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Well, I'm not really interested in judging others (beyond ways that are immediately useful). Fundamentally, people base their judgment not on their own, spontaneously generated values, but on the values they were taught by society. I don't think it's possible or even worth trying to truly escape from those values, though of course you can react against them superficially or engage in dialogue with them.
I don't believe you (90% of the time when Alice criticises Bob for being "judgemental" all she means is that Bob routinely expresses judgements that Alice doesn't agree with), but even if that really was the case, I think you should be.
That's silly. Of course you should make a judgment on the people you live with and whether they will steal from you or not. That is an example of a very useful judgment. Judging people on the TV is not useful.
Well, I would counter that forming assessments of people is a muscle, and if you don't use it, it might atrophy. That's the whole reason behind "learning from other people's mistakes" or "learning to recognise red flags": recognising that behaviour X is toxic and harmful in a person you don't know personally will make it easier to identify when someone you DO know starts exhibiting that behaviour. (Who knows, maybe there are people who started watching My 600 Lb Life for entirely base, ignoble reasons, but came away from it better equipped to spot warning signs of problem eating in their own friends and family.) If you only ever express judgements of people when being on the wrong side of a judgement call could have a severe negative impact on your life, but remain stubbornly agnostic at all other times, you run a severe risk of making the wrong judgement call when it really matters, or perhaps even failing to recognise that you're in a situation in which a judgement call is required. (Basically https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N2pENnTPB75sfc9kb/outside-the-laboratory and https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/09/constant-vigilance/)
Imagine two social workers, one who is extremely credulous and endlessly forgiving for all the bullshit excuses her junkie asshole clients offer her (after all, it doesn't affect her one way or the other); the other who sees through their bullshit instantly and tells them to get their shit together or she's cutting their social welfare. Which of these do you think is more likely to get ripped off when her own son gets into meth?
Or to use a less emotionally loaded example: imagine two employers, Alice and Bob, who make hiring decisions in their respective firms. Sometimes Alice's contacts in other firms will send her a CV and say "I'm thinking of hiring this candidate, what do you think of him?", and Alice always does her level best to provide an honest and fair assessment of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses according to their CV. The same thing happens to Bob, and he generally just tells the contact what he thinks they want to hear - after all, hiring decisions in another firm have no impact upon him personally. I would argue that Bob is far more likely to make a bad hiring decision in his own firm than Alice is, as by passing up valuable opportunities to assess candidates in other firms, his skill in this area will be more poorly honed than Alice's.
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I went to a Catholic primary school and was inculcated with a set of values on how I ought to judge people. More recently, as an adult, I have been bombarded with messaging about how I ought to judge people, coming from a woke perspective.
Truthfully, I don't really think either inculcation attempt was successful. I'm not claiming that I'm some kind of independent freethinker who Does His Own Research unlike you #sheeple. Rather, I think that, to the extent that I judge people, I'm relying heavily on heuristics bestowed on me by natural selection. Obese people, junkies and certain other groups inspire a primitive disgust reaction in me which feels deeply innate, an instinctive knee-jerk response similar to the reflexive stomach-turning sensation you get when you smell vomit or rotten food.
(Not that I'm saying all of my instinctive disgust reactions are appropriate or reasonable! There was a thread this week asking why some people feel uncomfortable around people with Down's syndrome, and I will cop to that - I know it's not fair of me to have that reaction. Likewise people born with horrific facial deformities.)
Maybe when I judge people on a higher level of cognitive reasoning, that's something that can be consciously inculcated or taught. I don't really know, though. A lot of my moral reasoning seems to ultimately come down to "what's good for the goose is good for the gander", an evolutionary heuristic we share with chimpanzees.
I concede that in addition to society's values, you also inherit a bit from evolution. Either way, you are not forming your values. For example, you say that it's not fair of you to have a negative reaction to DS people. But you didn't invent that notion of fairness independently.
No, I didn't independently of my own accord arrive at the conclusion that you should treat people with Down's syndrome with respect. Probably there are very few people who can truly claim to be moral innovators in this regard.
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Catholics aren't big on Matthew 7:1 I guess?
Yes, but there's still much judging to be done. Luther and Calvin are clear.
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John 7:24
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I don't buy it. Society pounds me with messaging about how I shouldn't judge, that people could be fat for any reason or no reason at all, that we barely even have control over our own bodies. In stark contrast, my personal experience is that I can manipulate weight and body composition by simply making choices and developing consistent habits. This isn't difficult at all for me. The reason that I judge fat people isn't because society told me to, it's that my personal experience makes me believe that they have serious character defects. I can believe that making choices and developing habits is much harder for some people than others and still recognize that this is a product of poor executive function, which manifests as a character defect.
There is a small coterie of fat acceptance activists that is occasionally wheeled out like the Washington Generals or the Libertarian Party to be laughed at, but for the most part, no. That's why 600lbs Life even exists in the first place, it's a show that as we have just discussed in this thread, make fat people look even worse. Why does such a show exist? So people can watch it and feel justified in hating fat people. Which is to say, it makes them feel better about something they were already doing. It's not by accident that you are, yet again here, casually mentioning how easy* it is for you to gain fifty pounds of muscle or lose fifty pounds of fat on a dime. It's not because you're embarrassed.
I train a lot and I don't think I've ever claimed otherwise. The easy part is identifying what needs to be done to gain muscle, lose fat, increase strength, or increase aerobic endurance. My claim isn't that people don't need to actually make changes, it's that failing to do so is a character defect. Denying that it's even possible to do so is even worse, diminishing people below the level of having agency over their own bodies. As with other addicts, it's easy to observe that they're telling the truth about their inability to regulate their own behavior, but it is a defect.
So people need to make changes - to what end? What ideal body type are people supposed to be striving for? I mean even over thirty years I've seen expectations of what men should look like change a fair bit.
If someone was stretching me out on the rack, I wouldn't need a complete answer for what my happiest possible state looked like to know that I would be a lot closer to it if the torture stopped. You don't need to fully flesh out (no pun intended) the ideal body type to argue it's better not to be obese.
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I don't believe you, unless maybe you have a very broad definition of immediately useful. For instance, what use did you have scolding the OP for judging people outside of their "character"?
I openly admit that I am very interested in judging. Judgment is necessary when analyzing all actions or things as good/moral or bad. What I wanted to point out is a very common trope of some people, who lack even basic self awareness and who can with straight face say things such as "unlike all those nasty bigots, I am very open-minded and non-judgmental person". The ask by anybody not to judge, is often just a manipulation technique to normalize and shelter from criticism what they themselves judge as a good thing. With no such treatment offered to what they deem as bad things such as bigotry, which has to be judged and punished harshly.
I didn't scold the OP at all. It's quite normal to judge others, particularly men, for being small or weak, and I've been on the receiving end of that judgment many times. Of course, there is a difference between observation and judgment. I can observe someone's behaviour without forming an opinion on it. I also don't agree that judgment is always necessary. This is not meant in a cuddly liberal way. Rather in a kind of sense that one should treat events and people sort of like passing clouds. And I would add that I also think that I am very judgmental - I just don't think that's a valuable or desirable trait in myself.
Even for stoics it is absolutely okay to judge others and especially themselves in accordance with stoic virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. For instance Seneca was very critical of Nero, and Epictetus had no problem judging emperor Domitian for his tyrannical actions.
In fact Stoics would be the first ones to point to fat people as negative example of what happens if one lacks self-control, which is the core basis of the virtue of temperance. I know this, because they actually did condemn gluttony and other excesses of Roman elites.
I am not sure where you came to this idea that stoics are some silent monks never to talk and make judgements. One of they key values of stoicism is courage, which includes courage to tell the truth even in face of tyrants like Caligula who wanted to order Seneca to commit suicide, then let it go given Seneca's poor health.
Fine, I have deleted the word stoic from my post. I would not have added it if I knew this would mislead you so badly.
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This would be easier if the non-stoic side of the anti-judgment movement were able to keep their behavior restrained. A lot of people do act like you; though they don't pretend they don't judge. They just judge silently but choose to be polite. But forbearance is mistaken for weakness which is followed by an attempt to deny that the judgment is legitimate.
Since We Live in a Society someone is going to have to be disagreeable and tell the truth that being fat is usually a lack of virtue and trying to cover that fact up is also lack of virtue. If only for the kids, who can't be expected to have a philosopher's judgment and stoic detachment.
You might benefit from reading what I said. I said I'm not interested in judging others, not that I didn't - I of course, pass judgment on others, naturally and uncontrollably, and according to values I did not generate. But that judgment is rarely useful - if someone irritates me, or displeases me, what can I do about it other than seethe? Isn't that the real poison in whale watching on reality TV? Why not watch Sam Sulek instead?
Oh, come on now. You literally have reality TV shows devoted to displaying fatties like circus freaks for the people in this thread to hate on. If you needed to be told by your television set that it's okay to hate fat people, then you're not being brave. If you're watching it, it's for you - people watch shows like this to be told they're right, not to be challenged.
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