But I want friction, anger, fight. And I was trying to trace this today. What feelings lead me down that path? How do they start? What other possibilities exist? Arguing is not wrong, but compulsivity is unhealthy.
Arguing consists in large measure in judging compulsively, in labeling things right or wrong, positions and people as right or wrong, defensible or indefensible.
And it hit me: the process of judgement is related to the primitive instinct of in/out, safe/dangerous. It is related to the animal instincts that kept, and sometimes still keep, us safe, that keep us aware and switched on when we need to be.
As such, it is–without me knowing enough to be more specific–related to the fight/flight/freeze response. Fear and judgement go together.
If we posit, as I do, that feelings precede explanation (Existence precedes essence, as a severely traumatized man once said), then compulsive judgement is a consistent outcome of developmental and other trauma. So too would be the inability to judge. Hyper and hypo arousal.
So I manage my own fear by judging others, as well as–more or less continuously–judging myself. It has been a not particularly funny joke I tell myself for some time that I’m fucked no matter what I do. There is and can be no right answer to any situation concerning my emotions and behavior. That is likely another reason I like abstraction so much. There resolution is possible. I land, or crystallize, my fear, my generalized anxiety.
But if we imagine ourselves as wild horses, running on a primitive and open prairie, we would not–even if we were talking horses–spend too much time on ethics, or political theory, or how to develop the prairie and get rich. We would live in primary experience.
One could say that the cultivation of fear which has so characterized the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions has happened pari pasu with the ubiquity of strong moral judgements.
And I was wondering today if one could speak of “trauma cultures”, where children are acculturated through fear and violence, and who then develop those traits in their own children. Children who are traumatized will naturally gravitate towards being highly judgmental. Their culture will reflect that, and in a cycle, create it. Fearful kids become judgmental adults who foster fearful kids.
There are so many things in the modern world which are CLOSE to important truths. It is true that dogmatism is bad, and that most moral situations have many possibly valid interpretations. It is true that competing dogmatisms–competing fears disguised as absolute judgments–often lead to violence. Violence, too, is of course on the continuum with the already-activated fight or flight impulse.
One could view judgement as a sort of attack.
I fear I am meandering, but hopefully there is something useful here.
I will add that my own moral philosophy on judgement–moral decisions must be local, necessary, and imperfect–is quite consistent with a judgement which is not compulsive. In some way, I saw all this long ago.
I have an odd mind that is perennially thinking thoughts I don’t have anyone else to share with. That is where you, silent internet, come in. Thank you!!!!!
Oh, and this: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/judgement-or-judgment/ I was judging my spelling, but it’s apparently all good.