18 November 2003: Judgment

"Lately," Lila wrote in her journal earlier today, "I don’t want to do anything except sit around and read."

Alas, I've got the opposite problem. I've got a whole lot of stuff that I really, really want to get done, but I made the mistake of picking up Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver yesterday morning, and now I'm on page 225 and I've got two days left to do the homework and housework and other work that I'd planned to do over the course of four days. Plus, I feel icky and sluggish from two days of being almost completely sedentary (though I did manage to free myself from the accursed tome long enough to get to a good yoga class this afternoon).

Anyway, Quicksilver, apart from being dangerously addictive, is by far Stephenson's best book yet. I'm astounded at how prolific he is, and even more astounded at how polished this work is given how prolific he is. Over 900 pages, and it's the first volume of a trilogy which is allegedly already completely written, the other two volumes scheduled for release within the next few months. With this work, I believe that Stephenson has earned the right to be called the greatest novelist of my generation (there are several still-living people who have written slightly better novels than this one, but they were all born long enough ago that they are of my parents' generation, or the one prior to that, rather than mine).

For me (and I suspect that this will also hold true for several of my regular readers), the dangerous level of addictiveness is compounded by the fact that it is impossible to read this book without being afflicted with the urgent need to create and run an RPG campaign.

Quicksilver's addictiveness is further demonstrated by the fact that it wasn't what I'd been planning to write about just now.

I was going to write about Judgment. I've had the intention for years now to write an essay or a rant or something on the absurdity of the inherently self-contradictory dogma, espoused all too often these days by newagers, knee-jerk liberals, and various other very stupid people, that Judgment Is Bad.

The main thing that's kept me from writing such a rant is the question of what I could possibly say. I mean, anyone with even the most rudimentary reasoning skills can spot that “Judgment Is Bad” is a judgment, and that the use of the word “judgmental” as a pejorative is doubly judgmental, insofar as it involves both passing judgment on whoever one is denouncing as judgmental, and, again, passing judgment upon Judgment itself in deciding that the word constitutes a pejorative. What else is there that can usefully be said on the subject?

In my experience, adult humans can be neatly divided into those who are capable of instantly recognizing for themselves that "Judgment Is Bad" is a self-contradicting absurdity, and those who are too stupid to ever learn to think. There’s no need to address the former on this subject, except to belabor the obvious for comic effect, and no point in addressing the latter, since they’ll just go on chanting “Four legs good, two legs bad,” or “Why are you being so judgmental,” or “You hurt my feelings,” or “You wouldn’t understand because you’re a heterosexual male,” or whatever other meaningless twaddle has been stuffed into their hollow heads in enough quantity to leak out of their mouths.

This evening, however, I found myself in an email exchange with a friend who fell into neither of the above categories of person. He’s usually capable of some degree of reason (albeit not always as much as I’d like) but he has recently been brainwashed by a cult, which has largely robbed him of this capability – temporarily, I hope. (The cult in question is Landmark Forum, the one that used to just be called the Forum and before that was called EST. Landmark Forum, like Scientology, has become one of the most successful cults in the modern world because instead of turning people into zombies, it turns them into assholes, and assholes are much better than zombies at bringing in money.)

In the course of his latest brainwashing session, my friend had actually had a potentially useful revelation – he’d realized (correctly) that all his life he’d been making himself and others miserable with his tendency to pass harsh, self-righteous judgments upon people. But because this revelation occurred in the context of a cult brainwashing session, he didn’t end up coming up with a sensible response like “I shall work on making my judgments more loving and compassionate.” Instead, he came up with “Judgment Is Bad.” And, like most people who buy into that bit of self-contradictory nonsense, instead of trying to rid himself of all judgment (which would at least have rendered him harmless), he resolved to devote himself to the improvement of others (yes, of course, you and I know that the notion of “improvement” cannot exist independent of judgment – but give the guy a break, he’s been brainwashed by a cult).

So in the course of our email exchange, I had occasion, for the first time, to consider the question of what to say to someone who is capable of some degree of reason, but yet hasn’t immediately seen the flaw in “Judgment Is Bad.” So I figured, what the heck, I’ll reprint it in my journal, and write whatever I have to write to introduce it, and that’ll be the rant on Judgment that I’ve been wanting to write.

The bit of the email exchange that merits reprinting is very brief, actually. He wrote:

I want to talk to you about how I see gossip, complaining, and judgementality as destructive.

And I wrote:

Since that statement contains a strong judgement and an implied complaint, I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical.

Humans make judgments. This is not always a bad thing. I'm continually working on making my judgments more compassionate, but I'm not about to try to stop being judgmental. It's an act of judgment to decide that judgment is destructive, or that a given judgment is destructive, or that destruction is a bad thing in general or in a given instance. It's an act of judgment to decide whether or not a given person, be it you or someone else, is being judgmental, or overly judgmental, or whatever.

Thus, I judge and reject your judgment of judgment.

It's also an act of judgment to determine whether a given statement is a complaint or not, and whether or not that complaint is destructive, and whether or not a little destruction might be a good thing in a given instance. It's also an act of judgment to determine, in any given instance, the difference between "gossip" and the useful dissemination of information.

Thus, I judge and reject your judgment of gossip and complaining as being far too broad and absolute a judgment to be of any practical use in bettering the lives of humans.

 

Okay, off to bed... I'm all curmudgeoned out.

 

"That's the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."

- Principal Snyder (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)