Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people.—Eleanor Roosevelt
We are a generation prone to making moralistic judgements about others by observing their behaviour through our subjectively tinted lens. Our part of the globe is chockfull of pharisaic bullies who infest others with their preachy canting. “The blowback of this antisocial behaviour is intolerant milieu wherein fatwa replaces dialogue,” says Prof Arfa Syeda Zahra.
Our formal or informal idiom reeks of priggish thinking. We too often jostle aboard moral bandwagons. By finding faults with others to tag them evil is our flawed and mean act to look sanctimonious. “The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets,” observes JM Green.
Before putting anyone to the guillotine of our bigoted judgement, we must assay him on at least three parameters. Firstly, we must appraise anyone not by what he did, rather by what he wills to do. Past must not eclipse our present and future as we can turn a new leaf anytime.
Secondly, judgements must be built upon circumstantial evidence. Research has found that we gravitate towards overestimating the personality and underestimating the situation when making judgement-based attributions, especially with people we do not know well.
Thirdly, a judgement should be made objectively by keeping in view the dominant tilt of an individual to good or evil. Wasif Ali Wasif says if a person is inclined towards goodness by a decimal fraction above fifty percent, he must be deemed good if at all we are hell-bent on passing our judgement on him. “When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself,” advises Earl Nightingale.
After all, why do we judge? Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung explores its reasons: “Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” Hard pressed for time and space in this digital world, we feel smug in forging rash perceptions of others. “Although our conscious minds are avoiding our own flaws, they still want to deal with them on a deeper level, so we magnify those flaws in others,” explicates Jung.
Our self-made negative opinions of others create in us the resentment that grows into William Blake’s metaphorical poison tree. Cognitive dissonance — the rift between our belief and behaviour — also triggers this attitude of making negative assumptions about others. To cope with cognitive dissonance, our mind by default starts a process called normative idealisation wherein our own status is held as a yardstick to gavel others.
A study published in Mindfulness Magazines in July 2010 finds that judgements spawn depression in us. Similarly, judging others unauthorised to categorise them as good or bad plummets one’s self-esteem to the lowest. Shakespeare personifies envy as the green-eyed monster, and Iago — Shakespeare’s most villainous character — embodies this because of his tendency to make harsh and rash judgments.
We run out of room to live peacefully and joyfully in society because we are becoming too condemnatory. Assuming the worst about people prevents us from forming positive interpersonal connections. Human beings cannot be labelled outright good or bad as per Cartesian dualism. Post-structuralism posits a whole beautiful spectrum of human nature. “Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about,” exclaims Ian MacLaren.
A sahabi killed a nonbeliever who proclaimed the Oneness of Allah in a battle, justifying it by saying the kafir accepted Islam fearing death. The Last Prophet (peace be upon him) was angry, saying true intentions can only be known by rending the heart. The straitlaced branding of human beings into good or bad is utter negation of mastery of the craft of the Creator who created man as the paragon of all creatures.
we belittle people only when we see them from a distance or with vanity.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 30th, 2023.
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