Being Less Judgmental

This week's article summary is How to Be a Little Less Judgmental.

When I had taught middle school for about ten years, I was at a crossroads in my career: was I going to commit to my discipline (history) by teaching at the high school level or was I going to move into administration?

I was teaching 8th grade World History and was being courted by the high school history department. They were the top teaching group at the school, were devoted to their discipline, yet were also smug, cynical, and defiant to authority.

A few times a year we had an all-school meeting where the Head of School provided a big picture update on the school. (This was before email or other forms of electronic communication.) So, about 200 teachers from the three separate buildings (lower, middle, and upper schools) gathered in the school chapel as one community.

Not surprisingly, the iconoclastic history department members always sat in last row of the chapel, not paying much attention to the Head’s update; instead, they graded papers, completed crossword puzzles, anything but listen to the Head. They were the teachers who were “too cool for school.”

At one of these all-school meetings, as I walked into the chapel with some other middle school teachers, the chair of the Upper School history department (and the most arrogant) shouted, “Hey, Joe, why don’t you come sit with us?”

Like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls here was my defining moment. I was being invited to join the cool kids.

I could see my future unfolding: join them, move to the Upper School and become one of the top teachers in the school. Yes, I would need to follow their lead and be dismissive of others, but I would be a top dog!

In that split second, I charted my future. I meekly (after all, I was intimidated him and the other history teachers) retorted, “Thanks, but I’m fine sitting with middle school teachers.”

I chose to side with right, respectful, and collegial. I wasn’t going the join a group whose members felt they were superior to others. Working in a big school, I understood that there were a lot of decisions to be made and that not every decision directly impacted me. I was able to see beyond myself, my division, my students and embraced that I was part of a bigger community.

As you’ll see in the article, we are living in a very judgmental age, personified by the upper school history teachers at my former school.

During preplanning, we talked about how people tend to judge themselves by their intent and others by their actions. We talked about being cognizant of avoiding ‘instantly reacting’ and taking a few moments to ‘thoughtfully respond.’ My personal mantra is “Assume Good Intentions” which helps me avoid rushing to judgment.

As we head into the final stretch of the school year, we need to be even more alert to how we work with and support others.

Joe

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Casting judgment on others has never been so easy. Social media gives onlookers the opportunity to scoff at a person’s every choice, from how they dress to what they feed their children. How people have behaved during the pandemic has inspired plenty of judgment in its own right: At the height of restrictions, adherence — or lack thereof — to masking and social distancing measures practically became barometers of people’s characters, indicating a lack of personal responsibility and empathy or an abundance of hysteria and over-caution, depending on your views.

While it gets a bad rap, in pre-modern times, judgment helped keep people safe. Judgments were alarm bells allowing humans to distinguish between toxic and harmless food, trustworthy and untrustworthy tribe members, and hardworking and lazy kinspeople.

Judgment is also a signal that someone’s behavior is unusual or out of context to your particular in-group.

But in today’s mobile, digitally facilitated world, judgment can take on new, toxic forms. When you silently cast judgment on someone from afar based on an Instagram story, you don’t get feedback from other people — or even the subject of your judgment — and you don’t learn how to make comments or critiques in a constructive way. Normally in a social situation, you judge somebody’s behavior, and their response to you helps to calibrate your interaction with them, and also the responses of other people around you. Because so much of our lives are disconnected from each other, we don’t perceive that body language and we don’t perceive that social feedback anymore.

Digital platforms also incite and prioritize outrage and conflict, making it easy to look down on others from your moral high horse. When people are constantly sneering at others on public platforms, the perception of what “normal” social judgments should look like is skewed. In normal communities and in normal, functional families, passing judgment on other people’s behavior, it functions very well. Families rarely break up because somebody says, ‘Hey, you’re acting like a jerk’ at a holiday get-together.

While judgments help signal social norms and allow us to identify our people, mean-spirited critiques are unproductive. Discernment, on the other hand, can help you identify unhealthy and toxic behaviors. In today’s polarized world, it’s important to detect when someone’s attitudes and beliefs pose a threat to others’ rights and well-being. Unless someone’s behavior is actively harming themselves or others (in which case, you should name the behavior, tell the other person how you’re feeling, and set boundaries on how you’d like them to act moving forward), learning to curb petty moral righteousness is possible, but requires slowing down your thoughts and having some empathy.

Look inward: If you’re motivated to stop hurtful critiques, you have to evaluate their source. When you feel a twang of annoyance when a friend impulsively books a vacation despite constantly complaining about money, ask yourself why you’re upset by this behavior or what purpose your anger or annoyance serves in this instance. Anger is often a signal that another person isn’t taking your well-being into consideration or there’s a conflict. Does your friend’s last-minute trip conflict with upcoming plans the two of you have or is it simply something you wouldn’t personally do? We have to pull back and go, ‘I’m being judgy, I don’t really want to do that.’ If you find yourself whispering a snide remark to your friend about a stranger’s shoes, try to reframe the judgment by complimenting the person’s confidence, for instance. Just as being judgmental is a practiced habit, so is stopping thought patterns that lead to hurtful observations and assumptions. If we come to notice we’re doing something that is unhealthy and pause and stop it, then we are far less likely to go down that path.

Practice curiosity, compassion, and empathy: When people buck social conventions, those casting judgments are often quick to be offended before considering a reason why someone else is engaging in that behavior. Say your colleague is quitting their job before landing a new one and you’re outraged at their irresponsibility. Instead of jumping to conclusions, get curious and ask them about their reasons for resigning or what they hope to accomplish during their time off. Curiosity is the antidote for judgment. Meet those you’re unjustly judging with compassion: When it comes to differences of opinion, it can be easy to assume that someone who doesn’t share your beliefs is ‘evil or stupid.’ Instead of reacting aggressively in an attempt to change their mind, think of a good-faith reason why someone would think this way as a means to slow down the judgment process. What does the person you’re judging know about their behavior or beliefs that you don’t know? For example, when it comes to relatives with differing political opinions, think about how the loved one ended up believing what they believe: the media they consume, the people they surround themselves with.  Of course, you should never compromise on important moral and social issues. Relationships with people whose views are antithetical to your own will have to be renegotiated and you’ll need to decide how to move forward if you want to maintain contact. But you can control your initial assumptions of them based on their beliefs.

Stay in your lane: There are very few things you can do to convince people your way of thinking and living is ideal. Save for the occasions where someone’s behavior is dangerous and harmful, focus only on what you can control. We can only control our behaviors, our thoughts, and our actions. Many human behaviors are actions signaling to others what kind of person you are or what groups you belong to. Instead of criticizing your aunt for constantly sharing bizarre memes on Facebook, consider she’s just vocalizing her membership in a another group. Understanding actions’ underlying meanings can help you avoid pointless arguments trying to sway someone to your side of an issue. Instead of judging and attacking and hoping others see your way, sympathize with others’ reasoning for their actions, don’t feed into toxic thoughts, and lead by example. You can’t make somebody value the things that you value. All you can do is try to gently demonstrate that valuing the things that you value makes the world around you better and people will want to move there in some intellectual or moral sense.