Is Everyone Judgmental?

“Judge” means “to form an opinion or conclusion about.” I feel as though most of us do form opinions about the majority of people we come across, yet not necessarily conclusions.

To form an opinion about someone else is a natural human instinct that exists for means of communication, navigation, and survival. It is a reflex of rational, experience-based discernment that is far from perfect yet very necessary.

Say you are walking down the sidewalk by yourself at night and you see another person heading toward you. Your eyes are going to chit-chat with your brain, who will converse with your gut, and the three (or four, depending on if you count the eyes as one force) of those guys will come together to form an agreed-upon conclusion of this character.

Whatever your consensus may be, will dictate how you proceed. If the person approaching you has a look of devious mischief behind their eyes and blood on their shoes, you might judge them as an undesirable character to pass by. But if the individual walking your way is whistling some Sam Cooke, with a wistful smile on their face and a pug in their tote bag, you may be more likely to continue on your original course (so long as you’re cool with Same Cooke and pugs).

Judgment is not exclusive to extreme situations like the two I have just described. Judgment is an intrinsic, deep-seated and unshakeable impulse that comes with being a human, no matter how insignificant or extreme the given situation is. It is intuitive, often unintentional instinct that permeates every avenue of our perception; from stalking someone on social media to formulating a subconscious evaluation of something in your peripheral vision, we are intelligent and practical and judgmental creatures.

With that being said, a judgment of someone else is safer when regarded in the soil of subjectivity than in the sludge of objectivity. When one declares their own perspective as an irrefutable reality rather than a personal perception, they are attempting to fit a squirrel-sized shoe on the fin of a whale.

Your perspective is all you know, and so you should defend it. Be a representative of your reality, a teller of your truth, an orator of your own opinion… not a prohibitor of someone else’s perspective.

The act of judgment is naturally an internal process, and typically only becomes a seed of strife when made external. Judging aloud, amongst others (and about others, especially) is where the term “judgmental” collects a good deal of its negative connotations. “Don’t be so judgmental,” is not only almost always spoken in a judgmental tone, it is also only used in certain situations. If your friend makes a snotty remark about your Uber driver’s music taste, you might remind them that taste is subjective. But if your friend criticizes the Uber driver for smelling like bourbon, you might want to amplify that voice of judgment inside of you and say something.

Of course, other human beings are not the sole recipients of our judgments. Everything within our perception resides on mankind’s microscope stage of scrutiny. Some things, like people and places and ideas and events, are more likely to trigger intense reactions of either defense or offense when scrutinized. We love what we love for our own reasons, just as we fear and hate what we feel we should.

When one takes a moment to judge an object, any subject that exists inanimately, it becomes much easier to understand how truly impartial an act of judgment can be. A pencil case seems less important to defend (or attack) than a human being with strengths and flaws, who stands at the head of a path riddled with ways they’ve helped and hurt the world.

As I said earlier, I believe an ultimate issue with judging other people comes along at the second half of its definition: conclusions. We’ve established that we allow our minds to sprinkle together an opinion of pretty much everything within our sensory understanding ㅡ I believe it to be our responsibility, however, to try to dissuade those opinions from morphing into conclusions as best we can.

There are of course exceptions to this. I know I definitely have reached a conclusion regarding how I feel about Hitler, Stalin,Ted Bundy and Charlemagne tha God. There is no universal line-in-the-sand dictating when someone has crossed the threshold of redemption in another’s mind. Attempting to draw that line is a near impossible feat that would be washed away by implicit bias and personal “Yeah but they’re different” feelings about particular folks. This notion works the same way on the side of love and praise; I know I am quite set in my feelings of intense respect and admiration when it comes to souls like MLK, Thich Nhat Hanh, Maya Angelou and Keanu Reeves.

I want you to think of someone right now. Anyone. Perhaps the last person you talked to. Find your opinion of that person, your current judgment of them. Try to observe it.

Is it rigid, like a stone statue, in a state of firm and permanent being? Or is it fluid, like a flame or stream, subject to change and adjustment and nuanced interpretation? If the person in your mind is someone you adore, would you see them differently if they contradicted your idea of who they are, and did something you find condemnable? If the person in your mind is someone you resent, would you be open to re-evaluation if they demonstrated something along the lines of extreme kindness or remarkable selflessness?

I think that when it comes to coexisting with one another, we should mind what seems to be bad, celebrate what seems to be good, and encourage what seems to be growth.