On Judgement
For our entire existence in civility, we have tried to understand the immense chaos that is our environment. Through accumulative knowledge, we have created many complicated concepts; Language, religion, good, evil, morality, spirituality, history, science, mathematics, culture, philosophy; all are products of our attempts to try and understand our environment and who we are, the muses of an Orphan Man. Ultimately, what they amount to, are judgments.
Our attempts to organize the world and our ever-accumulating knowledge have created many achievements that make us very powerful, for good or ill. Judgment, in many cases, microcosmic and macrocosmic, can push us to excel. At other times it has pushed us to hate one another; but what we judge based on usually stays the same- whether or not the sentiment is constructive or destructive.
To understand judgment, we must understand who judges and why.
All judgments are based on concepts created by the outside world. Plato’s cave is a great allegory, which both expresses the power of moving to a new perspective and the fact that by the nature of the human condition- truth is unattainable. Therefore, all judgments are theoretically paramount to delusion.
Judgment is an extremely neutral term. On the one hand, when it is someone judging us, or something that align with we use the word with the negative association. But when the judgment is something we agree and have no qualm with- ‘judgment’ is used with a tone of personal pride and positive association. Therefore, it is not so much a neutral term as it is malleable to the empathetic disposition of the person that uses the word.
This is an extremely bad system for the use of the word because it 100% enables people to be blind to themselves and their own judgment process.
The language of the Orphan Man still has not evolved past his ego.
Instinctively we judge each other physically, on the most ego based fronts. How attractive we are, how strong we are, how tall we are, the color of our hair eyes or skin; the way we walk, the way we speak, and how old we are, are all factors that we instinctively try to judge based on the moment we meet one another.
The word ‘judgment’, comes from the old french word, juger, meaning to ‘enact a court order’. There are two basic motivations for judgment. We either aim to judge someone to make them better and give advice, or we judge them to break them down- make them feel weak and punish them.
The point is that no matter whether the judgement is constructive or destructive- they both arise from the same commonplace of judgement.
Personal judgment always come from people who have a rubric of what being a good person means. These rubrics are usually put there by societal programming. In the West, our standard of virtue might be a successful capitalist who can give generously.
The point is, that even to commit constructive judgment- there must be a basis of what being a virtuous person looks like. At the same time, the reason we use destructive judgement is to force conformity to that same standard of whatever generic character represents the aims of that social group.
The virtue of constructive judgment is more easily obtained in closed groups because it is easier to empathize with people who are more like you- especially when they share the same definition of virtue. But it is these very same communities that enable destructive judgment against people not like them- because people not like them are considered to not be good.
You see, every personal judgment we make is because of our in-crowd bias. Often the time's people's definition of virtue changes from social group to social group- let alone from state to state or country to country; so the judgments that that person makes will be subsequently aligned to whoever their crowd is.
The in-crowd, no matter how large or small a form it may come in is always something that is put there to sate the insecurities in an individual. The in-crowd values the assimilation of the human being, and they achieve this by means of judgment.
This is unnatural. The human being craves freedom, part of freedom is finding the space to grow into an individual and find a place for yourself. This psychology is reversed in the in-crowd.
Although the in-crowd follows trends, it resists core change. Those who deviate from the path are ridiculed by destructive judgement and so growth cannot be fostered; the weapon the ridiculers use is judgment, a specific type of judgment I characterize as destructive judgment.
If you are in the in-crowd you will be ridiculed for your difference, which completely undermines the original purpose of the in-crowd, which is to alleviate insecurities. Instead, it puts more stress on your insecurities because you will have the constant fear of letting your true self-slip into the sight of your fellows. The Orphan Man creating an iron cage of his ego, out of thin air.
The biggest key in knowing when to receive judgment and when to dispel it is in understanding whether the judgment is constructive or destructive. This is easier said than done, it can often be simple to misconstrue the two.
For the most part people-especially in Democratic society- are wired to respond to all judgments as if they were destructive instead of constructive. Destructive judgment holds no value for you, whether in the dishing out of it or receiving; it only holds value for the frightened, selfish individual.
Constructive judgment should always be considered, it never hurts to have a second set of eyes on you trying to give you advice. However just because judgment is taken in the account doesn’t mean you must act on it, it is up to you to place value on what critiques are given to you. The best way is to place more value on the critiques on people that you aspire to be like.
Ultimately, all I can ask the Orphan Man to do, is to ask you to do is lend more consideration to the bias of how we judge people.
The most important judgments that will be made your entire life are judgments that are made by yourself. Many people (Especially in my age group) do not realize this. The reason people do not realize this is because they confuse contentedness with stagnation.
One of my friends once said to me “Why would I want to change the way I am, I am happy and content this way.” I was appalled at this, never have I heard so much stagnation and lack of ambition jumbled together in one sentence. The reason that we would want to change ourselves is because no one is perfect and as humans, we can make ourselves better. As a person who judges themselves every day in everything I do so that I can make everything I do that much better, I felt cheated by this statement. And the funny thing was that it wasn’t me who was being cheated, it was my friend because he didn’t realize the potential he was wasting. The reason I felt cheated is because I am of the firm belief that all humans have the duty to try and improve on themselves, and I know that as humans this is what sets us apart. The ability to step outside oneself and look at who we are and beyond that can make corrections on parts of ourselves that need improvements is a blessing- and yet some people never pay it any heed. Overall your own judgments are the ones that have the most power because they will determine what experiences in life you are open to
Throughout our history, the great men and women have always been the ones able to use their conscience, take a step back from oneself, look at what they are now, and look at what they want to be, then decide what they need to do differently to achieve their goals. It is the therapy of the Orphan Man to come to understand the bias of his ego.
Self-criticism is a trait unique to the Orphan Man and it has been the driving force in setting humans apart. In this way, self-judgment is a tool as powerful as the idea of divine judgment because the two ideas do align.
To fully appease any non-nihilistic religious faith, self-judgement is something that is a requirement by default. Self-judgement is therefore equally as powerful a tool as faith in divine justice- and is a trait instrumental in leaving the ego based mindset that is The-Orphan-Man behind.