The Value of Judgement
Should we judge others? Can we avoid it?
Judgement is the act of evaluating a set of perceptions and information and making decisions based on them. Much of our life is spent doing just this as it is a necessary act that should precede any action. Without this step action is just reaction based on habit and programming.
Should we judge others and their actions? I think that everyone must evaluate others and their words and actions in order to know how to best interact with them, or even whether to interact with them in the first place. Unfortunately there are many people who will not hesitate to take advantage of others for their own profit. Some even do it for pleasure. The act of judging another’s motivations is a necessary step in order to keep from putting yourself in situations that require desperate action or lead to being hurt and/or abused.
Judging the motivations of others is also how we determine who our friends are, who we would like in our community, who we would engage in various life activities with and even who we want to help us raise our children.
However
Though we must judge others against our own standards just as we do ourselves, we must also keep in mind that we don't know what life circumstances have shaped their values and that they may have a different set of standards because of this. People act differently for many reasons. Cultural, economic, emotional, different upbringing, different values, substance abuse, psychological issues, etc. Because you can never fully understand why someone acts the way they do, and because none of us can claim to have the "correct" set of values, we can't pass absolute judgement on anyone, perhaps not even ourselves.
In Other Words
We must judge people in relation to our own value systems in order to make intelligent decisions about relationships and safety (unless your intuition is 100% spot on and you have complete sensitity to it, in which case lucky you). We judge whether another persons past actions and their likely future actions are in accordance with our own values. But to judge someone as good or evil or make other character judgements based on our own limited, third party experience is usually unfair and unnecessary.
##Despite This
There may be some value in casting that moral judgement. If only because by doing so, we define ourselves. We illuminate to ourselves what our values are and upon deeper reflection we can often see that we have been guilty of the same actions we are judging reprehensible in others. This can be a valuable insight for someone on the path of self discovery and deepening awareness and can lead to positive change.
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This post has been selected for curation by @msp-curation by @clayboyn and has been upvoted and will be featured in the weekly philosophy curation post. It will also be considered for the official @minnowsupport curation post and if selected will be resteemed from the main account. Feel free to join us on Discord!
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thanks for taking part shookriya! i really like the ending of this where you say:
" If only because by doing so, we define ourselves."
that is an important thing to realise!
ill be posting later with the awards.. so look out for that!
<3
Thank you, I liked that part too :)
I think what was trying to come out is that most of our judgements about others come from our ego seeking validation. These judgements are false and not useful except as a tool for growth once we are aware enough to see them.
They tend to crowd out the more useful judgements like "this is a kindred spirit" or "this person may be a serial killer". We may make those judgements but they aren't usually coming from intuition or object thought. They are just the ego screaming it's monkey head off.
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WOW! my love how wise and clear answer! speechless, lov u
Thank you my love. I'm glad you thought so. It seems I was the only loser in the contest which was ironically about how judging people is bad. ;)
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