Judgement

The concepts of positive and negative are ubiquitous.  We depict these concepts as an infinite line in both directions with a ‘0’ in the middle.  The further you go to the right the more positive the number and to the left the more negative.  These concepts are similar to our perception of good and evil.  The analogy is not perfect but it is useful.  That which is principled, from good to better and bad to worse, is unlike numbers.  The good/bad continuum is not a simple progression of things getting better or worse with zero in the middle.  Still we agree that some things are less evil, negative, than others.  Kicking someone in the shins isn’t as bad as shooting them in the head.  A mass murder in a church is not as evil as genocide.  And some things are better than others, giving a friend twenty bucks to cover a minor debt isn’t as good as loving someone enough to marry them and honor them for the rest of your life and being civil at your Thanksgiving dinner isn’t as positive a behavior as giving up your life so others may survive.  In this model the good things are positive forces in our world and the evil things are negative.  Sometimes it is difficult to determine which good or which evil goes where on the continuum or even what goes on the good side and what goes on the bad side of zero.  Like I said, it’s not a perfect analogy but it illustrates my point.

So let’s construct a perfect world where we eliminate all behavior and actions less than zero.  There is no bad, nothing negative.  There is no evil.  And in this perfect world once evil is eliminated zero behavior comes into question.  ‘You could have done something!’  Sooner or later the initial euphoria over eradicating all evil wears off.  More needs to be done and zero behavior is magically done away with too.  There is no room for not behaving positively in a perfect world where there is inequity and need.

In this perfect world there are no evil deeds and no zero actions, just positive deeds, only the good line of progressively more positive behaviors stretching on and on, each one more positive than the last.  How long will satisfaction with nothing but good last?  How long until someone questions the small good things?  How long until someone asks ‘Couldn’t you have given him forty bucks instead of twenty?  Ya know, he really could have used an extra twenty bucks’.  And a push to eliminate the small, enhance-able good behaviors will begin, again and again ad nauseum.

That which is good and that which is evil is a matter of definition and degree.  Definition and degree that only exist because we judge, because there will always be those who say, ‘You should have…’  We cannot eradicate evil because we cannot do away with the capacity to judge.  As long as the capacity to judge exists, someone will judge something as bad.

You cannot eliminate the use of the word ‘should’ in your vocabulary or the speech and minds of others.  You can try to stop saying ‘should’ but even if you are successful, it will still be there in your head.

Whenever the word ‘should’ is used, you have the obligation to yourself and those you love to ask ‘Why?’  Make the ‘should’ justify its judgment.  Make the ends justify the means and then justify the ends. If the ‘should’ can be justified, maybe something ‘should’ change.

Maybe something ‘should’ be done.  And maybe not, we live in a world where ‘zero’ actions still exist.  In the small part of the world that you presume to control you owe it to yourself to be the one who decides.