Judgment & Opinions
I’ve really been feeling anti-judgment, lately. I’m just astonished at how much we judge everything. Constantly. We don’t even notice. Even little, tiny things.
Someone decides to get married? We must make a judgment on it. Everyone must have an opinion, and it must be FOR or AGAINST.
Someone wants to X route in their writing career? The community must make a judgment on how that’s either DUMB or the SMARTEST THING EVER.
Someone wants to feed the birds? We must all consider the possible ramifications and MAKE A JUDGMENT. And then DECLARE OUR OPINION.
(So here I go, making a judgment.)
In Kindergarten, we have to learn right and wrong and such. We start sorting things into black and white, because that’s how we understand the world. As we grow up, we start to recognize the gray area. We mature.
I’ve been thinking that the optimum time for a human being is in their early twenties or so, when they still recognize the gray area. Because it seems that as we get older, we start forgetting about the gray area. We start filing ourselves into FOR or AGAINST with everything. We get rigid in our thinking.
We de-mature to Kindergarten.
This is a generalization, of course, so it doesn’t apply to everyone. And I’ve often thought it doesn’t completely apply to writers and actors and the like, because we so regularly step into other people’s shoes.
I want to be about understanding, not about judgment. I don’t want to choose a side: I want to find a middle ground, or at least some way where we can let people live their lives, as long as it harms none.
The little judgments we make are astounding. And to have an opinion is a judgment, too. But a blog needs opinions. And I just seem to be flat out of those, lately. They make me tired, because then everyone will have to sort themselves into FOR or AGAINST.
What think you?
23 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Natasha Fondren is an eBook developer, writer, and classical pianist. After a fifteen-year piano teaching career, she moved to Arizona and built a book design business. She enjoys the lizards and desert heat in Arizona with her Border Collie, Padfoot, and her cat, Dixie Doodle.
I think you can have opinions without being judgmental. I try very hard to always see both sides of an argument. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion, but I do try to be open-minded. That said, I DO judge people when they’re complete idiots.
(I kid, I kid…)
This is true, Melanie. I’m trying to be more open-minded, too.
Love your gravatar!
I agree, absolutely. I get so frustrated with churches (mine included), who claim judgment isn’t ours to make… yet what does every church do? Judge the others. But it’s more than that. People get this entitlement mentality, that it’s okay to look at another’s situation and judge what they see. There are so many factors in any given circumstance, and so many of them we can’t see.
I’m with you, after understanding. It’s what we’re called to be. Not judgmental.
That said, I have to fess up. I fall into the trap sometimes, too.
I hear you, Janna! I just wish we could understand and skip the judgment.
But man, that trap. Like Robin said below: I’m judging the judgers!
I am FOR this blog post, NOT AGAINST it. This message has been endorsed by me.
HAH!
LOL at Kathulhu’s comment!
I’m getting the same way, Natasha! There seems to be this weird, rampant, judgmental attitude around lately that drives me buggy. Then I wonder if I’m being judgmental about the judgmental people, and it gives me a headache. I so wish people could let other people do their thing, or, better yet, be interested in other ways of life/cultures/opinions. I’d even take people not getting so pissed at each other for their differences. Sheesh.
It’s a dangerous loop, Robin! You’re right! I was thinking the same thing.
But yeah, we seem to be living in judging times.
While there’s a danger in being so open-minded our brains fall out, I like balance. But then I’m a Libra.
Problem is there are certain things I don’t want to understand, some things I do feel black and white about, like child abuse, animal cruelty…
It sucks to understand such things, Bernita. I try especially hard to see that side. I don’t know why. It’s depressing. I guess I like to entertain the illusion that if I understand it, I could help fix it. But no, of course I can’t. *sigh*
I’m a Libra, too.
My brains regularly fall out, LOL!
I agree. The older we get the harder it is not to become more deeply entrenched in what we believe or what we think is right or wrong. Good thinking blog today!
This is so true, Laura! Down with rigidity!
It drives people crazy if you neither agree nor disagree! Really, it does. But the tendency to assume that any issue is either this or that, not a complicated mixture of factors, implies that one side is wrong, the other right.. If we’d just go for the win/win model instead of win/lose!
LOL, it does, doesn’t it! LOL, Written! It’s sorta fun to drive people crazy. The other thing that people hate is when you change your mind. They seem to think that’s a sign of weakness, but it’s really a sign of strength and fairness, in my book.
Good point. Most of life is lived in the gray areas.
So true. So complicated, Charles!
I think sometimes opinions are egos speaking. We need to voice our thoughts simply because they’re OUR thoughts.
It does annoy people when you have no opinion. I do that a lot at work. I simply say I don’t care. It is what it is.
That’s a good point, Aimless. I like that: I don’t care. Sometimes I don’t, and I care even less about a polarized debate of the topic!
I guess that’s maybe true for other people. It’s certainly true for my characters. Trinidad’s whole process is about learning to see the greys.
But I see only grey until it drives me mad, like a giant fog over everything, clouding what’s right and wrong until I don’t know anymore. Then someone reaches out of the fog and pushes me one way. Then I stumble over a rock and see the other way. I’m the classic fence sitter (or faller-offer-and-climber-back-oner).
That’s cool, Betsy! About Trinidad.
And I hear you about the gray driving one mad. It does me, too! Or it breaks my heart, one or the other.
I agree to a point but I also think that people are too often convinced that to become mature they must see, as “gray areas” things that really are morally wrong. Much of the way our society functions depends on people “acting like adults” and perceiving behavior that is wrong as “gray,” in my opinion.
Funny, I’m the opposite, or rather I’ve developed in the opposite direction. When I was younger, everything was black or white, right or wrong, and I was sure I knew all about it. [eyeroll] This peaked in my late teens, IIRC, and I’ve been easing back ever since. At this point I still have a lot of firm opinions, but I’m much more likely to see caveats and exceptions, and understand why people who disagree with me do so.
And yes, that mode of operation is much more helpful for a writer.
Angie