It’s a good testament to modern culture the fact that the phrase: “who are you to judge?” has become a token of great wisdom and esteem. I especially like the variations on this phrase, “don’t judge, you can’t know.” “That’s what you say.” “Don’t throw rocks at glass houses or…something.”
If you can’t tell from my general snarkyness, I hate these phrases; I hate them passionately, completely, almost religiously.
You see, my views differ somewhat.
I contend that, counter to the dominant trends in modern culture, frequent judgment is a good thing, even frequent and private judgment of other people or of groups (which is usually what inspires these phrases.)
I contend that moral appraisal of other people’s lives is inescapable; and absolutely necessary for our survival.
I contend that the way to being a better, more compassionate and wise person; is not judging less, but more.
In the same vein, I contend that —all else being equal — a society that judges too much is better off than a society that judges too little.
Oh, and before anybody brings it up: as a person who almost made the financially-unsound decision to major in philosophy, I am fully aware of Socratic arguments some people make for the alternative.
Yes, wisdom does include ‘knowing when you don’t know.’ Yes, there are many times when there are far more benefits in isolating your ignorance than flaunting your knowledge. And yes, many times the most judgmental people are the biggest fools, and the biggest hypocrites.
But none of this is relevant to the importance — or rather, the absolute necessity— of judgment.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in all that time I wasted at college in overpriced classrooms trying to earn a generally worthless degree, I don’t remember Socrates ever saying, “I am only wise because I know that I don’t know….so don’t bother trying to know anything.”
Socrates, who prided himself somewhat on being irritating to others, might have been convinced that criticizing a man to his face was wrong; but he would have surly spit in the face of the man who told him not to judge another within his own mind.
And therein lays a hint of what is actually being criticized by the “anti-judgmentals” (….or as a will henceforth call them: the “proponents of non-think.”) It is not the act of judging people to their face that is condemned, most polite and civilized men condemn this, it barely needs to be said. No, what is being criticized is the act of judging others in the safety of your own privacy, in your own mind. The very act of evaluation becomes sin.
The proponents on non-think don’t want you to come to the same conclusions as they have; they want you to have never thought alternatively. Their goals have never been about persuasion, they’ve been about manipulation; about fear and control and the casual exploitation of uncertainty.
Scarier yet, you only have to infect one generation with this particular brand of mental poison. The next generation will gladly take hold the charge; they will repeat the same arguments, apply the same tactics, without ever examining why.
I can already hear some of you out there complaining. “But Ryan”, you say in your typically annoying voice, “….surly you exaggerate.” At which point you will probably call to attention the image of a bitter and miserable house-wife, who is never short an insult; or the endless stream of similarly bitter and miserable people, who generally seem more judgmental then their happier contemporaries. Next you’ll probably bring up a few choice examples of people who judged wrongly; of racists and fools, of the deluded and the biased, or homophobes and dogmatists; and maybe a few Nazis, for good measure.
To which I reply: Shut-Up You Dirty Hippie! Your arguments are silly and self-refuting. Contradictions are springing up like weeds in Texas. This is probably the reason why you don’t have any friends.
But on second thought, that sounds a bit too harsh. After I apologize, I’ll try to make my argument a little clearer.
Sorry about that. Anyway….
Imagine you ask the average person a question: what do you think is better, the average life of an alcoholic, or the average life of a non-alcoholic? I doubt most people’s answers would surprise you.
Now ask yourself, how do people come to that conclusion? The answer is simple: they evaluated the evidence, which naturally entails evaluated the lives of others, and the rest followed quite naturally. 
Now think of all the judgments you’ve made, of all the conclusions you have come to over the course of your life. Like most people, there are too many to count; every conclusions you have come to, every value that you hold, every action that you have taken contains an endless stream of judgments and re-judgments; even if you weren’t fully conscience of this happening. This is true of almost every bit of mental activity that we perform. Ironically, even the phrase “Don’t judge” contains a plethora of judgments and conclusions.
Point is: evaluation is inescapable. We wouldn’t be able to survive a day without it. Our minds have this nasty little tendency to come to conclusions weather you like it or not. Your choice is weather you come to those conclusions through conscience, careful, and deliberate thought; or let it spring up automatically, placed there by others, by dominant trends, or a reflection of your subconscious.
You say that judgment of others is mean, and sometimes petty; I say that far more problems in history have been caused by a lack of judgment then too much of it.
You say that judgment is flawed and immoral because the world is too complicated, because human biases and prejudices get in the way, because the standards of proof are difficult to apply; I say your logic supports the opposite conclusion. It is precisely because of these reasons that frequent judgments and re-judgments are necessary.
You see, because I agree with you. Even under perfect conditions, human judgment is prone to inevitable — and sometimes fatal — errors; and we are never working under perfect conditions.
We owe it to ourselves, and to others, to hone our minds to the best they can be. To enhance our intellect, our logic, our reason to what limits we can find.
Your brain is a body part like any other; it has an identity, it works better under some circumstance than others; and like many other body parts, it functions better when used frequently, and atrophies with disuse.
Why is it that we accept the phrase “if you want to get good at something: practice, practice, practice” as true in almost all aspects of life, but somehow leave the functioning of our minds out of this?
You see, we need to judge not just because our survival depends on it, not just because it is an inescapable part of life; we need to judge because we want our judgment to become better. Yes, the universe can be difficult to deal with, difficult to understand, but this fact is precisely why we need to put so much effort, deliberate and focused effort, into our thinking.
To judge, for we can learn to judge well.
Beyond all the forced implications and the fear and the subtle manipulations, the arguments against the use of your mind are simply not very good. Striped of all its clothing, most of the arguments are reducible to simple associations. All judgment is equivalent to the worst judgments; Irrational, vile, and mean judgments put in the same category as careful and just ones.
People who take careful aim with their judgment, who evaluate and adjust when they notice they haven’t hit the mark should not be put in the same category as people who shot from the hip, and don’t even look in the right direction, and are blind besides.
Trying to make these two things equivalent is like saying a surgeon is the same as Hannibal Lector. Yes, they both cut people up, but for very different reasons, to very different ends. And you would never say surgery is wrong because Hannibal Lector makes a mess of things.
I hope that I have imparted on you the reasons I find those phrases so disgusting. Why I felt the need to write some 1500 words about it.
In the name of wisdom and clear thinking: the ‘non-thinks’ make clarity and thinking impossible.
In the name of “niceness” and “compassion”: they undermine the only thing that true kindness and compassion can spring from.
In the name of making a better world: they use fear of being ostracized by nice company, and implications, and bad associations; tactics we should all find despicable, even when the ‘none-thinks’ ends are just and right.
So I beg you, don’t let these people get away with it. Don’t let them scare you, or humiliate you, or hobble you in any way.
Fight for your right to think; and realize that the only weapons the ‘non-thinks’ have against you amount to pea-shooters in the face of a proudly thinking and reasoning mind.
