In this article I am describing my past experiences with judging, and try to question whether our world is becoming less judgmental.
My personal experience with judging
When I was studying at the university, I once had dinner with my classmates in one of the fancy restaurants.
During dinner, instead of taking his time to enjoy our meal, one of the classmates had started looking around. He noticed that the editor-in-chief of a famous fashion magazine was dining there at the same time a few tables away.
The classmate got incredibly excited.
He started trying to persuade me that the Editor-in-chief was an admirable person because of her professional position and past career in the fashion industry. I was not really awed.
When I asked about the moral values that Editor-in-chief represents – whether she is a good person privately – my classmate responded that he does not know much about the Editor-in-chief’s personality or beliefs. What was even more surprising to me was that he said that it does not matter to him as long as someone has fame and power.
I was shocked how shortsighted my classmate was.
Clearly, he was judging other people based on the wrong principle. A surefire way to find out whether someone is worth-deserving respect would be to evaluate others with consideration of their good actions.
For example, if they live by moral values such as honesty, truthfulness and integrity, and whether they want to make our world the better place. Or, if they would rather do things for money or to speed up their corporate careers.
In my opinion, if we assess other people with morality in mind, we will never be wrong.
Is the world becoming less judgmental?
Recently I have noticed that our modern world has been promoting more and more lenient approach to life.
This, for instance, discourages young people from judging others based on the universal more values while encouraging blind omnipresence tolerance for everything. Consequently, young people are becoming less willing to express personal perceptions when they do not agree.
It is so risky not to judge the reality according to objective truth.
Because it takes away from people their natural ability to decide on something, all by themselves, without any deceiving influence. We definitely should not tolerate things that other people, who have more money and influence, do and persuade us to do, if we do not agree with them.
Their decisions, let’s say profitable for their companies, but unhealthy for us human beings, may negatively influence our daily lives, health and mind.
Does anyone out there want people to be judging less?
It is crazy when one realizes that discouraging people from making rational judgements has been spreading so widely and easily throughout the world.
Isn’t it all because a small group of people in the world, who own half of the world’s wealth, has created this kind of environment? Maybe. Maybe not.
Think about it.
Less judging = more profits?
If you sell unhealthy products that taste good thanks to chemical flavor enhancers, therefore this action is making you rich, but you know that these products are harmful to people’s health by causing obesity and diabetes, would you want people to rationally judge your bad products?
Of course not.
You would prefer to keep on making your money.
Because once people start judging, they will find out about all the bad consequences of using unhealthy products. And most likely, majority of your customers will switch into something healthier (such as fruits or vegetables).
That is why, it is so important to promote healthy products and ideas.
Because once the most powerful entities have too much power, they will sell what is the most profitable, not what is the best for our human body, mind and soul.
How to judge?
So, how do we know what is good for people and what is not?
You can check one of my previous posts ‘How to be good?’ to find out my definition of goodness, and how I judge things.
Clearly, having clear thought and reason does not go well when certain businesses are making big profits. The perfect environment for certain companies would be when people do not judge products, but concentrate on buying more and more of them, blindly.
Do you think that corporations also influence our education system?
How good for you and me it would be, if schools do not teach children critical thinking? We would be terrible at judging!
Unfortunately, we live in the world which is intentionally, and unintentionally, teaching us to tolerate whatever ‘stronger’ people decide. Rather than educating all people equally to objectively judge things around based on universal values, and all of us adhering to them.
Will that ever change?
