Judging

It’s something most people do to others. Though, my hunch is that few of us may like being judged ourselves. This may have more to do with the negative association of judging, that of criminality and being guilty, than actually having someone, “form an opinion or conclusion about” us. (It can be positive, such as in the case of selecting a life partner or date, or noting someone’s positive attributes such as “the most amazing brown eyes”.)

A preferred term for the activity of judging may be assessing. Mainly because it may feel less, well, judgy. However, it does lack the decision or conclusion element which may remove the power behind judging. Assessing seems to indicate you are still working out what to think. Whereas judging seems to have drawn a final conclusion.

So when you hear someone say, “don’t judge me”, or “you have no right to judge me”, it probably tells us more about them (possibly feeling guilty), than anything else. The person may also be demonstrating that they do not fully understand the deep survival mechanism inherent in judging.

As humans, as with probably any living species, we are constantly assessing and evaluating our surroundings for dangers, opportunities, threats and means of survival. This assessing, and then judging, is an in-built, hard wired, millions of years DNA thing. Not something that is easily changed.

Maybe everyone should just learn to get more comfortable with being judged. I’ll start.

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