Judging Tigers

 

You said:

I've heard about my quick post that said that it is judgmental to think someone is judgmental. Ah -- this is a self-referential maxim on the general maxim to not be judgmental, and self-referential pronouncements often lead to trouble. Obviously we must make judgments, about everything, as we as we skip through life, picking safe stones to step on and keeping out of the cold water. We think, oh that stone looks slippery and that one is not stable, and so on. This illustrates the difference between judging and being judgmental. I judge the stones, but not on a moral basis, but just on how well they suit the purpose. Seeking revenge, striving to enhance personal honor, hating, having a grudge, are all extreme manifestations of being judgmental. It involves assigning value judgments ("good" and "bad") to behavior and people and things (of course we know things cannot be good or bad, so when we do this we are personifying them unrealistically). Christians have the Biblical command to not be judgmental, that judgment belongs to God. This would imply that such views of someone (that they are lazy, or dishonest, or whatever) should not be held and that doing so is something of a sin. The reason given though is not very good. Because God is the final judge doesn't mean we shouldn't make our personal decisions about people. No I don't think there is much evil about being judgmental. What is wrong with it is that it is unhealthy. It makes us unhappy and disappointed and so on. It has little effect on the person we are judging.

ChatGPT said:

I think you’re circling something important, and you’ve already done most of the hard conceptual work by separating judging from being judgmental. That distinction really is the hinge.

Your stepping-stone example is excellent because it shows how unavoidable judgment is. To live at all is to discriminate: this is safer than that, this is reliable, this is not, this course of action is likely to end badly. If “judging” were forbidden in any strong sense, paralysis would follow. Even the Gospel injunctions presuppose discernment; otherwise “by their fruits you shall know them” would be meaningless advice.

Where the trouble starts is exactly where you put it: when judgment stops being instrumental and becomes moralized and personalized. Judging stones is about fitness for purpose. Being judgmental about people tends to slide into global evaluations—this person is lazy, dishonest, contemptible—rather than limited, situational assessments—this person did not do what they promised; I should not rely on them for this task. The former hardens into identity claims; the latter remains practical.

On the self-referential maxim—“it is judgmental to think someone is judgmental”—you’re right that it illustrates the instability of absolutist prohibitions. Any universal ban on judging collapses into contradiction the moment it is applied. What usually happens in practice is that people smuggle in a moral hierarchy under another name: I don’t judge, but people who judge are bad. That’s not moral progress; it’s a change of vocabulary.

Your reading of the Christian position strikes me as historically sounder than the popular version. “Judgment belongs to God” was never a claim that humans should suspend evaluation; it was a warning against usurping ultimate moral authority—against final condemnation, not against everyday discernment. Even Aquinas is quite clear that prudential judgment about others’ actions is necessary for justice and community life. The popular modern reading turns a theological humility claim into a psychological impossibility.

Where I think your conclusion sharpens things nicely is in shifting the critique of being judgmental away from evil and toward harm. Chronic moral judgment corrodes the judge more than the judged. It entrenches resentment, fuels disappointment, and distorts perception. Worse, it tends to simplify the world into moral cartoons, which is intellectually lazy even when it feels morally strenuous. As you note, it also usually fails at its supposed purpose: it rarely reforms the other person.

One possible refinement: being judgmental is not merely unhealthy because it makes us unhappy; it is unhealthy because it replaces curiosity with certainty. Once someone is “that kind of person,” learning stops. And that, more than moral error, is what makes judgmentalism such a dead end—psychologically, socially, and intellectually.

So I’d say your position isn’t that judgment is fine and judgmentalism is bad, full stop. It’s that judgment is a tool, while judgmentalism is a habit. Tools are chosen and put down as needed; habits shape the person who has them. That seems like a distinction worth defending.

You said:

The Buddhist story that has him saying that a certain prince who thrived on and spent a lot of time on the hunt would be reborn a tiger was not a judgment that his karma would cause lower, animal rebirth, but that it would cause him to be what he wanted to be.

ChatGPT said:

Yes — that story fits perfectly with the distinction you’ve been drawing, and it shows how alien Buddhist moral psychology really is to the Western “judge–condemn–punish” reflex.

In that account, the Buddha is not passing sentence on the prince in any moralistic sense. There is no tone of you are bad, therefore you will be reduced. Instead, it is almost descriptive, even clinical: the prince’s mind is being trained, day after day, to delight in stalking, killing, domination, the sensory world of the hunt. Given that training, a tiger rebirth is not a demotion but a continuation. Karma here is not a courtroom; it is a momentum.

That’s why your phrasing — he would be what he wanted to be — is exactly right. The rebirth reflects inclination, not moral bookkeeping. In Buddhist terms, intention (cetana) is shaping perception and desire, and rebirth simply provides an environment in which those habits make sense. No cosmic scolding is required.

This also reinforces your earlier point about judgmentalism being unhealthy rather than “evil.” The Buddha’s stance is diagnostic, not accusatory. It’s closer to saying: If you spend your life training as a musician, you will likely live as one; if you spend your life training as a predator, you will inhabit a predator’s world. There’s no outrage in that, only causality.

Notice how different this is from the Christian popular imagination of judgment. In the Buddhist story, nothing external is imposed. The universe does not do something to the prince; the prince carries himself forward. That dissolves the very emotional fuel that makes judgmentalism attractive — indignation, superiority, the pleasure of condemnation.

It also connects back to your stone-stepping example. The Buddha is “judging” in the same way you judge stones: given these conditions, this outcome follows. He is not assigning worth to the prince as a person; he is observing the trajectory of a mind. And because of that, compassion remains intact. One can feel sorrow for the narrowing of possibilities without feeling contempt.

So the story ends up being a quiet rebuke to judgmentalism without ever forbidding judgment. It says, in effect: stop moralizing outcomes and start noticing tendencies. Once you do that, blame becomes largely irrelevant — and with it, much of the psychic damage that judgmentalism causes.