Since we start analyzing the characters in the stories we know, we start judging. Being an essential part of our thinking system, judgment allows us to look at the mistakes, analyze and rate the quality of other individuals. We acknowledge most of the murderers are cold or most of the philanthropists are angles of God. Since then, we believe good models have more the living way to learn.
As the judging sense gets stronger, there are times that we got carried away. It’s when there is no more accommodation for the schemas and perceptions in our thinking systems. In plenty of cases, we might lock our mind in the box of the archetypes we build up for others. For example, some still believe Asians are good at Mathematics and LGBT is either a kind of sickness or an error of creation. Humorously, there are some ironical cases when a person, who lacks a quality, judges a person who also lacks that quality. I’ve seen a big-headed person judges another big-headed one. One said, “you don’t know that until it happens to you”. Hence, the joy of judgment is that how much we realize we’re better than others and that we have something to be proud of ourselves. Plus, Sigmund Freud also said humiliation was a way to release our anger. Therefore, he concluded human beings as “homo homini lupus” (a man is a wolf to a man). A person judges a bad girl by comparing the nights she spends with her boyfriend with the nights she stays at the apartment with her housemates. Since then, he can see himself as a good model and a wise man. However, when he gets a girlfriend for whom he can’t stop falling, he is later sympathetic to the girl. But still, he tries to find many reasons for not blaming himself. Or another case is even worse: a guy makes fun of the victims of sexual abuse. Since when seeking for others’ lack become such a fascinating hobby of the human race?
We can’t stop ourselves from judging, can we? However, we can choose where is the yellow line to stop and not to turn ourselves into the slaves of judging.
Eurus Thach
