Judgement

Recently I had a set of intense conversations with some very close friends about the topic of judgment. And wow, what a rabbit hole that topic created. Judgment seems to be prevalent in so many activities that it is almost impossible to escape it.

Is judgment the metric we use to help drive our decisions? Should I do this or that? Am I good enough to ... ? Will they approve of me doing ... ? I'm sure that a ton of our feeling judged come from our parents, society, authority figures, religion, and many other external sources. The question is: Is judgment useful? Especially external perceived judgment.

Or does external perceived judgment cause us to do things we don't want to or shouldn't (eg I should be a better son and do ... for my parents), or KEEP us from doing things we want or should (eg what will my friends think if I ...)?

If we stop using, applying and feeling judged will society devolve into chaos and an animalistic horde? Or can we use our own internal compass to guide ourselves in decisions without the pressures of external judgments? External judgments seem to be more about who we let judge us and less about making decisions that will be valuable to us personally.

And what is a judgment anyway? And why do we give THEM the power to judge? It seems that judgment has a huge component of self-esteem / self-worth built into it. If you feel that you have as much or more value as the judge then you typically don't care about their judgment (do you really care about what the homeless person on the street thinks about a recent decision of yours).

So maybe external judgment and looking for validation is all about us not feeling worthy. And how those feelings are presented to us early in life and continued through our adulthood. If we can shrug off judgment then maybe we can shrug off all the associated garbage as well.

Don't get me wrong, I think judgment is a very useful form of mind control. And I think the vast majority of folks need that structure to exist in a cooperative way (just think of how well the threat of "Hell" works for the religious crowd).

In order to release judgment, I think you need to take the next cognitive leap in development: to separate yourself from the crowd. Basically to be free from the thoughts of others and feel enough personal value that institutionalized or individual judgments are no longer important. Of course this is different than arrogance or self-esteem. Those are things you get, things you build, things you have. I'm talking about the confidence that releasing others opinions of you will not shake your internal core. It is a subtle shift in perception, but all amazing things start with a subtle shift.

- Steven Cardinale