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Thursday, August 21, 2014

Judgmentalism strikes twice -- obeisity and grammar

Well I'm working on disagreements -- some pretty strong -- with two of my positions -- that we don't really control our weight no matter how much will power we have and that English grammar rules should for the most part be gotten away with.

Interesting but what I see in both cases is a symptom of the same disease -- judgmentalism, and in both cases doing harm.

I remember my mom when I was a kid after some relatives had left, remarking about one of them who was fat -- she said, "She tells me she has a hormone problem, but I don't believe it -- she just eats too much and is lazy."

That's judgmentalism and bigotry -- you look at someone, they are fat, ergo they stuff themselves all the time and are lazy.  Clearly overweight people are discriminated against in society in many ways, and it is just as bad as discriminating against someone because they are short or very tall.  Besides what they eat and whether or not they are lazy may be marginally relevant to what they are as a person, but probably not.

The other problem is the condemning people do of others who don't speak English according to the rule book.  The purpose of a language is communication.  Therefore if you successfully communicate with a minimum of effort from the reader or hearer, you are fine, and it is only when you are not understood or are ambiguous and could be misunderstood is it that you have made a mistake.

Rules are not even needed to avoid ambiguity.  Then you don't use rules to correct it but attack the ambiguity directly.

There are however two other reasons to know and follow the rules.  First is that often they are esthetically more pleasing to the reader.  It is much more pleasant to read well constructed paragraphs filled with complete sentences and well punctuated than it is to read other stuff.

The other thing is, right or not, there are those who will make prejudicial judgments about your writing or maybe dismiss or not pay attention to what you say because of the grammatical distraction.

This last is for our own behavior.  We need to train ourselves to not get upset or anything when others make "mistakes."  One may recall that revulsion is the second cause of our personal unhappiness, and this is a revulsion.

Judgmentalism is negativity.  When we think bad of someone we harm ourselves by having ugly thoughts.

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