About the Judgements we make.
No doubt, we make judgements about people. We choose to interact
with people based on how we feel about them, what judgement we arrive at, about
their character and about them as persons, as fellow human beings. No doubt
these judgements vary from person to person. Some people are admired by the
society as a whole while some people are thoroughly misjudged all their life.
Below, with the help of this schematic, I will try to explain what I feel about
this whole process. This is based on purely observational data and inference
drawn by me (and hence, could be biased) exclusively on those occasions.
Judgement of an object or person wholly depends on the judge’s
evaluation. This evaluation (which is sometimes beyond our voluntary control),
depends on the perspective of the evaluator and also the circumstances. Let’s
first eliminate ‘circumstance’ as a variable for simplicity. For example, the
songs I sing in the bathroom during shower could be evaluated by me as ‘superb’,
but one who has musical training will judge me from that perspective as ‘below
average’. Now, if you add circumstance into the mix, for example, Sir Elton John
asked to judge my bathroom songs with someone pointing a gun on his forehead
might deliver a positive judgement. Probably, I was successful to drive the
point through.
If you are still reading, let me explain the picture. Without
the circumstance, evaluation is solely dependent and tainted by the evaluator’s
perspective. In the picture, I tried to depict differences in perspectives due
to several factors. Some people may have a broader perspective (as in blue) and
some have a narrower (as in yellow). Broader perspectives tend to have inputs
from wisdom generated from life’s lessons, one’s education, and one’s ability
to afford good education (pedigree), tolerance etc. On the other hand, narrower
perspectives tend to have inputs from aberrant mental conditions like
selfishness, jealousy etc. in addition to lac of education, pedigree etc.
Sometimes these are mutually exclusive, sometimes not. It could be more complex
than we think, for the purpose of discussion let’s just keep it simple. Finally,
evaluation gets colored by one’s perspective. Perspectives can be many,
however, again, for the sake of simplicity three basic perspectives are shown.
There could be a differential mix of these three yielding many diverse
perspectives. However, the outcome of Judgement is always binary. Positive or
negative; it has never been intermediary, however, some people are always
undecided and they tend to follow the majority in any judgmental situation.
If the judgement about a person is positive, we tend to
choose from different alternatives based on the degree of positivity. If we
judge positivity in arbitrary units, values near to 100 will produce
celebrities and around 50 will produce peers. For example, we might rather consider
hero worship than making friends with Marilyn Monroe or Mahatma Gandhi. This is
admiration. However, if you think a certain someone is successful in life and
you like that person, you will probably follow instead of admiring too much. However,
I always found friendships blossoming between equals. Equal struggle, equal
suffering, equal qualification, equal ambitions and so on.. Point to be noted,
although positively judged, perspectives change, and that might alter the
judgement any moment. Marriage, on the other hand tends to have the lowest
positivity count on the judgement scale. It is the aspect of mystery that keeps
it alive I guess, and the partners tend to adjust their perspectives in a
dynamic pattern. Notwithstanding, it might go up on the positivity scale as the
perspectives broaden with time.
If the judgement about a person is negative, we tend to
forget that it is just a function of perspective which is again a function of
evaluation that is colored by perspective. When I was little, I asked my
grandfather, “Why does a thief steal when he has to hide from everybody?” He
answered, “The thief probably doesn’t think he is doing anything wrong,
otherwise he wouldn’t be doing it.” In a way, he was right. The thief had a
different evaluation and judgement based on his perspective which is entirely
different from most of us.
When we judge a person as negative, we tend to avoid or
ignore them. We tend to criticize or devalue them in social situations and we
try to make them a social pariah or ‘untouchable’. We label them with our own
evaluation which is a function of our own perspective and hence suffers from an
observational bias. When 99 out of 100 people around you think that you are a pariah,
you sort of agree to that and start believing that. You try to fit into their motif
and just hope that under certain circumstances you will be judged positively.
Based on the degree of positivity, you might be able to get a wife, a friend or
a follower. Who even dares to think of admiration?
