Judgment

We only have ourselves to blame for being judged. The passive voice a little paradoxical there? Perhaps.

Walk with me:

Open your eyes and you’ll see that there are people everywhere who just don’t give a damn. And, stone me for it, but most of the time they’re the people with the most obvious absurdities, the most vulnerable targets for a very presumptuous criticism.

But let’s take a look at the presumer: on what ground does his judgment rest? Perish for a moment the cultural relativity, the fashion’s fickleness, the ultimate superficiality of seeing simply surface. What I’m aiming at is something a little more obvious, that the critic has placed himself in a vituperative framework of his own free will, has submitted to this arbitrary, fluctuating value system on his own, while the sublimely unconscious victim is outside, in some foreign sphere of actual involvement with the world. And nine times out of nine-and-a-half, the critic never says a word, arduously forging those mental daggers that stay stabbed in his memory. Even if he has the gall to let loose, those insults stick with him, and he perpetuates the harshness of his own criteria—and the child slides on, to play another day.

We do not realize it (we fallen ones), but in judging others, we judge ourselves. Take note, ye resentful downtrodden, for the King of the Trivial will—I promise you—one day fall victim to his own knives. For in cracking that uncreative joke, he has unknowingly set a standard—a standard that he is now slave to fulfill. And time will pass, and he will get comfortable, thinking that he can have his life and murder it too…when just then he’ll see himself in an unflattering light, catch a laugh’s updraft, or—God forbid—discover himself taking self-forgetful interest in something, and that censor will swing back on its maker.

 

So who is really doing the judging? Near nothing gets said, and what does is interpreted through subtleties of tone and gesture—an incredibly unreliable science, given the variance of idiosyncrasy. We merely assume people’s critiques, in the end. And the blots of blatancy are easily shrugged, if you can see clearly. But returning to the original question—who then is doing the judging? Condemnation is usually a case where it really is all in your head, where imagination runs wild with improbabilities, pure fictions of concealed meaning and unheard gossip.

I will repeat ad infinitum, dear reader, for I want you to see this, to comprehend this obvious fact that has eaten away at me for years, all the more humiliatingly at the discovery of the insight pre-recorded and printed on the very leaves of the trees: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

The problem is a simple one, of values, reiterated now for thousands of years: where does your treasure lie? In your socially constructed (that is, false) self? Or in something else, something deeper and more essential to your character, a commitment by which you place yourself in a position of humility before your duty?

Here I grant your answer. Why is the world so critical? Who do you fault for your social anxiety? You have already guessed: yourself.

 

The social critic is damned to self-consciousness. And in this, God knows we should pity him, even as he cracks another witless curse, even as he laughs through the gates of the underworld. For he cannot escape the merciless gaze of his own idol; we can only hope that one day he will recognize it for what it is, in humility return to the world of things and people.

It is you, you lucky forsaken one, that should rejoice, for you are free from those chains: only be wary that you do not return slap for slap, take on the vestment of the maniac to avoid his gaze. That’s one thing you can’t do, because then the maniac is you, and you still have not escaped judgment. You’ve merely become a masochist.

The critic, oh remorseful maniac, why does he do it? Unfold the mysteries of the human mind! I see only an endless chain of inheritance, exacerbated by the frustration of the victim’s freedom from himself. For that is truly why he grinds you, meek and mild one—he is taking his revenge on you for not being him.