Babies & Being: A Spirit of Non Judgment
How can any of us possibly be in a position to judge being for being being?
A baby’s born – a unique set of genetic predispositions enters a unique environment. Even identical twins growing up with the same parents don’t end up becoming identical persons. The complex paths of their experiences over time, even within the same family, are nowhere near identical, and result in the creation of two unique human beings despite their similarities. In infancy, a person’s potential is vast.
Now, picture Adolf Hitler as an infant. Yes, I know – it’s hard to get around the moustache. Yet surely it wasn’t congenital…
And surely that baby only could have developed into the Adolf Hitler the world has come to know and hate under the specific familial, social and historical circumstances in which he found himself.
Or picture a William Wordsworth or Robert Frost born one or two centuries from now, when the likelihood of finding woods to stop by on a snowy evening will be remote. Someone with the potential to become a great nature poet can’t become one after we’ve decimated our environment to the point where people lack access to relatively unspoiled nature.
Isn’t every one of us a kind of crystallization-in-context – something that develops when a certain set of genetic predispositions enters a specific and highly complex set of circumstances?
We need to make moral discriminations about human conduct as harmful or helpful, good or bad. But who are we to judge the very being of another – or ourselves – as either “good” or “evil?” And not because good and bad don’t exist; moral discrimination concerning human actions and failures to act, and on a global scale, is arguably needed more urgently today than ever.
But because when you look around for someone’s essential self to judge – where’d it go??
A baby’s born – a unique set of genetic predispositions enters a unique environment. Even identical twins growing up with the same parents don’t end up becoming identical persons. The complex paths of their experiences over time, even within the same family, are nowhere near identical, and result in the creation of two unique human beings despite their similarities. In infancy, a person’s potential is vast.
Now, picture Adolf Hitler as an infant. Yes, I know – it’s hard to get around the moustache. Yet surely it wasn’t congenital…
And surely that baby only could have developed into the Adolf Hitler the world has come to know and hate under the specific familial, social and historical circumstances in which he found himself.
Or picture a William Wordsworth or Robert Frost born one or two centuries from now, when the likelihood of finding woods to stop by on a snowy evening will be remote. Someone with the potential to become a great nature poet can’t become one after we’ve decimated our environment to the point where people lack access to relatively unspoiled nature.
Isn’t every one of us a kind of crystallization-in-context – something that develops when a certain set of genetic predispositions enters a specific and highly complex set of circumstances?
We need to make moral discriminations about human conduct as harmful or helpful, good or bad. But who are we to judge the very being of another – or ourselves – as either “good” or “evil?” And not because good and bad don’t exist; moral discrimination concerning human actions and failures to act, and on a global scale, is arguably needed more urgently today than ever.
But because when you look around for someone’s essential self to judge – where’d it go??
Posted by Paul at 12:14 AM Permalink
19 Comments:
and the bad
have made us look sad,
we are desperate
and desirous of something new.
we have put animals in the zoo,
we have blow the earth-through,
stuck things around with glue,
and finally ruled with humbug virtue.
it is time for a change,
time to move on with age,
time to salvage,
time for something agape.
unless we can forge unity,
we will not gain immunity
against our own animosity-
the love-hate of humanity.
born undiscriminated,
growing up discriminated,
trying to live emancipated,
in death elevated.
I agree. We r all so similar yet so unique. That makes it very wrong for us to judge someone else.
Keshi.
KESHI: Exactly – similar and unique. I think one thing that can lead to judgmentalism is when people take the “similar” aspect to mean identical, as in “I would never have done that; therefore he/she should not have done that.”
CRYSTAL: I’m an agnostic on free will/determinism. Here, I’m suggesting that the self, which can feel so very much as if it exists separately, solidly, and in distinction from its surroundings, really doesn’t. Guess you could say we’re each fully “embedded” with the rest of the universe.
It’s possible that a degree of choice is an aspect of what comes into being with each human life; without a doubt, the situational factors and the predispositions that we’re born with are huge factors when it comes to the lives we end up leading. In relation to choice, if choice there be, those other factors narrow or expand the range and types of choices that are available to us.
I think that people do have a choice of how to act until they have made the decision, then it couldn't have happened any other way.
PECOS B: And working in the schools, I've seen this on the playgrounds – kids today don’t seem to organize themselves for play the way earlier generations did.
HAZZBUZZ: At the same time, your example suggests larger social forces influencing individual choices – in an earlier time, racism was more generally acceptable than it was later…
That’s why, personally, it seems clear to me that there are powerful non-choice variables that affect each of us, whereas the existence and degree of free choice strikes me as speculative given that we can never go back in time for a “do-over” to learn whether we actually could or could not have done differently than we did. My feeling is that we do have some degree of choice in some matters, but I only see this as my personal sense of the matter that’s based mainly on how I’ve personally experienced and understood my own life – i.e., pretty subjective…
Even if we did all have free will, some people have a headstart in making the best choices and others have a terrible handicap, so it's still not fair to judge.
All that said, I do believe in free will/agency - there are a million tiny choices that go into developing the moral muscle that is required to make good choices. Some avoid the workout.
What we can't judge is the difficulty of the task they faced.
How much worse to know that they could have saved themselves.
And you know me well enough Paul, to know that I mean these things in the purely secular meanings.
HAYDEN: Your comment strikes me as in line with Hayden’s and my reply to her. Maybe instead of “free” choice or will it should be called “influenced choice” or “somewhat free” will – but even then, we wouldn’t know for sure because of the no do-overs thing.
Now there was a modest man who was not cut out for the dirty negative ad reality of modern American politics.
He didn't like to draw attention to his accomplishments it was (in your best Dana Carvey Mimic) The Right Thing To Do.
We forget that Saddam's Army was brutalizing the Kuwaiti people and that Iraq had the 4th largest army in the world..which was destroyed in 100 hours...but left intact so that Iran could not sweep through.
Besides the Administration were certain that the Army would revolt and the people would rise up against the Tyrant..sounds oddly familiar to his son's administrative wishlist?
Good Ole Jimmy Baker had the best reflection. He said that when we had Saddam on the run why didn't we go all the way to Baghdad and end it..
"well guess what, nobody ever asks me that anymore"
Bush decided that it was imperitive to strike back at Saddam's aggression. He judged that it needed to be done because the kowtowing to Hitler in the 30s did nothing to duissuade him from conquering the world.
Evil is easy to spot, what we need to improve upon, is our ability to celebrate the good. The new 24/7 Mediarazzi sells more 'papers' writing about evil and they are responsible for exagerating how terrible the world is. There are far more good people than bad..or you and I wouldn't be here chatting.
True -
its like u can say several good words in front of a kid n swear once n it will pick up the swear word n say it to every person it comes across!!
but ultimately when we are mature enuf either we can live wid choices made for us or start makin our own! personally i found dat i was not a perfectly good person so i stopped judging ppl! n its better this way.........
p.s. hope u are feeling better!:)
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