"Thou shalt not judge, lest be judged yourself"

[Mole]

It's hilarious - when you make judgements they don't like, they call you judgemental.

 

[Insidious 3]

I judge everyone harshly, but i judge myself the harshest.
I don't express my judgements about others either.

 

[substitute]

It's hilarious - when you make judgements they don't like, they call you judgemental.

Haha yeah, I've never heard of someone being called judgemental for saying someone was a good person

the way I see it, the key to non-judgementalism is all about refraining from presuming to know someone's internal processes. That is, one can perceive an action or choice to be bad, wrong, harmful etc and judge the effects to be bad, but to then leap from that to judging the person who did those things as a bad person is where fallacy begins...

Each individual person just wants to be happy, to avoid suffering, and most people most of the time, IMO, don't actually go around wishing to cause harm. So people act according to their understanding, in order to avoid suffering, to be happy, preferably without also causing suffering for others. But everyone's understanding is at different levels, everyone has blind spots or lack understanding in different areas. And where we all have a blind spot in common is in the fact that none of us can presume authority in knowing someone else's internal processes, and we can't really predict what others will do or feel, as this can vary widely.

If I see that someone has done something, an action that can be observed as bad, my assumption is that they're either not aware of the bad effects of this action, or that they consider it unavoidable, they feel they have no reasonable choice.

Sometimes this is true, sometimes there is no other reasonable choice and our hands are forced. But a lot of the time it's more a matter of our not having perceived a 'third way', the one that isn't either "I get hurt" or "I hurt someone else". It's a result of people having to try to guess other people's needs, thoughts, responses etc., and having guessed wrongly.

Sometimes it turns out that someone actually did know of an alternative, but refused to take it because it meant making a compromise or concession they were not willing to make: they were selfish. Or maybe it meant they'd have to confront something they were afraid to: they were cowardly. But even these things don't necessarily make them a bad person, to my mind... it just means they don't understand, perhaps because they've had no occasion to learn or nobody's explained to them, that behaving in this way actually goes against their own longterm interests.

I maintain that most bad actions stem from lack of understanding and knowledge, rather than actual deliberate intention to cause harm. So rather than doing this:

"You just figured you'd do what the hell you please because you don't care about anyone but yourself and you've no feelings so you don't bother to consider other people's feelings, you're a selfish, uncaring bastard!" which is a hell of a lot of certainty about things the ranter can't possibly know, you're doing this:

"It hurt my feelings when you did X... why didn't you do Y instead? It would've been easier for us both." during which discussion it will hopefully transpire as to why the person didn't do Y, usually that they didn't realize it was possible, and that they thought X was what you wanted or whatever.

So all of which is a longwinded way of expressing the old adage of "love the sinner, hate the sin". And Marcus Aurlius wrote about this observation before Jesus came on the scene

 

[Mighty Mouse]

I think we all have values and beliefs that make up our world of "truths". Some of these are conscious some are unconscious but they are constantly at work.

Whenever we are around someone or something, that experience is filtered through those values and beliefs.

When something hits those radars which are very different or same, we have some kind of reaction to it. It can be a mental, emotional, or even physical reaction. This is when I think it hits our consciousness if it hasn't already.

I don't think we can control going through this process of filtering.

I think what is in our control is working on staying open to others and how they are compared to our values.

Also, what we do about someone else's similarities or differences is up to us as well.

 

[Totenkindly]

Haha yeah, I've never heard of someone being called judgemental for saying someone was a good person

What if Hitler called you a good person?

(I have to admit, I'd be offended in your shoes. )

I judge everyone harshly, but i judge myself the harshest.
I don't express my judgements about others either.

It's definitely a saving grace.
But what of the long-term effects... and what's the correlation between self-judgment and other-judgment, if any?

 

[Jack Flak]

What if Hitler called you a good person?

There would probably be a sense of relief if we're talking circa 1940.