On making judgments

Every judgment we pass on other people's work is a revelation about ourselves. If I say about a piece of music or a painting that I do not like it, it is a statement about myself, and my ability to appreciate or enjoy a particular example of such an art form. If I put down a book because I am not enjoying reading it, it is a revelation of my own capacity (or rather lack of it) to gain any benefit from this sort of book. Others may enjoy the book I am discarding, and I may simply not be in a position to do so, from the background of previous reading, previous studies, I have made thus far in my life.

The more I progress in life the more I become wary of expressing my dislike for anything or anyone.

Some examples of art forms can be dismissed without fear of error perhaps, but we are always potentially capable of error in the matter ourselves. When we consider how rarely a great artist or a great composer (judging greatness by the eventual verdict passed on them) was recognised as such in his lifetime, we can begin to learn the lesson about premature judgments. Very often greatness has turned out to be just too far forward to be appreciated by those alive at the time, but the next generation perceives that these works were exactly what was needed at the time to make the process of music-making or painting (or whatever) advance as it later did. The person turning the corner first is only appreciated fully later.

So now I begin to recognise certain things in terms of 'things I am not yet ready for'. I recognise I may never be ready for them. It may be the case that no one will ever be, because they are inherently worthless. But who am I to know?

So we make decisions: read or not read; listen to or not listen to; view or not view; and so on. But we do well to remember that in discarding something we may well be diminishing the potential for eventual enjoyment of something really worthwhile.

So far I have referred to art forms, as the orbit within which we all make judgments. But what about people, especially people in the public eye, such as political or religious leaders, or organisations (groups of people structurally united in some way)? We make decisions inevitably: join or not join, support or not support, and so on. Let us make these judgments warily, with what wisdom we have, with what knowledge we have. But let us always remember that with more knowledge, and perhaps with more wisdom, we might well decide otherwise. Let us press forward to gain more knowledge, and certainly more wisdom, with every passing year, remembering the dictum of Socrates, that the wiser he got the more he realised how little he knew.

When we come to moral matters, again we are in perilous territory. 'Judge not, that ye be not judged'. We are unlikely to know all the circumstances, all the predisposing events, the strength and persistence of the temptation. We may pass judgment on the act, recognising the murder as a murder, the rape as a rape, the theft as a theft, the lie as a lie, but we do well to say of the murderer, the rapist, the thief, the liar, 'there but for the grace of God go I.'