"I'm not one to judge"

The other night, I sat down with my glass of red wine to take in the local nightly news.

It was a rather uneventful night of unimportant things and insignificant events in this desolate stretch of land called the Central Valley of California.

One of the segments happened to involve a reporter interviewing a rather queer looking High School “boy”. I normally block out the sight of people like this. Rooster style hair cut. Make-up. Clothing much too tight for his pathetically skinny frame. This “things” look wasn’t what caught my attention. Rather what he said in response to the first question asked of him. The question asked is irrelevant, mainly because I have no recollection of what it was.

The first words out of his mouth were,

“I’m not one to judge.”

….



This brings us to the topic of today’s rant. The school of thought that it is wrong to judge. I apologize for the logically fallacy of the last statement, where I bring up thought and connecting it to the concept that it is immoral to judge. The people in this “school of thought” fail to ever actually think.



The reasons why this concept of withholding judgment is idiotic are many. They range from the mundane and silly to the insane and suicidal.



MUNDANE AND SILLY:

“Is 2 + 2 = 4”

“Well I’m not one to push my moral system onto the inner feelings of what two 2’s decide to add up to, so I will withhold judgment.”



INSANE AND SUICIDAL:

“Is it wrong for Ahmadnejad to want to wipe Israel and Western civilization off the map?”

“Well, I have never walked in his shoes, so I can’t say”



I hear this phrase thrown about so casually lately. Mostly from young people, ranging from 0-60 years old. When I hear anyone state such an idiotic sentence, I get much the same look on my face as President Bush gets when asked about the current president of Russia. In my minds eye, I am trying to rationalize why this person is so afraid to pass judgment upon anything! Because that is what the statement “I’m not one to judge” is implying. What is the cause of this fear? Is it feared that by passing judgment, you open yourself up for criticism? Is it dishonesty? Is this person merely saying that they do not judge, while internally, they have formed an opinion? Is it self deception, a kind of internal schizophrenia? One minute, they feel the moral haughtiness of not judging others, until it is something that affects them personally?



The fear of being judged by others is a very common one. Anyone that has ever taken a speech class can attest to this. What people fail to overlook in the fear of being judged by others is confidence. Self respect. Belief in ones self. When you are confident in your position, the opinion of others is insignificant. Even if you can only defend your point of view to a certain point, the opinion, and therefore the judgment of others, begins to quickly lose validity. When we form an opinion about something, we are stating that our mind has weighed the pros and cons of the situation and determined which is better. We may not have all the facts, but we did the best with the facts that we did have. If we learn something new, our opinion may change, until then; this is what I think about this or that.



Is it schizophrenia? Some type of mental disorder? Can these people actually shut off the part of their brain that has the ability to form a judgment until it is something that may affect them personally? This, in my judgment, (get it), is the most excusable situation. The ability to shut off your brain about crap that will never affect you can be seen as a blessing in many situations. For example, a person living in Antarctica really has no legitimate reason for worrying about running out of ice. That being said, if the Antarctican were asked, he should be able to form an opinion based on the information available. The shutting off of the brain is not an excuse for anything except in the case of actual physical rest. Our brain is what sets us apart from all other things on this planet, and should be able to jump start when needed.



Is it dishonesty? Is this person merely stating that they do not judge others, while in their mind; they most certainly do form judgments but are withholding them? Why? Is it a persona that they are trying to project? An image of all encompassing tolerance and acceptance? This person may not want to appear to have placed enough value in one’s own brain to determine right from wrong. That would be presumptuous and a little conceited. After all, “Who are you to judge?” This is the most despicable form of deceit I can put up for discussion.



One of the worst phrases ever conceived of,



“If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.”



Horrible.



What if your friend is getting into drugs, wouldn’t be nice to point out that they are doing something bad? What if your fat family member is wearing something that you know is entirely embarrassing, shouldn’t you tell them?

Or what if the “not-so-nice” white family down the street kept setting cross’s on fire in your front yard? It would take a value judgment to determine these are all bad situations.



Is that example a little extreme?



“Ok”, I’ll give a more recent, relevant example.



Just for example, let’s say we have some recently arrived new additions to this country. Perhaps they come from a culture that has “different” views on the role of women in society. Perhaps, those views include covering the women from head to toe in some type of dark clothing. Along with the unique fashion sense they bring to the mix, they won’t allow women to go in public alone, for example. Should these women also have the audacity to choose whom to date or associate with, perhaps, in that culture, the proper response would be to “honor kill” the women. Before it gets to that point though, in order to prevent such rebellious behavior in their women, they fall back on the time honored tradition of clitorectomy, hypothetically speaking. After making sure their house was in order, they might turn their attention to the government of the country that they are now “guests” in. They might take a look at the Constitution, and determine that this “Constitution” might be secondary to something else. For the sake of argument, we will call that something else, the Koran. Then they might decide to donate money, time, political influence, and bombs, to the cause of making this weird “Construction” more compatibible with their beliefs in the absolute authority of the Koran. They might form groups that have names that rhyme with the word B.A.I.R. Using our very own laws and sense of tolerance against us. Using the very freedoms provided by our constitution to destroy our constitution.



If someone were actually using their brain to analyze and judge the following hypothetical situation they might come to the conclusion that the situation is so far fetched and would never happen in the real world. This must be one of those “April’s Fools” type stories we read in the Sunday papers. Real Americans would recognize the dangers of letting such a situation occur. Letting such a thing happen would require the greatest lapse in judgment ever to occur in human history. Why would a people so blessed by the freedoms of speech, religion, and property allow some group to come in and use speech, religion, and property to destroy everything that has sustained them for the last 200 years?

I couldn’t say, I am not one to judge.







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