If You Can’t Help Judging, What’s the Best Way to Do It?

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It’s something like the irony in forgiving. You can let something go (as in, “forgiving it”) without being obliged to embrace, or even continue a relationship with, the person you’ve forgiven. Nor does forgiving require you to see the other person in a different light. The only prerequisite necessary is the desire to put behind you whatever wrong you may have suffered at another’s hands.

At the bottom, what drives you to forgive is the motivation to refocus your attention on the here-and-now and whatever opportunities it can still offer you. And that generally makes a lot more sense than spending additional time either lamenting some indignity or injustice or aggressively retaliating against it.

Just as holding a resentful grudge against someone doesn’t, and really can’t, benefit either you or your (at least, supposed) antagonist, directly taking up arms against “what is” is also typically a futile enterprise.

Dealing effectually with disagreements and conflicts is also a matter that's best seen paradoxically. For if you’re truly committed to living by certain values, if they guide—or even determine—your behaviors, how can you not judge others whose words and actions represent a clear disconfirmation of those principles and ideals?

Obviously, some people are more judgmental than others. But the nature of human defenses is such that when another person says something in sharp contrast to how you need to see yourself or something that feels threatening to your worldview, your knee-jerk reaction will be to respond adversely to them: to judge them as negatively as you perceive their judging you. Unless, that is, you’re afflicted with terrible self-esteem or self-doubt, in which case you’ll likely capitulate to their perspective and, instead of counter-judging them, join them by harshly judging yourself.

But in one way or another, we all reveal a strong tendency to be “judging machines”—not only by judging others who, however vaguely or inadvertently, threaten us by not sharing our views, but also by vindictively counter-judging those who presume to judge us.

Stating this is hardly to say anything new, although the terms employed to describe this phenomenon usually revolve around notions of criticism and defending against criticism. (And here, see my earlier post: “Why Criticism Is So Hard to Take,” Parts 1 & 2, 2009.) But however we address this common dynamic, the main thing to consider is how well trying to force our perspective on another—or, if they’re the initiator, actively resisting their contrary perspective—ultimately serves us.

If acting and reacting, judgmentally is pretty much universal, there must be something primevally adaptive about it. Yet in today’s world, such a defense mechanism—whether we refer to it as denial, displacement, projection, or rationalization—can be seen as self-defeating, as actually reducing our opportunities for achieving the happiness and contentment we yearn for.

So, must you really take exception to another’s opposing viewpoint in order to experience your own as valid, worthy, or justified?

Here’s where making a fundamental distinction could help extricate you from this apparently self-protective but actually self-sabotaging trap. And this distinction, too, is paradoxical, for it involves the ability to recognize the dichotomy between narcissistic judging and humble judging. And it’s the second kind of judging that can save you from the likely fallout of the first.

If (probably unconscious to you), you partake mostly of the former kind of judgment, you negatively evaluate others to affirm that you’re better, or superior, to them. Consequently, narcissistic judging can be seen as bordering on the arrogant and condescending—resorted to so as to safeguard a perceived assault on the legitimacy or intelligence of your beliefs and the feelings linked to them.

And, frankly, it’s a defense common to almost all of us, going way back to childhood when, not yet able to do or understand so many things, we tried to brace our shaky self-image against all that felt endangering to it (as in, “That wasn’t my mistake; that was your mistake!”).

But in the end, attributing to yourself greater dominance or authority over others sets you apart from them—and not in a very positive way. For the more you denounce or degrade others who adhere to standards or ideals differing from your own, the more you’ll alienate them and the more alone, or not fitting in, you’ll feel.

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Speaking personally, I try to live by the simple, yet challenging, dictum: “Live and let live.” And as tempting as I sometimes find it to invalidate others whose viewpoints differ markedly from mine, it’s a reaction that brings with it mostly frustration, discouragement, and, at times, a kind of intellectual despair.

All the same, I can’t deny that it can be my first impulse. And (as embarrassedly I must admit) there’s a certain self-righteousness about this reaction that, in the moment, can feel rather gratifying. But beyond its immediate egotistical reward, such an attitude really doesn’t achieve anything advantageous. Or resolve anything.

So what’s the answer? Well, as already suggested, it’s in transitioning to the second kind of judgment: namely, humbly judging others. Which might well seem like a contradiction. After all, the very phrase “sitting in judgment on” implies a critical, accusatory, and supercilious attitude—not to mention a certain virtue or correctness.

But to amend the conventional connotations of judging by adopting the modifier, “humbly,” hints at something quite different. For here, you’re not assuming any intrinsic superiority over the other’s viewpoint but endeavoring to appreciate it from a more empathic and compassionate orientation. Whether you happen to agree with it or not.

Judging humbly implies a willingness to assess the other’s position from a “live and let live” perspective. If their stance on something violates your own cherished beliefs, you might well determine to fight against their favored policy or perspective. But—paradoxically, yet again—you attempt to do so with humility. And inasmuch as I realize this might all seem rather far-fetched, let me provide an example:

If you’re scientifically oriented, you almost certainly believe in the reality of global climate change. And you may join organizations devoted to drastically overhauling our current “do nothing” policy toward it.

But that doesn’t mean you still can’t try to sympathetically grasp the assumptions, beliefs, ideology, or theology of those who are skeptical—or disbelieving—of such man-made change. You don’t look down on them or see them as enemies so much as seek to understand their biases sympathetically and, if tenable, furnish them with evidence that might possibly get them to reconsider their environmental stance.

In other words, you respectfully take for granted that their views have personal validity for them, that they’re based on values as dear to them as yours are to you. Plus, if you don’t mount a frontal attack on them, but are able to approach them in a more agreeable, collaborative manner, you’ll have a far better chance of prompting them to reassess their viewpoint.

Such open-mindedness entails being willing to forfeit your prideful sense of righteousness. And for the great majority of us, that’s a really tough task. It requires developing substantial self-discipline, restraint, patience—and even big-heartedness.

But ask yourself: Might cultivating these admirable qualities afford its own satisfaction? Moreover, devoting yourself to such an empathic undertaking can help reconnect you to the vast human community, replete as it is with countless beliefs grounded in each individual’s genetic makeup and the multitudinous environmental influences they've been exposed to.

And while that doesn’t mean adopting a passive, do-nothing stance to whatever feels seriously wrong or corrupt to you (as in Edmund Burke’s words, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing”), beginning to look at people and things more relativistically can pay significant dividends—both to your self-image and your relationships in general.

For unconditionally accepting others as much as yourself may just constitute the deepest core of charity and compassion. And be the most powerful motivator of mutually beneficial change.

© 2019 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.