Most of the time, to be honest, I don’t know remotely enough about the person/people in question to judge them. For example the other day acquaintances shared these first person accounts, one from a parent, one from a child talking about an aspect of their identity and how it shouldn’t be judged negatively. So the people in question might be well balanced, intentioned, and trying to be their best selves. Believing that makes me sound very tolerant and open minded. Or, they might be a train wreck of self deception, poor relationships and manipulation. Hmmmm, not so open minded now. But is option B any less likely or probable than option A? As far as I can tell, no.
I do try to not assume that worst of people. Johnathon Haidt talks about this in The Coddling of the American Mind and I have thought about it a lot. At the same time, not assuming the worst is not the same as assuming the best. I’m not so eager to do that either.
Truthfully, I do judge. Everybody judges. I believe in nuance but also clarity: they both have their place. My life is the outcome of a series of judgments and some of them could look fairly harsh from one point of view. But there is a difference between judging ideas and judging people. You can reject an idea without totally condemning another person’s life, which you probably don’t know that much about anyway. I can also decide to avoid certain outcomes in my life without viewing people who didn’t / couldn’t avoid those outcomes in a bad light.
If I think about the majority of the judgments in my life, they have mainly involved judging certain ideas / beliefs / ways of looking at the world to be insufficient. Sometimes it was a sharp judgment and sometimes it developed over time. But the most useful judgments are not about individual people (much as I might agree or disagree with their decisions) but people in aggregate. I look for patterns. Specifically patterns that apply to people kinda like me. What works, what doesn’t.
In summary, I think judgment is a very good thing but one should judge with pragmatism. Like anything else, a judgement should be useful not just generate a lot of negative emotion.
