I have recently given a reference for a colleague that led me to struggle with the imperative of saying what was true against what would be favourable. It made me ponder exactly what a judgement is and what it should do.
We should not be swayed by pithy proverbs such as "Judge not lest you be judged". If the only motive not to judge is empathy with those who are judged, then this is feeble grounds indeed for our actions. I suggest a stronger, more resilient ground for judging. Put simply it is "Judge only on the facts."
The problem with our judgements is objectivity and fairness. If, in a moment of rage, I yell at someone and say things I later regret, does this characterise me as an angry person? On any objective measure, it does not. In purely mathematical terms, if an event represents less than 0.0001% of the all events, it is insignificant and does not characterise the subject being examined. The other 99.9999% does. Therefore, if 99.99% of the time I am calm and collected, I MUST be judged, objectively, as a calm person, no matter how dramatic the anger, nor its consequence (for example, it leads to someones death). In fact, to be objective, if that dramatic anger occurs, I must, applying science, look for factors that create the anomaly.
Narrow judgements, therefore, are not bad because they may give offence. They are bad because they are arrived at stupidly, without applying good sense and science.
How many times do we glibly judge people presented in the press because of an horrific outcome? That man who drowns his children by driving into a lake is clearly a monster. We build a mental profile of someone who we find almost inconceivably evil. Yet what do we actually know?
Even we we have reports from the press, we know that the press will often selectively choose details to either position a person as hero or villain. Without having lived inside a person's skin for their life, we cannot know what they usually are. We cannot know whether the man driving his children into the lake is in a stupor or completely lucid and vindictive. It is simply unscientific and irrational to judge him as either.
Where does this lead us then? Must we never judge? Does this leave us crippled, unable to detect real danger?
I assert that, in every judgement, we must necessarily count our judgement as provisional. We must be prepared, when judging others, to be completely open, at any moment, to discovering a completely different person. We must remind ourselves, at the moment of judgment, that we may be, profoundly and scientifically, wrong.
Do not avoid judging, as it may be what stops you acting on suspicions someone is preying on our daughter. But in all judgments consider all the facts, especially those you do not yet know.
1 comment:
It's an interesting thought Roo and I often wonder about it when I give references for people, or when I check referees for someone I'm hiring. People's behaviour is situational - someone can be brilliant in one situation but awful in another, or can change from brilliant to mediocre because of other factors in their life, like mental illness, grief, etc.
This post made me think of two other things. One is the line from Russell Hoban's "Turtle Diary" - I can't remember it properly but it says something like - remember the first face you see on someone, because sooner or later you will see it again. So if I see you going off your brain and then find that most of the time you are calm and friendly, I will still be wary because I know that temper will recur.
The other is to be pedantic and correct your Jesus quotation. English usage tends to confuse the words used. Mr Tasker says "The form of prohibition...translated 'Judge not'...makes it clear that it is the habit of censorious and carping criticism that Jesus is condemning, not the exercise of the critical faculty". Don't be condemning or superior - beware of the log in your own eye when you try to take the speck from someone else's. In other words, a lot like what you're saying.
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