At certain points in our life and with certain people we are able to perceive others without judging or categorizing them but this rarely happens because we as human beings have a lot of opinions and thoughts about many things. An example of this is when we receive information from a love one. We have no judgments about our love ones so therefore we freely receive any information and trust that it's good. Whether or not we judge or categorize the received information is something different. But I guess someone can argue that there is a judgment and categorization on our love ones; only the good ones. But I do have the ability to look at my friends and not have any category for them or any kind of judgment, they are just human beings trying to live out a good life like I am. I guess it's only the good thoughts that I have about them. Is that also a judgment even if it's good? If so, we my conclusion is that we can NEVER be able to perceive others w/o judging.
With a majority of people or media that we listen to, we almost always perceive it with judgment and categorization. For me, I must admit that I do tend to have immediate thoughts and opinions regarding new people I've met. Their first impressions always stick with me and from then on, I would remember them by how they presented themselves during our first meeting. I wouldn't really call it judging because I am not making a specific assumption about them, it's more like a feeling of dislike or like, comfort or discomfort that I may have with them. Most people tend to have judgments on topics based on how their past experiences and how they were raised. I do believe that people live through the eyes of their experiences and knowledge and they categorize things accordingly. I myself categorize the people in my life as close friends or just acquaintances. I also do this with certain topics as well. Since we cannot always perceive things without judgments, I think a fair way of perceiving things is with understanding and empathy. If we receive things with a conscious decision to try and understand the perspective, we can effectively receive the message. Without understanding and biasness, we would only make a fool out of ourselves and mistakenly have false knowledge. Once we can make a conscious decision of trying to understand and empathize with the topic, we can make a clear, educational, and knowledgeable opinion regarding the topic. I'm going to try and do this myself as well.
Signing out,
Events Dreamer
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Hello EventsDreamer,
ReplyDeleteI too seem to always stick with my first impression of a person. I don't know if it is the best thing to do, because now thinking back I have judge others off the first impression and have been wrong many times. It is hard not to form an opinion of someone the first time that you meet them, it seems to come naturally to us. I have witnessed friends of mine make judgements on other females and whether or not they would hang out with them, based on their first impression of the girl. This is something that I don't agree with, but like I said it seems to be a natural thing that we do as human beings.
Hello Events Dreamer! You said, "At certain points in our life and with certain people we are able to perceive others without judging or categorizing them but this rarely happens because we as human beings have a lot of opinions and thoughts about many things." At what point do you think this is possible? With whom is this possible? Expand a bit on this idea. :)
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