Judgment vs Judgmental

“Judgment is the prerequisite for decision making. We should pass judgment but we must not be judgmental.”

To judge, especially in personal, social, and even philosophical mindsets has been incorrectly portrayed as a bad characteristic. Out of date philosophical teachings, such as the infamous Carl Jung quote “Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge”, is a clear example of this incorrect sensationalist mindset. This quote clearly presents how, many subscribe to an incorrect ideology, without examining the factuality of it, just because it sounds sophisticated on the surface or because it was uttered by a famous person.

Thinking is the first in-line process for any activity we undertake; and before we act, we must think to evaluate the data, information, and facts that lead us to that action. Once we think about the facts of a situation, we then pass judgment on the merits of the information, so that we can take action or abstain from acting relative to that evaluation. Therefore, judgment is an intermediate necessity to make a conclusion to behave.

Being judgmental means to make a decision and judging without having all the data, information, and facts at hand; therefore, being judgmental is often associated with ignorance. However, passing judgment or making a judgment is based on proper evaluation of information and facts in order to make a decision to act or inact. After all, that is how our legal system is set up. The judge evaluates the information, the merits, and the facts of a case or a situation, in order to render judgment to make a decision and to issue a verdict. This is why Theory of Self-Relativity advocates what it has termed as factual-thinking, so that we can evaluate everything that we deal with based on facts and evidence and not based on preferred-ideologies or comforting-emotions, even if on the surface it might seem to be logical and true.