Should we judge others? Can we avoid it?

Judgement is the act of evaluating a set of perceptions and information and making decisions based on them. Much of our life is spent doing just this as it is a necessary act that should precede any action. Without this step action is just reaction based on habit and programming.

Should we judge others and their actions? I think that everyone must evaluate others and their words and actions in order to know how to best interact with them, or even whether to interact with them in the first place. Unfortunately there are many people who will not hesitate to take advantage of others for their own profit. Some even do it for pleasure. The act of judging another’s motivations is a necessary step in order to keep from putting yourself in situations that require desperate action or lead to being hurt and/or abused.

Judging the motivations of others is also how we determine who our friends are, who we would like in our community, who we would engage in various life activities with and even who we want to help us raise our children.

However

Though we must judge others against our own standards just as we do ourselves, we must also keep in mind that we don't know what life circumstances have shaped their values and that they may have a different set of standards because of this. People act differently for many reasons. Cultural, economic, emotional, different upbringing, different values, substance abuse, psychological issues, etc. Because you can never fully understand why someone acts the way they do, and because none of us can claim to have the "correct" set of values, we can't pass absolute judgement on anyone, perhaps not even ourselves.

In Other Words

We must judge people in relation to our own value systems in order to make intelligent decisions about relationships and safety (unless your intuition is 100% spot on and you have complete sensitity to it, in which case lucky you). We judge whether another persons past actions and their likely future actions are in accordance with our own values. But to judge someone as good or evil or make other character judgements based on our own limited, third party experience is usually unfair and unnecessary.

##Despite This

There may be some value in casting that moral judgement. If only because by doing so, we define ourselves. We illuminate to ourselves what our values are and upon deeper reflection we can often see that we have been guilty of the same actions we are judging reprehensible in others. This can be a valuable insight for someone on the path of self discovery and deepening awareness and can lead to positive change.