eThoughts : The Art of Making Judgments

Judgments are, of course, not only inevitable, but necessary. Even if one tries to avoid judgment, that itself is a judgment. Given this fate, it appears our best bet is to learn to make judgments—appropriately.

Seems like we’re not doing so well.

We’ve got this problem—what’s our benchmark for making all of these judgments? Feelings? Thinking? A book? A song? A parable? History? The future? The moment?

Ugh. Partial information is a tough benchmark for making appropriate judgments.

All right, it’s not one source, but numerous sources. Next problem—how many sources? That doesn’t even address how we decide on the quality of those sources.

Drat.

Maybe that’s why we’re still struggling with judgments, and struggling with our own evolution. It’s one thing if we’re being driven along, another if we’re doing the driving.

Seems like we’ve been raised to watch out. Our prime directive seems to constantly be in a state of readiness—en garde, so to speak. It’s as though we are imprinted, and thusly oriented, towards the fear of life rather than the beauty.

Yeah, I know—we’ve got the Book(s) or the Ideal(s), not to mention the moments, in which beauty trumps fear. But what is our predominate state of being, beauty or fear? And, yeah, I know that in some countries, in come cities, in some neighborhoods, in some families, in some individuals, we have created beauty and lots to be thankful for. Yet anxiety has now replaced depression as the number one mental illness, at least in the United States. So we’ve got our castles of beauty and all the walls, drawbridges, and moats to protect our way of life, but does that mean we’ve got beauty wired in?

Seems like our biggest problem is not illness or accidents, not to take away from the dents those twin tigers can and do make in our lives, but our supposition that what is permanent is the temporal nature of anything wonderful—and if we do have wonderful, we’ve got to fight to keep it. It seems to boil down to the notion that any state of beauty we may find ourselves in, is subject, in a moment’s notice, to be revoked. Our thankfulness appears to be for those pockets of peace in such a living state of uncertainty and turmoil.

That’s an interesting heritage. Might we examine that supposition without turning into a species of Smurfs? Are sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs our only available realities?

Hmmm, sounds like a lot of work—and likely not such a priority with all of those wolves knocking at our door.

One way or the other, I guess we’re more comfortable with living in a state of en garde. If that’s what we’re going to do, maybe what we need to fight off is not the wolves outside of us, but inside—at the very fountainhead of their creation.