Stuck

I used to have the same hangup. It's especially easy to fall victim to it when you're feeling a bit desperate and secretly fear you'll spend your life alone unless you relax your standards. But I found that it helped me to just not think of it as judging. After all, I truly didn't have any right to *judge* a guy just because he was late for every date, had gross tattoos, or was still working at Starbuck's at 35. But what I did have a right to do was set certain criteria that any man I dated had to have. It was that simple: I didn't have to say "he's bad" or "he's not good enough." I just had to say "he doesn't have the qualities I need." No passing of judgment. Just keeping my own needs in mind.

Thank you for writing this piece. I first came across this idea when reading Michael Bywater's book entitled "Big Babies." In one chapter, it bemoaned the fall of the Latin virtue of "discrimen" (the ability to accurately assess a situation, make judgments, and take the appropriate action) into the modern vice of "discrimination."

Children and teenagers grow up learning (and rightly so) not to discriminate against people based on certain traits such as race or gender; however, perhaps the way in which it's taught has had undesirable effects. No effort is made to distinguish valid judgments based on relevant traits and invalid judgments based on irrelevant ones. The message conveyed is simply "Do not judge!" "Discriminating is bad!"

Clearly the pendulum has swung too far when people are acting and thinking like Jasmine in your article.

Just so I understand. You are railing against the inevitable outcome of the post-modern academic movement in one blog entry, while declaring against the evils of traditional society in another? It is immediately imperative that you reconsider the ethical framework you use to evaluate situations.

When was I "declaring against the evils of traditional society"? Given a choice, I tend to prefer railing against the inevitable outcome of the postmodern academic movement. Traditional society has its flaws, but postmodern academia really bugs the heck out of me. This fact affects my ethical framework.

great post! I think the non judgemental thing is going too far. I made some judgemental statement and my new age friend snidly commented "I prefer not to judge others", clearly passing a judgement on me for judging! Poeple just need to relax. If someone wants to do something in thier own life, I probably shouldn't waste my time judging that decision ( it's not my life and I don't know where they are coming from) but I clearly reserve the right to judge my own life and when people are bringing negativity into it, I can judge them as not fitting my needs ( similiar to the ealrier comment). The real trick is when we share our life with someone with whom we disagree. In that case we have the task of judging how much accpetance will be helpful and how much will be hurtful for the fufillment of our own needs and the needs of the relationship. Life is all about judgement. To dismiss it as bad or uneccesary, hurts us deeply.