Judgement

Learning to be impartial.

Why do so many people feel a need to classify things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Legitimately intelligent people spend vast amounts of mental energy trying to draw lines around what’s ok to experience, and what isn’t.

Judgement is one of those things that people always talk about as either being good, or bad. We want to be less judgemental, yet good judgement is admired and coveted. How are we supposed to develop good judgement if we’re not judgemental?

I’ve been told that I can take too long making a point. In an effort to be more succinct, I’m going to assume anyone reading this understands three things:

1. All judgements are part good, part bad. We’ll never rid ourselves of bad judgement, or being judgemental, it’s about finding balance.
2. No one is really qualified to make judgements about others. The whole idea is hypocritical. The more qualified a person feels on a subject, the more likely he’ll be to express his judgement.
3. Making judgements can have unintended consequences. They can be dangerous to make, but just as dangerous to avoid making.

I was provoked into writing this post because of a comment I saw in my newsfeed; it suggested that everyone should write all the things they publish (from comments, to blog posts, to status updates) in word, or some other program capable of checking spelling, grammar, and reading your text aloud. He suggested that people are distracted, and subconsciously think less of others who have typo’s or grammatical errors in the things they write.

I’ve spoken about this before, but I believe a cognitive elitism is occurring. There are enough barriers preventing intelligent people from sharing their ideas freely; why should we encourage people to filter, and curate their own ideas?

In this heavily curated internet age, it’s refreshing and special to hear something real.

I agree, however, that people can be judgemental when it comes to things that appear to be black and white. Like math (mostly), spelling and grammar are subjects that many people feel qualified to judge others on. We learned in grade 2, that the teachers who judged our work actually helped us learn how to write. We can justify expressing our judgements as positive criticisms.

I spend a lot of time reading different stuff. If I see spelling and grammar errors in published books, why should I care how someone spells anything in a comment they post on some random blog? We should be able to see beyond the spelling errors to understand the point the author is trying to communicate. I’m not sure if it’s been my recent work with children, ESL learning centres, or all the stakeholder interviews I’ve been doing; but I know communication skills don’t directly equate to intelligence.

Some people who struggle to effectively communicate have the most important lessons to teach us. We might have to learn how to listen differently, but sometimes it’s worth it. We need to see beyond our own biases. We have to stop being afraid of interpreting and expanding on ideas offered by others; sometimes it takes work to identify genius.