Hacker News Reader

Comment by habitue | Hacker News Reader

I like this quote, but it's good to remember why judgement exists. Judgement exists because it puts pressure on people to conform. You disapprove of their actions, and you let them know either explicitly, or implicitly through your behavior towards them. We all exert pressure on each other to conform to expectations. In an environment with no judgement, nobody conforms, everybody does what they want.

I'm saying something pretty banal really, everybody knows this. Ram Dass's quote here is emphasizing that you can be overly judgemental. You can be stuck in an endless rumination cycle where you stew over the failings of people around you. If you're in this mode of thinking, it's good to take a step back and think of humans like trees. But similarly, if you're constantly being taken advantage of because nobody thinks you care strongly about anything, well, maybe consider becoming more judgemental

View on HN

> But similarly, if you're constantly being taken advantage of because nobody thinks you care strongly about anything, well, maybe consider becoming more judgemental

Being judgmental will do absolutely nothing to stop those people from taking advantage of you. only if you change your behavior can you change the situation. Looking at your situation fully and completely without fear and reactivity, that will save you. Judging all those people who are "doing this" to you, will do nothing but make you miserable. It is of course our nature to be judgmental but the work of Ramm Dass was to separate out those judgements to arrive at a state where you are truly not judging people. Has nothing to do with seeing what it is they do. an earthquake could level your town, and you see exactly what it is this earthquake did, and it was horrible. but you don't "judge" the earthquake, it just is. that's ultimately the state of all people too.

This is where I feel Reason comes in. While emotions are important, facts are always more important. Judging people is good if it's to further your own self interest otherwise it's a complete waste of mental energy. "Judging others" is a fact of life and has to be done, what shouldn't be done is doing it unnecessarily, especially when other people have no affect on your life. For example judging people over sexual/religious choice reasons is most often a waste of energy and shows your own unfair biases and character failures and just a projection of lack of self-esteem.

> Being judgmental will do absolutely nothing to stop those people from taking advantage of you.

You're right if we're talking about people who know you wouldn't like something and do it anyway (sociopaths / assholes). But you might be surprised how un-subtle the effect of knowing "that person will get pissed if I do this" is on changing people's behavior. Most people are reasonable, and they try to take the feelings of other people around them into account when deciding how to act. If your demeanor is always "Everything's cool, I'm taking it all in with no judgement" you can't really be surprised if people don't consider your preferences when making decisions.

> If your demeanor is always "Everything's cool, I'm taking it all in with no judgement"

No, you can walk away, or curse them out, or punch their lights out. These are all actions that do not imply you've "judged" them for what they do. There are multiple levels of perspective at play, but if you want to read Ramm Dass' writings with the assumption that being non-judgmental is a crock, that's pretty much how you'll come out of it. He was totally OK with that so in honor of his passing I will try today to be OK with it also.

I don't necessarily think his writings are a crock. I haven't read much of his work, but I read Paths to God and found it enjoyable. Largely, I guess I'm trying to contextualize judgement vs. non-judgement. If you're saying you can punch someone's lights out without judging them, my interpretation is that you're going through some process like this:

1. Suppress emotional judgement. (Maybe do this by re-framing their actions as something that is the way it is, like a tree or a river)

2. Evaluate the situation with a calm mind

3. Come to the conclusion that their behavior is undesireable in one way or another

4. Decide that in order to dissuade them from behaving that way in the future, you should punch them in the face.

5. Punch them in the face

I think it's probably a reasonable goal to insert a "stop and think" step before doing drastic things like punching someone in the face.

But I also think there's a non-negligible effect from using your emotions (in this case, the emption of judgement), to propel you to actually take action. I think it's very unlikely people are spurred to action by something that doesn't move them personally. There's just a bit of difference between "I'm mad about Trump. I'm definitely judging the hell out of him." and "I've come to the conclusion that Trump is a suboptimal president." I think a person in the former mindset is more likely to actually take action.

And again, I think in the context where people are too judgemental, and spend a bunch of time unproductively stewing about things, Ram Dass's advice to remove judgement is a good corrective.

> In an environment with no judgement, nobody conforms, everybody does what they want.

And the problem with that is, when nobody conforms, no profit can be made. A large part of Silicon Valley is predicated on people conforming (Facebook/Instagram, Twitter,WeWork, Snapchat, Amazon, Microsoft).

Judgment has been carefully bred in us, otherwise neoliberal capitalism would be unable to function and so the fat cats wouldn't be able to get their salami.

I know that "conforming" is a short-hand in literature for authoritarianism, lack of creativity, etc etc. But it gained that connotation in a context where our culture moved from a high conformity past, into a slightly lower conformity present. Much was gained when we allowed individuals more freedom.

By contrast, "no conformity" is a truly terrifying thing. Acting together towards common causes is a direct result of the ability of humans to sublimate their own personal desires to some degree and conform. Basically everything humans have accomplished is because of our ability to work together, and cooperation means not acting exactly how we'd like in every situation.

> Judgment has been carefully bred in us,

This is 100% true, but it isn't neoliberalism that bred it into us, it's that successful cultures had certain attributes that allowed them to conform, cooperate and accomplish things. This is humanity self-domesticating, not a sinister movie plot about corporations

Reply on news.ycombinator.com