I Say, Go Ahead and Be Judgmental

[Whispersecret]

Has the pressure to be politically correct become so great that we're now afraid to call things normal?

I bring this up because on several other threads I've found that people seem to be hesitant about labeling something as normal, or slutty, or whatever.

First, aside from the title of my thread, normality is not necessarily a judgement. If you are normal, you are like MOST people. That doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you if you're not like most people. Everyone is probably abnormal in at least one facet of their lives.

Second, more in line with the theme of the thread, do people no longer see any value in judging? Or have we become so afraid to judge because being judgmental is now something to be avoided at all costs?

I'm not familiar with the Bible, but Endlessly and Deborah can surely verify this, but isn't there some quote about "not judging, lest ye be judged?" I suppose this is true, but I think that society will deteriorate if people do not judge.

In an extreme example, if we did not look on kiddie porn as wrong, then pedophiles would think that what they did was acceptable. As a society I think we need to clarify what is WRONG and not acceptable, and I think that as a society we are getting so permissive that, like any old fogey, I wonder what kind of world my children and grandchildren will be living in.

Someone started a thread about whether they were slutty or not. I can't remember who it was, I don't care who it was, and I'm not saying they are slutty or not. BUT, I think that the woman was looking for reassurance that she wasn't slutty and perhaps some explanation of what was considered slutty and what wasn't. She did get the reassurance, but no one was willing to put forth a solid definition. That could be because something like being slutty is such a gray area; there are many factors to take into account. But if society doesn't draw some sort of fuzzy line on proper/decent/correct? behavior, then people don't know where to curb their personal actions. See? I don't even know what type of adjective to use in describing the type of behavior that is beneficial for society.

Am I the only "deviant" who has noticed this trend? Maybe I'm just getting old. I've found that having children has changed my views on quite a lot of social issues because my focus is not necssarily so much on myself now, but on them and their future and the kind of men I want them to grow to be. (That is, of course, not to accuse any of you childless people out there of being selfish.)

 

[Skitten]

I agree that having children I think changes a lot of us when it happens we want the world to be safe for them no matter what it takes. As for being judgemental I think that everyone is to a point, yes in the Bible it tells us not to judge but we are all human and it is hard not too. As for theese people who are child molesters and kiddie porn I think that they should lock them up and throw away the key or worse the abuse theese kids and then it is up to their families to make it right again and then it never is the are hurt for the rest of their lives so being judgemental is just human behavior and we are all not perfect I think we all try to do the right thing but sometimes it is hard.

 

[Endlessly]

Yeah, that's in there. Along with plenty of stuff that says God already did the judging and you need to act accordingly..

My beliefs are FAR from popular, and I'm going to get blasted for them I'm sure; but I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with you that people are so damned worried about being PC that they refuse to stand for anything anymore.

I find that unitheism or pantheism is something people think can explain every fucking thing in the universe.. All gods are one god, nobody's wrong, let's all smile and be tolerant. I'm sick of political correctness and tolerance.. Sometimes it seems like a religion that doesn't even have the decency to call itself such.

My beliefs refuse to let me see much grey, as much as I'd like to, in the area of sins and such.. And to be honest, I almost turned around and headed back to atheism when I became christian because I couldn't deal with the sheer amount of people MY GOD wanted to send to hell.

What sucks the most.. is that right is right and wrong is wrong, and there's no degrees of either. People don't like to be told that they're wrong.. And so tolerance and grey areas came up. But the thing is, you can be polite and convinced of your position.. But you CANNOT be tolerant and utterly convinced. Being tolerant is admitting someone else might be right, and if you have the right answer, and KNOW you do, you can't be tolerant.

Sucks, doesn't it? I know this is a little off-topic, but it's something I've been wanting to get off my chest. As you can see from my posts lately, these ideas of black and white have really been getting to me lately.. Then again, I took a personality profile that told me these kinds of ideas and questions will plague me my entire life.

Go figure.

 

[Siren]

Good Thread Whispersecret

 

[RonG]

All rise for Judge Hathorne . . .

Being judgemental is a good thing and certainly a necessity for raising kids. The trick is in allowing oneself, I think, to be able to reach a judgement but having enough restraint not to impose a sentence.

Concepts of right and wrong do exist without bringing in the concept of a universal creator. Unfortunately, freeing people of the "tyranny" of public religion made it harder to reach a social consensus on good v. bad.

Normal is such a fluid concept and too broad a term. I personally find it easier to deal with right/wrong.

 

[Jonas]

Whispersecret: OK, I see your point. Yes one must have lines drawn and standards set. I have my standards, however they evolve and grow as I do. They are influenced by the actions of other people, but they are MY standards, my code.

I don't feel that it would be right to enforce my standards on anyone else....and I will not have some one elses forced on me. The example you raised about kiddie porn is different. That is against the law. The law established by the people, for dam good reason. How many sex partners a young woman man have is not covered by law.

You will influence your children as you see is correct. Of course they will be influenced by many others that you have no control over. You must eventually let your children develope their own code, standards, normal.. or whatever you would call it. A good concerned parent like you should have little to fear. I'm sure your kids will make wise choices.

Btw..how many sex partners do you consider amounts to slutdom?

 

[Unclebill]

Exercise Your Best Judgement!

Judgement is necessary to live one's life period. Judgement is the basis of intelligent choices which may well determine one's survival. It is critical to teach your progeny judgement to assure their survival as well.

Siren, what's the point or purpose of judgement if there is no condemnation of that you judge as wrong or evil?

Endlessly, that's why I am an atheist; religion asked me to deal with too many contradictory proclamations. I found Ayn Rand, studied her philosophical works, could not identify and contradictory ideas, and I was hooked. The hardest part of her ideology for most people seems to be that it requires you to think and act consistently and rationally. That's just too much of a challenge for some.

Whispersecret, I understand you point about the politically correct. I my judgement, the major problem with the most vocal of the politically correct is that they preach acceptance rather than tolerance of the most outrageous, offensive and egregious behavior of a social nature and are very militant about it.

Yet while preaching tolerance (while trying in fact to force acceptance) they are the most intolerant assholes you're ever likely to encounter. Their "tolerance" doesn't hold when you disagree with them, especially if you make you opinion of disagreement known in such a way as to attract public attention, and especially if you attract public support. At that point you become a threat to their efforts to coerce acceptance of the outrageous and character assassination, libel, slander and any other means of intimidation to stifle your difference of opinion becomes legitimate to their cause.

The idea of "judge not lest ye be judged" is nothing more than a request for a moral blank check, i. e., if you ignore my wrongs I'll ignore yours and we'll all be happy since no one will acknowledge that wrongs are being done. This creates chaos and there's far too much of it in evidence today.

The key to valid judgement, however, is to base judgement on reality, i. e., rational values. Hypocrisy must also be considered when evaluating another's judgement. As an example, how much respect do you have for Bill Clinton's judgement and declaration that someone is a liar? Or for Hillary's advice to a woman to leave her philandering husband/boyfriend, etc?

And, no, it's not that you're getting old, you're maturing (or aging like fine wine!)

RonG, normal is a mathematical concept and is not so fluid. It is based on sample distribution and 'normal' falls between defined points on the distribution curve. Normal is not a reasonable basis for declaring something bad or wrong, merely different.

As an example, homosexuality is not normal, i. e., 90-95% of humans are heterosexual. The remaining 10-5% are outside the normal but that does not make them evil or bad. There are evil, vicious homosexuals but that also applies to hetero, bi's, Americans, Chinese, etc. There are the bad, vicious and evil people within all groups. That only makes the individuals bad, not the group.

Unfortunately, we have too many people who take the behaviors of a few from a group and use that as their rationale for hating, demeaning and persecution.

… I don't feel that it would be right to enforce my standards on anyone else....and I will not have some one elses forced on me. The example you raised about kiddie porn is different. That is against the law. The law established by the people, for dam good reason. How many sex partners a young woman man have is not covered by law.

Jonas, don't fall into the trap of 'it's the law' or 'it's against the law' as justification [child pornography example]. That's not a rational basis for anything. Politicians pass laws all the time and frequently don't consider the principles they violate nor the impact of their actions. They have passed laws making theft legal. Does that make it right?

Kiddie porn is and should be illegal. The rational basis is that it sexualizes children before they have developed to a point in their lives where they are capable of dealing with sex. It is a crime perpetrated by adults against children and if there's a case where the child was not harmed, I'm unaware of it and frankly, would be suspicious of anyone who tried to convince me it could ever be good for the child. We must as responsible parents protect our children from unreasonable dangers and risks. Granted we cannot protect them from everything. And if we could, what sort of helpless, inept, aimless adults would they become?

Certain threats and challenges are necessary for them to learn to cope with life. I think that being overly protective is as bad as inadequately protective. The difference is when the child will suffer, as a child or as an adult. If the suffering occurs as a child, at least there's a chance that a reasonably stable adult capable of coping with life's tribulations will result.

[BBtw..how many sex partners do you consider amounts to slutdom? [/B]

It's not a number, IMNTBHO, it's an attitude. Being totally indiscriminant (exercising no selectivity beyond "wanna fuck") as to sexual partners is more of the defining criteria for me.

 

[*Eve*]

I think the problem is that people try too hard to be popualr and in the process don't tell each other how they really feel in order to earn brownie points. It's not so much as political correctness, it's about being in other people's good graces.

Hey Unclebill!!!

 

[RonG]

I feel a Felix moment coming on . . .

RonG, normal is a mathematical concept and is not so fluid. It is based on sample distribution and 'normal' falls between defined points on the distribution curve. Normal is not a reasonable basis for declaring something bad or wrong, merely different.

Bear with my excitement - I so rarely get to trot out my hard earned knowledge of statistics and probability theory. Normal, in the sense of a distribution of a single random variable, does indeed take on defined and predictable behavior. But even with the Normal, any researcher gets to select his own critical value for his hypothesis test (ie, 1%, 5%, or 10% constitutes an outlier, based on your comfort level of mistakenly identifying a true outlier with the rest of the population, otherwise known as a Type I error or Producer Risk).

But "normal" in the pop culture sense is more of a multinomially distributed concept - there are any number of reasonable combinations of behaviors that can be considered a "normal" classification. My point on the word normal is that it relies much too much on the individual's sense of what constitutes a critically small group, hence it is a fluid concept. What is normal in my environment or comfort level may be abnormal for you. But kiddie porn is still wrong, even if one is at a NAMBLA meeting.

In summary, I agree with your conclusion but I did fail to distinguish between the mathematical concept of Gaussian Normality and the mainstream connotation of normal. God, I need a good drink after that and I suspect the class could use one also. I keep a bottle of Ol' Rebel Yell in the Faculty Lounge.

 

[Laurel]

The trick is in allowing oneself, I think, to be able to reach a judgement but having enough restraint not to impose a sentence.

Bingo! Well said.

 

[Endlessly]

*blinks at Unclebill*

Hon.. You can't find hypocrisy in Ayn Rand? I was an objectivist too-- still get the newsletter from ARI, even if I don't read it-- but it required me to have too much ego. I'm not good at that. Besides, it's my humble opinion we should work to make the world better.. serving eachother and not ourselves. It's that damned Christian thought process. (Note that I don't say 'upbringing.' that bugs me. I was raised ANYthing but Christian and chose it on my own.)

Randian is listed in the thesarus with the words "hypocritical, oxymoron, and paradox." Why?

Objectivism in a nutshell, paraphrasing Howard Roark in the Fountainhead: "You already made a mistake, by asking me what to do. Don't ever asky anyone. Ask yourself."

So we should all rely on our own understanding as is brought to us by our own thought processes.

Not on Jesus'.

Not on Ayn Rand's.

DOH.. See the paradox?

 

[Hullo_nurse]

Damn!! This is some deep shit!!

"Second, more in line with the theme of the thread, do people no longer see any value in judging? Or have we become so afraid to judge because being judgmental is now something to be avoided at all costs?"


I think deep down inside we are ALL judgemental of others. It is just that some of us openly share these judgements and some do not.

I think that our way of thinking changes as we go along in life. I used to work for Travelers and Immigrants Aid in the HIV Case Management office. 99% of my clients were gay. 75% or more were drug users. I got involved with a Needle Exchange program. We would give the drug users clean syringes for their dirty ones. Back then my judgement was that if they are going to use drugs they deserved to do it safely. That they deserved to be able to do this illegal activity and be protected from sharing needles and giving/getting HIV or Hepatitis or some other deadly disease. I don't know if I feel that way anymore. Isn't that like giving kiddie porn people the condoms to fuck the underaged?

I don't know if I really have a point here, except to say that we have become toooo tolerant and too free to do whatever we want in this society. Too afraid to make waves and stand up for what we as individuals believe in.

 

[CreamyLady]

I had one heckuva time on jury duty. It's the Libra moon thing, being able to see all sides of the question, and finding validity in every point of view.

But being judgmental -- setting oneself up as actually having the RIGHT to judge another's bad habits, or lifestyle, or existence -- seems to me to be intrusive.

Standards are a very subjective, individual thing. Most people have a line they will not cross within themselves. The position of the line, however, varies from person to person. Who am I to tell someone that they aren't stringent enough, or are too rough?

When people go too far in their behavior, they generally have to face consequences. Up to that point, however, I have absolutely nothing to say about it. I don't think anyone else does, either, but maybe that's me, being judgmental.

 

[Never]

Back then my judgment was that if they are going to use drugs they deserved to do it safely. That they deserved to be able to do this illegal activity and be protected from sharing needles and giving/getting HIV, Hepatitis, or some other deadly disease. I don't know if I feel that way anymore. Isn't that like giving kiddie porn people the condoms to fuck the under aged?

In my mind, raping children and taking heroin are miles apart. I frown on both but I'd only hand a death sentence to one.
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