Judge Away

“Be non-judgmental” is a common phrase in current times, but what does it actually mean and how well does it communicate it?

To answer these questions, we must first ask, what is "judgment" when used in this context?¹

A determination of how good or bad something is.

And so we immediately arrive at the crux of the issue, which is definitional in nature as there in fact exist two types of judgment:

1. Ultimate judgment (E.g., “This person is evil.”)

2. Tentative judgment (E.g., “Based on current limited evidence and the process of reason, this person exhibits many traits and characteristics that I deem as evil.”

Ultimate judgment is fundamentally a religious concept, and due to its nature as being true in the ultimate sense and hence, infallible, it requires as its judge an omniscient being (God) who is somehow capable of grasping infinite truth in its entirety. Human beings on the other hand, limited as we are, are not only unqualified to deliver ultimate judgment, but also incapable of delivering it. When it comes to ultimate judgment, all we can do is to pretend and delude ourselves into believing, that we are omniscient beings or equivalent to them and that our judgments are hence infallible. Many ideologies, political and otherwise, survive strictly on this fantasy, along with immature narcissists’ fragile sense of self-worth.²

When people say “Be non-judgmental,” what they mean (if they actually wish to make sense), is that we as fallible human beings, do not have the right to exact ultimate judgment on anything, and they would be right despite that statement being quite self-evident and hence redundant. However, when people usually speak of judgment in colloquial language, they are overwhelmingly speaking instead of tentative judgment (also known as a working hypothesis; one open and subject to change provided sufficient evidence).³ Thus we are met with the rampant contemporary issue of definitional conflation; the conflating of ultimate judgment with tentative judgment.

When this takes place,

suddenly, “Be non-judgmental” becomes “avoid tentative judgments” and “suspend your ability, limited as it may be, to distinguish good and bad while silencing your mind and your own conscience.”⁴

Suddenly, the statement is not so benign.

Suddenly, you realize the real message (intended or not) is that we should distrust ourselves and our faculties of reason when it comes to our tentative judgments of good and bad.⁵

Who benefits?⁶ Two answers:

The Swappers: Those whose mission is to rebrand the bad as the good, and vice versa.

The Levelers: Those whose mission is to flatten the distinction between good and bad so as to make everything ambiguous and meaningless.

“A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but a revolutionary age, that is at the same time reflective and passionless, transforms that expression of strength into a feat of dialectics: it leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance. Instead of culminating in a rebellion it reduces the inward reality of all relationships to a reflective tension which leaves everything standing but makes the whole of life ambiguous: so that everything continues to exist factually whilst by a dialectical deceit, privatissime, it supplies a secret interpretation–that it does not exist.”⁷

From page 14, The Present Age: On the Death of Rebellion (A. Dru, Trans.), by Søren Kierkegaard – Author, philosopher, and theologian.

Severity-wise, it is useful to know that the levelers are actually much worse than the swappers. Why? Because at least the swappers recognize the distinction between the two conceptual poles of “good” and “bad” and in doing so, affirms their reality. On the other hand, the levelers instead seek to destroy said categorical distinction altogether–leading to chaotic states of moral relativism where confusion, self-deception, and mob rule (“group-think”) prevail.⁸

Given the real dangers of the above, I see it as the responsible thing to do to try to explain tentative judgment better. First, how is tentative judgment determined?

A) With accurate emotional reasoning.

B) With inaccurate emotional reasoning.

C) With accurate logical reasoning.

D) With inaccurate logical reasoning.

E) With any mixture of the above.

The more accurate the reasoning, the better the judgment. The better judgments would be determined through the alliance of accurate emotional reasoning with accurate logical reasoning, whereas the worse judgments would be determined through inaccurate emotional reasoning allied with inaccurate or non-existent logical reasoning.⁹ The path forward here would be to:

A) Tune up one’s accuracy of reasoning.

B) Synchronize in a congruent manner one’s emotional reasoning (a.k.a., intuition) with their logical reasoning.

This differentiation of accurate/inaccurate raises a question in regards to the “be non-judgmental” statement, and that is, “if inaccurate reasoning leads to poorer judgment, and poorer judgments tend to hurt people as they smash head-first against reality, why not just stop formulating judgments all together to avoid the potential harm that comes with poor judgment?”¹⁰

Besides the irresponsible and idiotic suggestion to completely throw out the priceless benefits of accurate judgment, this question itself is indicative of a fear-driven response to life. It showcases the preference for the slow-death that comes with overprotection (a life endured) over the risky but adventurous life (a life lived); of quantity over quality.

A life endured vs. a life lived.

It is the choice of pathological security at the near-complete cost of personal liberty. If dissected further, we inevitably find at its bottom a distrust of human beings and their ability to tolerate truth and overcome tragedy (a cynical view of human nature), which is precisely the excuse used to justify their tyrannical and controlling methods.¹¹

If that doesn’t sound like somewhere you would like to go and bring everyone you love with you to, then ignore the non-judgment mob, and keep on tentatively judging. Work to surround yourself with honest individuals that you can openly bounce your hypotheses off of and together test and tune the accuracy of your judgments.

Stay humble, and judge away.

1. The context referred to here is the judging of another person. There are obviously other forms of judgment besides moral judgment, but those other forms are not the focus of this article.

2. I'm referring to any ideologue who, after being proven wrong in their predictions of human nature, society, the economy, etc., decide to blame others or vague abstract concepts instead of their own worthless irrational theories.

3. Science and rational inquiry are based on tentative hypotheses.

4. Psychological censorship and double-think.

5. Purveyors of this message often self-identify as sceptics, but it's only an front for an irrational power-based worldview.

6. Nobody actually benefits in the true sense of the word. Any "benefits" are at most temporary and misinterpreted.

7. Kierkegaard hits the nail on the head here with his beautiful observation of the core irrationality fueling revolutionary ideologies. Can you think of any modern examples where definitions of long-standing categorical distinctions are being emptied of significance, reduced to "a feat of dialectics"?

Kierkegaard, S. (2019). The present age: On the death of rebellion (A. Dru, Trans.). Harper Perennial Modern Thought. (Original work published 1940)

8. One easy way to identify a leveler is their use of the phrases "my truth" and "your truth." Its implication being that an objective truth does not exist; and ultimately, that reality does not exist.

9. If I am to get real technical, any emotional reasoning that cannot be made explicit (explained) is almost always irrational, as whatever situational interpretative framework that activated the emotional state remains unconscious to the individual and likely exists in relative isolation (as a psychological complex). Another one is that inaccurate logical reasoning does not technically exist. Logic is contextual. There can only ever insufficient logic, not inaccurate logic, the latter of which is a contradiction in terms; as logic is that which determines accuracy. My hope with my simplification is that most people will "get" what I mean.

Listen to this article instead

10. Who knew that for the counseling and psychotherapy professions, "do no harm" now meant "shut off your brain and lie to your patients to not make them feel bad." This is why I left counseling for coaching.

11. You will always hear them say as their justification: "I was just trying to protect you."