Not-So-Honorable Judge
This entry is dedicated to a very wonderful person (you know who you are.) Thanks for joining yet another cult with me. 
And thanks for bringing up this topic lately so I am thinking about it and am inspired to write about it.
There are people who are paid to make judgments everyday (honorable judges, supreme court justices). Then there are the rest of us who are always quick to judge for free everyday. This entry will highlight why we have the tendency to judge. Then after identifying the cause, the solution for doing it less will hopefully be easier to see. If you don’t agree with what I’m saying, please don’t judge!
The Cause:
All of our judgments arise from our paradigms (a set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way we view our own reality…7 Habits!) When we come in contact with anything or anyone during our everyday lives, our first response is reflective of our paradigms, how we ourselves see/interpret that situation or person or thing. We compare it to ourselves and our own situations, we think how we ourselves are like and how we would react, it’s all about our assumptions, our concepts, our values…we we we…(technically I could have written this entry in first person instead of third and it would be me me me.) Basically we use our paradigms to make judgments…but, there is one other piece: enter our motives. Our paradigms determine how we think and our motives determine what’s driving us to what we want to accomplish. Motives can include to make ourselves feel better, to make another person feel bad, to show off, I can think of many reasons…We are presented with a stimulus (a person, situation, thing), we use our paradigms combined with our motive and we respond by judging.
Stimulus—>Response
The Solution:
(Okay I admit, all of this is completely stolen from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People…)
In between the stimulus and our judgmental response is the Freedom to Choose. In any given situation, we all have our freedom to choose how we will respond. We have a freedom to re-evaluate our own paradigms and our own motives, and then choose on how we want to respond. Before responding, we can stop and think…that person may not do things like I do…I don’t need to make myself feel better by making someone else feel worse…I don’t need to show off…then hopefully, our response would not be judgmental.
Stimulus—>Freedom to Choose—>Response
I have much work to do myself in this arena. I catch myself making judgments but I am trying my best to steer away from it. I was also recently bothered by this topic because of being exposed to other people who were always making judgments. In a way, it was bothering me hearing people make comments about others and during the moment, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to judge those people saying those things either.
My wonderful fellow cult member attended the lecture at the zen center and this topic was being covered. During the housewarming, I was listening to her say: Everyone has their own way of doing things and until you are aware of their motives of doing those things, you shouldn’t be making a judgment.
So I was inspired to write this entry and I hope it will inspire everyone reading this entry to think twice, first look to yourself/your paradigm and determine why you are making the judgment (your motive), then use your freedom to choose a response before you say anything about anyone/anything next time.
“There’s so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.”
-John Wooden
“If you want small changes, work on your behavior; if you want quantum-leap changes, work on your paradigms.”
“It’s not what people do to us that hurts us. In the most fundamental sense it is our chosen response to what they do to us that hurts us.”
Golden rule: Treat others how you want to be treated…
Platinum rule: Treat others how they want to be treated…
