Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Judgement
Most of us judge, in fact most is an understatement, more like all. But have you ever thought that whenever you judge that person it isn't when the person is displaying something consistent of themselves but rather a slip. The context in which behavior occurs is very crucial. No this does not come out of my mouth, but rather from my textbook where there is empirical evidence to support this phenomena. But time and time again we do it all the time,
fundamental attribution error, power of the situation (think milgram), situational salience, etc. And i'm not saying judgement is totally bad. It is a survival adaptation, that is why we still have such traits in us. To discern good and bad, but our judgement skills ought to be improved and fine tuned. Think of the possibilities of a situational stimulus setting off the particular behavior before labelling the person as such. I like to do this actually. Firstly, i think less instantaneous judgement is always good (moreover this is something very close to my heart, more on this later). Secondly, it requires you to think, to think beyond just fishing a word in your vocabulary to label a person. Thirdly, it requires you to place yourself in another person's shoes - empathy and less egocentrism(hopefully). The second and third point leads towards a person embracing others for their faults, strengths, flaws and background.
Why do i hate judgement so much? Because i find that it narrows people's viewpoints, you don't take time to love one another and you simply are lazy or can't be bothered to(judgement, heh). The world could do with a lot more love.
Over the weekend when i was talking to angeline, i told her something which i didn't think i would have told her before. But the moment seemed right, and somehow something led me to believe that if i told her she wouldn't judge me to be in bad light but just accept that this is part of who i am. I may be wrong, i may be right. But it is one step towards a better friendship. Amongst closer friends there ought to be lesser judgement because you choose to accept who this person is as what they are. And with lesser judgement you'd be able to trust, of course not to say that in future i shall keep all judgements so that others will tell me things out of that false belief. Trust in your friend to keep their minds open, honesty on my friends part to tell me that it may be in conflict in what they believe. I do think that this will lead to an improvement in friendships and your daily life. Not to say that it is definitely right, but just a thought on an issue that holds very dear to my heart.
sorry if it may sound rambly, uni education hasn't really led to the ability to organise my thoughts yet.
Unknown at 12:40 am