TOK Journal #11, Date of Writing: 01/06/10 - 08/07/2010, Topic: Do WE Have the RIGHT to Judge People?

I was thinking about a fight I had with someone I knew today. I got fairly angry at them, quite worked up about it and I formed an opinion on this person. I wished them less than plesent things, as you do when ya get pissed off at someone! But then I thought about what I knew, what I throught I knew, what I didn't know, what I couldn't know, my emotions and how they influenced my opinion....... and I thought. Do we, as humans, have the right to judge our fellow humans?

Opinions are formed so easily... it is quite often we formulate an opinion about someone based on very little knowledge - what they are wearing, for example, is a common basis for opinion. What they say is another. When I say opinons, I mean more judgements based on very little actual fact. We all do it, its just a question of weather or not we really have a right to do it.

I think it is the lack of fact - or at least the inevitible narrow scope of it - that is the real issue. We don't know everything that is going on in the heads and lives of anyone but ourselves, and some of us don't even know that much. We cannot judge a person as being 'good' or 'bad,' as being mentally 'healthy' or 'sick,' for example, with any degree of accuracy without knowing all of the background information relating to it, something that is virtually impossible to get from anyone else. On top of this, we also need to understand the state of mind or attitude of the person in question. It is simply impossible for anyone but that particular person to know all of these things, totally accuratly, at once. This is why we do not have the right to judge others.

In the bible, it is recorded that we as humans do not have the right to judge. All we should do is forgive, turn the other cheak and let God do the judging when that person dies and (apparently) goes to heven. I am not religous, but I see a seed of truth in that statement.