I have a dillema. I am an unabashed meglomaniac. Essentially this means that I believe I am God or at the least; godlike.
On the other hand, as an all knowing old school diety I am aware of the need and benefits of humility.
I am lacking the gene for that behavior. I recognize however that the end result of humility is lack of judgment. Lack of judgment in the sense of judging others by my standards, not that I am incapable of healthy and effective choices.
So I replace humility with the effect of humility which is to accept that all actions are equal. That choices and behaviors have no value other than the worth one places on them internally.
Most of the time exhibiting a non-judgmental mindset is easy and natural for me. But the other day I heard one of the many stories of how one human has treated anouther human. I am not thinking on a global scale here, I am not talking war or genocide which is easily understood and internalized without malice. I am referring here to those common behaviors between individuals, the micro-evil that we all know of. Insert here ==> an event that happened to you or a friend of something you feel was evil done to you or by you.
Those are the situations with which I struggle to accept.
On the other hand, is there no places for judgment in the human experiance. In fact, should any behavior, even humility, be taken to its extreme? Even physics fails at its' most extreme endpoints.
4 comments:
I'm not sure exactly what your point is here. But I would like to know. Let's start with this: I don't believe that humility is a lack of judgment at all. We are CONSTANTLY judging - it is our nature as humans and it is also a necessity to make choices. Without judgment we would never be able to make choices. I believe that the best choices are made from a place of the most UNDERSTANDING, however. We must truly try to understand a situation or a person before we judge. And in order to truly understand, we must be humble and willing to accept that there are many, many other realities besides our own that we need to be able to understand.
So, in my opinion, humility means a broader understanding. Understanding means diminished ego and open-mindedness. Once we have achieved that level of understanding, we are in the best positions to make judgments. It's not a question of whether or not we judge, because we ALL judge and it is necessary. It's how GOOD we are at judging. But only you can ultimately be the judge of that.
:)
Thank you for clarifying my thoughts. You wrote clealy what I hamfistedly attempted to express.
But the conflict remains: There was a case in the news some time back, a man did something awful to a young girl. Even now, months later, I am utterly disgusted by what I know this man did.
So while in general I work to understand people's choices, and in general I can express a non-judgmental outlooking...like having banned the words, good and bad, right and wrong, should and could, from my vocabulary, in this instance my brain fights to label this man as evil and be done with it.
And anouther section of my brain screams, "no, this is exactly the situation where you have to try and understand. It's easy to understand the normal and mediocre, its monsters like this that force you to declare if understanding a human is a core part of who you are or just something you tell girls when you're flirting."
Does any of that make sense or did I just muck it up again?
It makes sense. You struggle with the challenges, like all of us. It is more comforting to dismiss those we find abhorrent as "evil" - it makes dealing with them more palatable. No one is saying you need to be Mother Teresa here...even she had a crisis of faith.
I think what we're dealing with more here is...the fact that you claimed initially to be an "unabashed megalomaniac"? I think that is something more worth discussing than the judgment we are going to strike on pedophiliacs or Hitler.
Right? You believe you are "godlike"? I think this is a more relative, pressing issue at hand.
Why is it a more pressing issue? I suffer furious joy as an awesome human. If more people experianced non-judgmental meglomania the world would be vastly more fufilling. Essentially it means: I am perfect and so are you.
That's why I enjoy your blog, you're tapped into your perfection
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