Judgements: We can’t live with them, we can’t live without them
“Don’t judge!”
“Reserve judgements”
“Avoid being judgmental.”
We all have heard the age-old advice being passed down in different words, phrases or language, however, all instructing you to withhold judgement. I’ve found this topic particularly interesting in the “Studies of Ashna”.
When I became aware of this concept, the first phase of learning was just catching myself passing a judgement. This phase was long & arduous for a lot of things could be qualified as a judgement when I really started to take notice.
DEFINING “JUDGEMENTALISM”
So first, let’s define. What does it mean to be judgmental? It is safe to say that as a society, we coin this term in a particularly negative light. However, in its essence, the adjective “judgmental” refers to the quality of rushing to conclusions without good reason.
Reason is a statement or fact that explains why something is the way it is or why someone does, thinks or say something or behave a certain way. Basically, reason leads us to a closer understanding of the observable world and starts with a “WHY?” — This question is crucial because a lot of the judgements I noticed myself making weren’t with the intention of asking “WHY?” at all.
If I catch myself making conclusions about things/people way too often without reason, it would be safe to describe me as a judgmental person. However, in a lot of cases, people are NOT judgmental of others, however of themselves, as they believe any judgement they pass will make them a “judgmental” person and we have established that usually means a negative quality.
So in this case, it is essential that you step away from identifying as “judgmental” and understand judgement as a tool that is useful in many cases and not-so-useful in others, however, we need judgments to make sense of the world. There are only useful & not-so-useful judgements.
It’s also important to note that judgement is not the same as intuition, but intuition informs a good judgement.
So in this particular section of Studies of Ashna, we will separate the useful judgements from the not-so-useful judgements to get a better understanding of our own judgements through their intention, reason & outcomes they achieve.
EXAMPLES OF JUDGEMENTS
In the following section, we will deal with real life examples of judgements that can be dubbed for experiments, conducted by the human we’re studying, that is Ashna. Of course, the names of the characters have been changed to respect privacy and also, I’m not giving that much sauce of my life away.
Judgement 1: Soya has a lot of ego. He is not a person I like to be around.
Judgement 2: Jamonna is a needy character. She doesn’t give me a good feeling.
Judgement 3: (I’m in a meeting) I don’t have the right level of experience or seniority to debate. I think I should just stay shut.
We will examine each judgement as per the following indicators –
1. Intention
2. Reason
3. Outcome
USEFUL JUDGEMENT
In judgement 1, I make a statement about someone who I believe has a lot of ego.
The intention I had was to simply assess this person’s character. This is a good way to check whether your intention is to simply inflate your own ego and appear superior by passing a judgement on someone else or your intention is to understand the given person or situation.
The reason I based my judgement on was on the quality Soya displayed in the past interactions I had with him. He talked about himself in very high regard, tried to bend things his way in an unfriendly manner and share knowledge in a way that appeared to inflate his own image. Outcome was to establish whether I wanted to hang out with him and the answer was no. However, if I believed that I had to get to know this person more for any reason (he could be a good connection in the industry for example), I would warrant further study into him.
Now in this case, this judgement can be looked upon as a tool to qualify whether someone is worth your time & energy. You can use this information to build an assessment of this person’s character and alter your behavior accordingly. However, always leave room for variables ie. that you could be wrong.
JUDGEMENT THAT WILL EVOLVE
In judgement 2, my intention was to spend less time with Jamonna because she triggered parts of me that ran away from people who appeared needy. It was a trigger for me. So I made a judgement based on my trigger, not fully knowing whether the neediness was fully accounted for by reason or my trigger inflated the quality of neediness. I had to wait until more interactions unfolded to give me more information to make a sound judgement on the neediness. The outcome was to put her in “character under assessment” category since she was someone I saw too often in settings I frequented. Intuition had a role to play here too since I would usually feel “wary” when around her. This simply told me to let my judgement evolve.
NOT SO USEFUL JUDGEMENT
Judgement 3 has to do with self-limiting beliefs & judgements we hold for ourselves. In my particular case, it was worth questioning myself whether I had something of value to add. However, to hold myself back by judging myself to be inexperienced to add to a debate has the intention of simply withholding my own potential. The outcome of this is quite bad — it takes away the possibilities that unfold when you come from a place of belief in yourself.
If the judgement you have of yourself has no outcome but TO LIMIT YOUR POTENTIAL, it has got to be filed under bad judgements.
Through this world, it is important to make judgements for they truly help us make sense of the world. We will not have all the information we need at any given time to make a 100% factual statement (nor do we have the processing capacity for this), therefore, we process what’s available to us at any given time.
Judgements help us in making broad observations that get us to a closer understanding of our own self, people around us, their behavior & motivations and situations. The easiest way to know whether a judgement helps you understand the world better or not is to know your intention behind it. It is also sometimes important to know what outcome you’re accomplishing. In many cases, you will make hurried judgements and that will be suitable to accomplish some outcomes ie. food at a restaurant you visited the first time was bad so you decide to never go again. Chances are there will be other dishes you will like if you risked it, but there are also lots of other restaurants you could go to so why bother?
In any case, leaving lots of wiggle room for any judgement is very important and that only comes with truly observing when your judgements are wrong and when they haven’t evolved with people & situations.
One thing that helps me is looking at judgements as premises or the start of the chapter rather than the ending. It serves to be a good way to deploy judgements as a tool to get to a closer understanding of people & the world you inhabit.
“She gives me bad vibes. Period”
can become
“She gives me bad vibes. If I see her next time, I’ll suss whether she acts the same way”
This leaves room for the judgement to evolve (therefore, it’s a premises you build upon) with new information rather than being fixed statement of truth. When it becomes fixed, you also fall for confirmation bias, because you will seek out information that only confirms what you have told yourself you know for certain.
“I know she’s like that” is a statement that’s fixed. You know she is like that. Period.
You will seek out more situations which affirm your conclusion. However, if you started with that statement as a premises, you will evolve it as new situations unfold.
That’s where I’ve got to in my studies of judgements. I have to continue to water the roots of awareness & humility in order to reflect upon bad judgements as well as have the humility to accept when I’m wrong. I’ve learned that limiting judgements about our own self can be far more damaging and also sometimes the root of our own unreasonable critical judgements of others. Afterall, we do treat people the way we treat ourselves (to a very large extent!).
Once thing is for sure — looking into the window of my own character has given me way more to advance these studies than looking into the window of other’s characters.
