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Old 03-08-2007, 01:59 AM   #5 (permalink)
Andy
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Well one way to go with this is that whenever someone makes a judgement, I tend to see the process going something like this:

1) Create a standard, it's totally subjective, you have complete control over the criteria of this standard and are free to change it at will.

2) Decide(based on the criteria) whether someone/something meets this standard, or doesn't. And then label them/it.

Judging is a form of labeling, and while it can useful, often people completely lose sight of the criteria they were using to make the judgment and instead see things only as the labels themselves, i.e. x is good, y is bad.

For a lot of the "negative" judgments, it's a good idea to be conscious of what your criteria actually are for using them. For instance thinking, what does this being "bad" really mean to me, what does this person being "wrong" mean? After figuring out your criteria and realizing what the actual feelings on the subject are, the label of "wrong" or "bad" can be discarded and instead you'll be left with something more accurate. Probably preferable too, since things reduced to labels like "wrong" or "bad" are often seen as much worse than what they actually are.

Part of it is seeing if the judgments are really necessary, would there be anything to be gained from reducing things/people to labels in a particular instance?

i.e. person x is walking around with uncombed hair. You could say, "wow that person is so messy." However, is there anything gained by making this judgment, is there any point to labeling the person as messy based on them having uncombed hair? It could be just left at "that person has uncombed hair" (which is still a judgment, based on what the criteria for being combed is, though it's probably less negative and more accurate than messy). Or go even further and say "that person has 263 hairs pointed north, 120 hairs pointed south etc... though at that point what you gain in accuracy is lost in ease.
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