My friend -- let's call her Jasmine -- just turned thirty. She is single and has wanted, for a while now, to find someone and start a serious relationship. In a yoga class last month, she met a man around her age -- a middle-school teacher -- who was clearly interested in her. They went to the movies, out to a restaurant, then to a concert.
"So," I asked, as friends do, "are you attracted to him?"
"I don't know," said Jasmine.
"How, after a month," I railed, "can you not know?"
She said he isn't UN-attractive. But he's childish, Jasmine said, and depressed, and he talks mostly about himself. He asks few questions. Most of what he says about himself is -- at this point, Jasmine refused to supply any adjectives. Instead, she shrugged and said, "He says life has no meaning."
"Hmm."
"Yeah," said Jasmine. "He says he's bipolar." He told her he diagnosed himself. He buys meds online, cheap, from Canada. He sends Jasmine several long emails every day which say she is too lovely for this dirty, ugly world. The emails include quotes from William Blake, whom Jasmine hates. She also thinks he has a girlfriend because his brother, whom she met at a party, said he does.
"Well," I said, "lots of danger signs, eh?"
"I don't know," said Jasmine. Her brow creased, her eyes darting from side to side. Jasmine is smart, with two degrees from major universities.
"Well," I said, "obviously -- "
"But," Jasmine whispered, "I don't want to judge. I don't want to be ... biased."
"Against what?" I howled. "Against bores? Nihilists? Blake fans? The unfaithful? As for being depressed and bipolar, we can empathize, but do you want a long-term partner who is -- "
"No-o-o-o," said Jasmine slowly and uncertainly. "But who am I to judge?"
And that's the point. And that's also the problem.
We are all judges, assessing constantly. Every living creature constantly appraises every fellow creature, every sound and smell and soil condition (in the case of Jerusalem crickets, say, or earthworms). Every living creature in the wild uses its every capacity to discern as keenly as possible what is safe, what is edible and what they can have sex with. This is the survival instinct. This is evolution at work. Living creatures were given the power to judge and the purpose of that power is to make sure at least some of us survive.
But judgment is being bred out of our own species. In school, at home, in the media -- carefully, deliberately --- Jasmine's generation and those even younger are being told that they don't have the right to appraise others based on their private criteria. They are told to discard those standards, that criteria, those triggers which (they are told) spring not from nature but nurture, based not on logic or evidence but wicked prejudice. Judgment, Jasmine's generation has been told, is bad. It is, they hear, a form of "profiling," and what on earth could be more dangerous or cruel?
Jasmine was taught not to trust her own common sense. In public schools and at those major universities, she was warned against using common sense. In that view, "common" assumes the primacy of any given majority. And in that view, "sense" is subjective. To those who taught Jasmine, the very phrase "common sense" offends. Jasmine has learned to blush with shame when common sense (which she no longer recognizes or acknowledges as such) arises in her mind and tries to guide her. Instead, like a stroke survivor who must learn to tie his shoes anew each time they come untied, Jasmine wastes time and energy striving to quell, deny, ignore and contradict her common sense.
If my gut tells me not to date this guy, then I should definitely date him.
This will demonstrate that I am not judgmental.
Not being judgmental means that I am good.
Bored by the man? Scared of the things he says, the way he is?
Hush. Hush. For who are you to judge?
