Judgment

I had a thought today, in fact just a moment ago, which I am uncharacteristically going to try to flesh out in text rather than simply transfer a fully-formed thought from my brain.

As voluntaryism defines both my political and moral ideology, I am about as socially liberal as it is possible to be. In fact, my personal sentiments take this a step farther in that I believe our judgments built upon our own man-made constructs and categorizations distract us not only from the equal humanity in all of us, but also from the beautiful individuality within each person. I'm appalled by both the superficial notion of compulsory "diversity" and the more traditional institutions of racism, segregation, and assimilation. The mindsets that promote either are on opposite sides of the field, but are in reality playing for the same team. Both serve to divide us as human beings.

Without getting into a whole bunch of scientific talk that I don't know about, I think we'll all agree that there are at least two phases of judgment. The first is the subconscious or semi-conscious judgment, based on your experiences, upbringing, opinions of others (regarding someone or something), initial sensory stimuli, and probably a myriad of other things. The second is your conscious judgment, based upon empirical evidence - personal interaction. In many ways the two overlap, but I like to think that we allow ourselves to let one drive.

For example, several years ago I deliberately conditioned myself to judge people based on my personal interaction with them (or at least observation of them). However, there is an undeniable part of everyone's psyche that summarizes their accumulated knowledge of people that have certain characteristics. The memory operates via association, so you would expect this to be no exception. In my experience, it is the amount that we consciously suppress this impulse as it influences our judgment that makes the difference. Simply put, regardless of preconcieved notions, a stranger should begin with ten points, with only the ability to lose them in the interaction, rather than beginning with no points, and having the ability to gain some.

The critical point is that the groups that we have segmented people into - which to some degree is natural - do not "do" anything that is not central to the definition that we have for them. So, it would be accurate to say that all christians worship Jesus Christ and muslims Allah, or that all "black people" have darker skin than "white people" (I'm not sure this would necessarily be true for "african-americans," in the objective sense of the term). You could say that all gay men and lesbian women are attracted to members of their own respective sexes.

Now, let's test out some of the more insidious stereotypes. Not all muslims advocate violence toward westerners. Some do. Not all catholic priests molest children. Some do. It would certainly be unfair to the peaceful, decent members of these groups to be attacked (verbally, or sometimes physically) for the evil deeds of other members among these groups. With so much faith in democracy, surely some would think that if it were somehow proven that the majority of members of such a group routinely engaged in some unsavory activity that has nothing to do with the group they belong to, that surely all could be condemned. This would again be wrong. Some people seem to think that committing crimes can be inherent in an otherwise peaceful "group," and they ignore the human nature and difference of perspective at the root, demonizing the group as subhuman monsters.

This calls for three large clarifications -

First, if the "group" is by definition objectively immoral, the aforementioned does not necessarily apply. For example, the KKK is by definition an immoral organization. This is not up for debate. They admittedly advocate discrimination against other members of society.

Second, my religious examples actually complicate this whole issue, because there are certain implications in many religious texts that are up for interpretation, which is one reason I don't engage in (organized) religious belief.

Third, and most importantly, it is how we respond to the judgments we make that lends any real importance to what I'm trying (read: struggling) to explain. It would seem to me an entirely acceptable response to abstain from attending catholic masses given evidence that any number of children have been molested by priests. So would avoiding a reportedly dangerous area (more on this later).

There are many examples of the reverse throughout history - internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, vandalization and acts of violence against mosques and American muslims after 9/11. If your judgment leads you to aggressive force against someone you don't know...you're probably doing something wrong.

One of the reasons why government is so sinister is that it attempts, at least visibly, to spread around accountability in a way that deteriorates this dynamic. Thus, when individuals in the military perpetuate a horrific crime against humanity, not only were they enabled to do so by being systematically dehumanized in training, but they are just "following orders," although in some cases acts of extreme violence can emerge from the "mob mentality," catalyzed by the ever-present idea that it's "us vs. them" (see my blog: The Perils of Collectivism). On up the ladder, the general was just acting on "solid intelligence," and so on. Not to mention that war in and of itself is baffling to even the most casual scrutinizer, and for good reason, but that's a separate article (hint: self-interest meets enormously disproportionate power structure).

Believe it or not, I didn't get to the point of my initial thought, but it's lucidity has faded. Hopefully this article is not too tangential - I know it's kind of sloppy. Forgive me.