it, my judgement tells me it’s something I actively want to avoid. Not only am I judging the content on the site, but I am also judging myself. If I were to watch any of the slop available to me, I would begin to judge myself for watching it, as to consume slop would be a “bad” thing in my system of judgement. I wouldn’t want to identify with those who do watch it either, so now I’m judging all the people who do enjoy that type of content, despite not knowing any of them individually.
There might be some very articulate individuals that genuinely do enjoy watching that type of content, of which the reasons I’m ignorant to or unable to understand. There is an unwillingness to learn and understand why someone would enjoy sloppy content, so in this state of judging, I have now laid this imaginary blanket upon an incomprehensibly large amount of people. Of which the only thing in common, that I’m aware of in the first place, is that those people have clicked on a particular YouTube video. Doesn’t that seem a little unfair? I believe it to be so. I’m in no position to be making large judgements on such large quantities of people, yet I’ve done it, and I continue to do it. Why?
I like to think about the brain as a machine in a context like this. This machine is better at being efficient at certain processes, while slower at others. If automatically left to its own devices, it will try to maximize that efficiency based on its own automatic processes and the ones it has been taught. In my experience, I automatically judge, and I pass judgements very quickly without taking a step back and questioning why that judgement happened. It’s very easy to be a person who judges and doesn’t think about their judgement, it would be the automatic and easiest path for your brain. Otherwise, to make a reasonable judgement, or to resist making a judgement at all, will require more energy, time, and effort than if you were to just let the judgement happen. I have found myself in both camps, and I imagine I will continue to be in both camps, so in the times that I can’t hold back or put forward a reasonable judgement, I can always analyze what I’ve done in the past to make a better choice in the future. I may allow the judgement to automatically slip-by my awareness, like how I would judge those who would watch a particular video. Upon realizing this, I can then come back and question my judgement, or acknowledge that it is fallible, and it isn’t to be taken seriously.
What judgements might you be able to take seriously, then? I would consider judgements that don’t happen automatically to be taken more seriously. Yes, all judgements are going to be limited, but in order to become more rational and reasonable with your judgements, you have to be able to question them. You can question yourself in why you think in certain ways. I can judge large amounts of people, and I can conclusively deduce that the judgement had arisen from my perception of what makes a video good or bad, or as I’ve said already, slop. This can also work in opposites, too. Someone who watches videos I consider to be “good” or educational will receive a positive judgement, rather than negative. Do these judgements accurately reflect reality? Yes, of course, I believe that to be the case. However, why would I believe so? It’s based on my personal experience. While I have not interacted with every single person that has watched a video that I would consider either negative or positive, I do have limited experiences with individuals that I have associated with, or no longer associate with. Assuming we talk about media consumption, I can find out what kind of content they like to watch. I would then create an association with my judgement. If they were a fool and watched the foolish content, that would reinforce that judgement, same as if a smart person watched smart content, that would also reinforce that judgement, and so on.
However, if circumstances put me in a position where my judgements were no longer accurate, supposing a smart person watched dumb content, and a dumb person watched smart content, would my judgement still be accurate? Well, enough smart people would have to watch the dumb content, and enough dumb people would have to watch the smart content, but I would find it impossible to accurately quantify this. Even then, I still have my own beliefs as to what makes a person smart or dumb, or what makes a video smart or dumb, so even if the types of people consuming the content completely switched, I still might not change my judgement because my perception of reality would be differing from those people, and I would probably think the world had gone mad.
It might sound pretty silly to have a complete switch like that, but it sounds like pretty common rhetoric from elders. Personally, my parents think the world has gone completely mad and insane. For what reasons? My best guesses are things like the fact gay marriage has been legalized, or that people are more accepting of one another, or that more and more people are giving up religion. Yet, I can’t pinpoint all their exact reasons, for nor could they pinpoint them all. However, the point is, there has been a drastic change in the world from when they were a child in reference to the state of the world now. Seemingly, there have been switches, black became white, and white became black. Perhaps the world really has gone mad, but for me, the state of the world has only seen a limited amount of change; not as drastic of a change that would occur over four or five decades. If I stick around that long, then I may also fall into a similar trap of thinking the world had gone mad, but I would be unable to describe the madness because the madness would be completely made up from within my head; merely a demonstration of my inability to accept the difference in my internal world and the external world. Could I avoid this type of thinking? Yes, I believe I could, but it would take quite some effort, but the effort would probably become normalized and then eventually a part of my normal thinking pattern. This effort would be going towards putting myself in a constant of questioning.
Getting yourself in a state of questioning all things can be beneficial. It stops you from acting automatically, it makes you reconsider what you had already considered, and it allows you to change systems you believe to have been working fine but actually need to be changed or replaced with something else. However, there’s no way we can be in a position to question all things, all the time. What we can do is try to be a little more aware of what’s going on. If you want to make judgements and you want to be able to question your judgements, while unable to go on questioning everything, we can try to specify certain things we want to judge. I think one of the most important things to be aware of and to question are judgements that impact other people.
Judgement of other people can come about in many ways. The most direct way is the direct judgement of another individual or group of individuals. However, there are many other ways that judgements can impact other people, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll keep most of the focus on the most impactful judgements that I’ve noticed in myself and others. I’ve had many bad experiences with being judged by other people, and I have done the same to others. If I had been more aware of my judgements, I wouldn’t have hurt anyone, for I wouldn’t ever want to intentionally hurt anyone in the first place. The sad reality was that I was running on automatic. However, how do we even know when a judgement will impact someone? How will we know whether the judgement is negative or positive? How do we stop ourselves from passing the judgement before we open our mouths?
How I know whether or not a judgement will impact someone is generally based around how close I am to the person and if our systems of negative and positive align. If I have a friend I’ve known for a year, I likely know what types of judgement I could pass that would negatively impact them. Negatively judging them for what they like, or what they want, or what they care about, assuming they trust and care about me, could hurt them, because I am someone who has an opinion that matters to that person. Likewise, positive judgements could be passed upon those same things, I could tell that person they should keep working on the thing they care about and I can attempt to motivate them. This is just for people I do know. My system of judgement will act differently for those who I don’t know. Our first interactions would be minimal in the fact that we don’t know each other. I don’t know where this person is from, what this person cares about, what this person wants to do, where this person has been, and so on. The point is, my judgement will be purely based on what I’m seeing and hearing in that moment. So, whatever judgement I’m going to pass is going to be just as weak as my knowledge on that person, and so I need to remember that. Perhaps the person is wearing unusual clothing, or they smell, or they look sad, or maybe they look happy, I don’t know how that person got to any those states. So whatever judgement I pass will be limited around my immediate perception. This is a case where I would need to take a step back and stay aware that my judgement is limited and should be kept in check. Negative and positive judgements happening internally will be subjective, but what I choose to do with that is what matters.
What I consider a bad thing you may consider a good thing, and vice versa, but because many people tend to hold many similar morals and ideas in their immediate areas of living, we often can come together and make note of overlap between our ideas. While we all have our individual experiences, the overlap can be found in institutions like school, which have manipulated us into thinking in specific ways, and I speak for Americans that went to public school, and so we are going to have some overlap there. I think many of us have heard that we should treat others like we want to be treated, and I would like to think some people act accordingly, while others ignore this. If someone were to belittle me or negatively judge me for what I cared about, or what I wanted to do, or what I loved, then I would feel awful, and I would be really upset. So, because it would make me feel upset, I believe that it would also make others feel upset, so I would avoid outwardly making it known that I think what a person does or cares about is meaningless or a waste of time. For you, that could be completely different, you might enjoy someone telling you that the thing you care about and spend time on is a waste of time, it might make you happy that someone would tell you such a thing, and it would make you want to continue doing the thing more. So, if you must pass a judgement that’s going to be negative or positive, keep it to a friend, someone you know, or someone that you have learned enough about. This is so if you do pass a judgement or vocalize something, you don’t hurt the person. Unless of course, that’s your intent. Even in the times that we believe we are making the right choice in the vocalization of our judgement, we are fallible, and it might end up being a mistake. How can this be avoided?
Well, maybe we believe we can pass a positive judgement, maybe even better, it is with someone we know and trust and genuinely believe we have learned to some extent. However, we aren’t infallible beings, we make mistakes, so how are we going to go about holding back on judgement before verbally making it known to the other party? Ask questions. This is what has worked best for me, and I do this across the board for things I am uncertain about. It’s really simple too, everyone does some amount of questioning in their life, so begin to question what you might want to say. Some questions you might think are: “Is this the right thing to say?”, “Would this hurt the other person?”, “Should I ask them if my words would hurt them?” Sometimes, just asking the person what may or may not hurt them could also be beneficial, learning the other person by being direct is an easy means to obtaining information to find out what words might hurt them. It all might sound a bit silly to go this deep to avoid hurting someone, and it might be, but at least be prepared to apologize if your judgements are hurtful. Correct them if you must, and be okay with that.
Despite all this work we can do trying to minimize the pain caused by judging, mistakes will always be made. Judgement itself is flawed, as judgement is based on our own experiences and our perception of reality. Our experiences are going to be viewed and remembered differently as time progresses and moves forward. A memory of a friend hanging out with you, having fun, or whatever, might seem nice and great only a year ago, but then you might recently learn that your friend actually wanted to hurt or harm you in some way, and thus the memory is tainted, and the circumstances in which you think about that memory have changed. Your thinking will have changed, both about the memory and about the person in specific. If something like that can change our thinking so severely, who knows what other memories and perceptions of things and people have changed. Change that occurred so long ago that we forgot that something happened to create that change, and so we believe it to always have been that way. Our perception is literally just a means to interface with the world, and we don’t know things for exactly how they are, and we can’t read the minds of other people. We have to ask and verify things, and even then, our interpretations of what the other person might say could be perceived in one way or another, so we still should try to tread carefully. Judgement that you believe has passed all the safe tests could still end up being harmful, however, with most people in my experience, the person is okay as long as you have tried or are trying.
This all might sound like common sense to most people. I’d guess that most people don’t have to do all this inward thinking as to how they judge themselves, the world around them, and other people. They just judge, and that generally works just fine. However, based on my previous environments and experience, what created my system of judgement was not fine. Judgement was a part of my daily life, in how I acted, and just about everything I did, and because of that environment, I also began to do vast amounts of judging, of which was generally negative, and so I had begun to hurt others and myself without my own awareness. The best thing I could do for myself was to change my environment and somehow alter how I judged. I will say that people have a tendency to gravitate towards other people that think similarly, so if most of my friends have the same or similar negative and positive reactions to judgements, when I say something hurtful to them, it will also be hurtful to me. The problem arose when I would go about judging in that way without properly acknowledging that was what I was doing, and so I ended up hurting others.
A prominent example was my judgement towards a friend who is unable to change. They stick within their bubble, and then perpetually stay within a state of being upset or annoyed over a thing that is caused by and a result of their behavior. I would actively judge them for not doing something about their bubble, about being unchanging, about not trying to solve the issue. I would go on judging them for not taking a step forward, for not leaving their bubble in order to obtain what they wish for. However, this didn’t work. Unless the person wants and needs to be told these things, then it will only push that person farther away, make them upset, and generally reinforce their belief that they should stay within their bubble. Instead, I should have tried figuring out why that bubble was there in the first place, I should have asked questions and tried to learn how that person created their bubble, and then slowly and gently push them out of it. Careful not to judge them, but instead, wishing them to get what they desire. The first method, immediate judging, is faster, easier, and automatic. The second method is long term, tedious, and energy consuming. I have to decide whether or not I want to take the second approach. The unfortunate reality is that sometimes, it won’t be worth it. If the person is completely unwilling to open up to me, I can’t exert all the energy I have to dig deeper and solve their issues for them. If the person wants to change, then I can help them, and with that, they will get closer to solving their own issues.
This change in how I judge people allows me to avoid excess harm, and it allows me to keep myself in check when a judgement could be passed on myself or others. Instead of judging myself so harshly like I may have in the past, I ask myself questions, I verify that the judgement actually makes sense and isn’t some illogical assumption based on past experience that is no longer accurate to the present day. I would loathe myself because that’s what I had thought must be done, that everyone hated me, and I too, should also hate myself, but now I understand and am aware that was absolutely absurd. To think that everyone I passed, every random stranger, would be silently judging me, hating me as if they could see through me, was absolute insane, and it wore me down. I would say to anyone who hates themselves, that they are being absurd, and they shouldn’t hate themselves. I would suggest to those people to find the place where that self-loathing began, for in that, they can realize how truly illogical it is to hate one’s self, to judge so harshly upon yourself, as if that brings out any good.
Personally, I would judge myself heavily based on things out of my control, because those same things were judged by those closest to me. Unfortunately, it isn’t unusual in American society to find many who judge negatively based on things like sexuality or differing belief systems, which I consider to be awful. If something is out of a person’s control, why would you be hurtful to that person? Especially if that thing harms no one, but simply makes a person different. How much negative judgement goes on everyday towards those who are autistic? Some unimaginable amount, but this is because the people are different, and on top of that, different based on things they cannot control! You would think that at some point, normal people would recognize much of their judgement is based around differences in other individuals, so they would take a step back, but in many cases, they are unwilling or unable to do so because of their automatic systems. They will just judge on-and-on.
While for the most part I have talked about being the one judging, remember that others that judge you won’t have the same knowledge as you do. Sure, there may be cases where they negatively judge you, and it will probably be hurtful, assuming that person matters to you, but they might be unaware that their judgements are harming you. Like mentioned before, I have judged on automatic, unaware that I might be hurting someone. I’m no exception, it happens, and we have to accept we’re not perfect emotional machines aware of each other’s exact feelings at all times. Some people are especially ignorant. Yes, we all have some level of ignorance, but some are unaware to the depths of their blindness. Perhaps in much of the negative judgement I’ve experienced, the ones casting that judgement were so blissfully unaware that they were actively harming me, even when I would be sobbing, because they had no idea the power of the words that were being said. Or if they were aware, they might have not cared, for they believed their judgement to be absolute and truthful, and the truth would seem to hurt, and so I would have to deal with it, despite the obvious pain I was experiencing.
With all this in mind, you can come to realize the blade of judgement can be dulled and sharpened when necessary. There is no need to be sharply judging all those you immediately interact with; you can hold back and avoid judgement. It can be a little scary, for this immediate and automatic judgement is a demonstration of our interest to avoid the unknown, for the unknown is scary, but fear can be dismissed with other knowledge, and the knowledge that we can’t be certain unless we dig deeper and learn more should be enough. If there is no interest to dig deeper, be content with your lack of understanding of the other individual or individuals. For those whom you do know, and do trust, and also trust you, be ready to sharpen your blade, because judgement could promote change, and change that person wants, but also be ready to dull your blade, because the judgements might just harm the other person. Understand contexts and the other person well, and be ready to ask questions. Questions, unless deliberately attempting to harm, don’t harm anyone. People are generally willing to talk about themselves as well, so asking about a person and their life, to understand them better before casting a judgement, will be of ease, and of benefit to both or more parties.
Exercising your control over how you judge in this way might be taxing at first, just like all things you haven’t done before, but the benefits are immeasurable. If you can begin to hold back on your judgements on others until you have more information and knowledge, that’s great, and the others will greatly appreciate that, whether you were going to make the judgements vocally or not. People can pick up on when you’re judging them, even when you believe there has been no verbal indication. Not only holding back on others, but also yourself, can and will do great things for your mental and physical health. I could judge myself endlessly for being too slow to finish something, or having difficultly working on something, but I try my best to omit these judgements, for they don’t promote any change or increase my ability to do thing I want to do. I also no longer judge myself for the things I cannot control. It’s a waste of time and energy, and not only does it make me feel miserable, it also makes me miserable to be around. Maintaining reasonable judgements with yourself and other people are the most important to me, but of course, judgement goes beyond just people.
Beyond people, there are also judgements upon objects and things, while not my focus and the most impactful, it should be considered if you are able. Question the object you want to judge, ask yourself if you really know it, and go through similar processes as to a judgement on a person. You could judge a novel for something, but have no idea the depth of that thing you are judging, and to someone who does know, they will consider you a fool, because you didn’t put the time and energy in to find out the nuances of the thing. When you believe you understand, take a step back, because you must continue to question. At times, it’s okay to be certain or have a level confidence in one answer, but be willing to look for more answers, and question all that you can. All these changes in your system will alter how you judge, and you will have to be okay with that.
You may find that in your questioning and alteration of judgement, there will be many ways to view one thing that you otherwise would have immediately only produced one conclusion to. I have found that even simple things, like whether or not food will be tasty based purely on my vision, ends up being silly and inaccurate. I’ve had moments where ugly food was flavorful and visually appealing food was disdainful. There are other common situations too, like where a shirt looks like it will be comfortable, but it actually ends up being very uncomfortable, despite my vision telling me it would be comfortable. How did I reach the conclusion to the taste of food or the comfort of the shirt? I had to try eating the food and wearing the shirt. Perhaps this comes back to survival instincts; avoiding the unknown for our survival. Whatever the case, we aren’t in the wilderness anymore, and so we can actively decide to keep, drop, or alter our immediate judgements.
Judgements can both be simple and complex, how we choose to judge ourselves, the world around us, and the people within it, will impact how we act and how we think. Not only this, it can also impact both people we do and don’t care about. No matter what category the person falls within, it’s best, if you can, to avoid harm on either side, to subside our judgements, for we really don’t know anything for sure. Until we do know, which we would find out by asking questions, judgements can be withheld, side-stepping one of our automatic processes. I hope that you understand how you might judge yourself or others better, or you might understand how someone may have judged you, but was not aware of their automatic judging. It’s not easy to resist the automatic circuitry that has worked for so long, but in doing so, we can find more control in our actions, and we can wisely choose judgements that will have positive effects, rather than negative ones.