There are so many perspectives on judgments, but I will try to share what I see as judgment, and how judgment affects me on the negative and positive sides.
In my view, judgment comes from the higher faculties of the brain. Every judgment is a choice and this being a separate and distinct, essential element from the physical. All my stored knowledge and my understanding 0f my determinant judgments, are connected to pain or pleasure in any learning, or conversation, and these feelings move my brain into action to accept and learn, or action to reject what the person is saying.
Desire is also another part of my judgment. Desire is also part of my reasoning abilities, and my desire to possess something, or learn something, which prompts cognitive or physical action to promote learning.
Reflective judgment is also important to connect conceptual ideas together for the brain so there can be cognition, memory short and long term for the benefit of adapting and survival. Each bit of information I take in through my senses must be applied to all faculties. All of my judgments must be a-prior according to most masters of thought. This means to me, that my judgments must be based on knowledge, feelings, desires to possess or learn, which must be paired with experiences in order for them to be more than just assumptions, and for adaption of my being into the environment I find myself in.
All my cognitive faculties have a need to be unified which then gives me felt inner harmony. My mind will then not race, but be at peace. Another one of my driving forces is to fit, to be part of, or to find a place for self in each social situation for a sense of belonging.
I must always remember when speaking to others, that each judgment that I make is subjective. It is only made from my own perspective and I can only see what I see as right, truth and the way to go for me. My judgment is not a conclusion that is made for another person.
(1) I believe I cannot and do not see the other person’s perspective. The reason why I choose not to judge another is: feeling, desires and their past experiences all contribute to how the other person sees and believes things to be. I do not live inside their mind or bodies with their knowledge, feelings, desires and experiences to contend with. Only that person will know what is right for them.
2 I can choose to impose my projections of what I see as Truth onto that other person, or I can make a judgment for myself, articulate it and move on.
It is my opinion and has been an observation in my life that I should make a judgment only for myself, articulate to others where I stand and move on with no criticism of others, however in killing of children, I find myself quite determined to relay that message to others. In my opinion this rule should be a shared rule, by both parties.
Teleological judgment to me is having a clear notion of what judgment is for. I believe judgment is for making sound decisions to build conceptual ideas that fit inside my mind with a felt harmony. I believe if I have this, I can then make a sound decision for myself. I believe the sensed and learned data has to be clear and concise. I believe that I must be aware of my desires, feelings, and knowledge and able to connect new sensed information to general ideas. I then can experience the general ideas of society, and learn the specific details for myself through my own experiences.
In order for this to work for me, I need to make “I statements” for myself, I need to make a genuine effort to learn, ask questions right up front, and listen intently to other people’s encounter, and to hold myself responsible for all my own feelings. I hesitate with the idea that I can really learn in totality from others articulating their experiences, but being a pragmatist I can and do make a genuine effort to learn from behaviour acted out. The behaviour has to be consistent with what is said. Someone cannot be acting out anger, and yet tell me they are not angry. In fairness what I will say is, I learn from behaviour acted out, if and only if it works.
If I judge someone else, I must recognize whatever I say to judge that other person is what I myself have to learn. The minute I judge someone else verbally, I reveal my own judgments about what I see, and what I need to put together as a concept in my own mind. I have no concept to excuse people killing dependent children.
It is my observations that judgments are a good thing, as long as I have recognition that judgments are for building my own conceptual ideas for my cognitive faculties. I have had opportunities to build my concepts as well-rounded and exciting information for myself. I believe that others should not judge me, for they know little of me from the outside. Another knows little about my knowledge, but a lot about their own knowledge. They know little about my feelings, but heaps about their own feelings. They know little about my differences, but loads about their own differences. This leads me to believe that a little knowledge stands in the way of me making a sound judgment about another person.
However having said these above statements, if I do make a judgment based on something positive, about another person, then it often is used as a reinforcement for that person, if the behaviours are working.
It has been my past experience that I have felt disrespected by other’s judgments. If a judgment has negative connotations to it, it can be very hurtful. I have been repressed by someone else’s anger, expressed through judgment. I have often been bruised emotionally by someone’s need to control what I think. This can lead to unfair judgment and no acceptance of differences.
I can certainly choose to learn from someone’s judgments for example: turning negative judgments into positive learning. For example: I am extremely sensitive to negative judgments. I understand inside and out the harm that negativity can do, and the confusion it can cause me as a human. I had to do the learning of how someone else could see me in such a negative way. It was hard to see myself in such a negative way when I was trying so hard to live a good and decent, honest life. I did learn this. All judgments are not necessarily Truth.
Do I have the right to correct or make a judgment about someone else? I am of the opinion that if a person is hurting another physically, such as pushing, hitting or any kind of behaviour against another, then correction or a judgment is an absolute must. If I as an adult have a negative judgment or correct another adult in their belief, I wonder how much good am I doing for that person’s self-esteem. It is different when we are parents of children, for we are responsible for their growth emotionally and the maturing of the person, until they are eighteen years of age. Here in this article I am only talking of adulthood. I can however share what I believe with “I statements.” I can share my own thoughts and experiences about what I have to learn, and what I think about. This way if a person chooses to learn something different than what they know, they can make a choice of their own cognitions. It is an observation as an adult, that I should hold myself responsible for my own knowledge, feelings, desires, instincts, and spirit, and learning from experiences. It has been my observation also, because of how each adult learns, “dependently, independently, and self directed according to Psychologist, Stephen Brookfield, that to criticize or judge that which I do not understand, and will not or cannot understand, is not teaching another person one thing. It is only criticism, which is how to criticize that is taught. In my opinion there is a concatenation of a very negative feeling connected to the term criticism in making a judgment of another.
Learning has to be the choice of each adult. I can however make a judgment for myself to have ongoing learning in my life. I am of the opinion that I must never think that I know all of what there is to know. No one Can!
Written by Carolyn D Hogarth Feb 19th/1999.
