Judgement 24 X 7

When Jesus talked of the Day of Judgement, he sketched an image of how God would partition people into two sides — the “nice” lot, the ones who are sent to heaven, are the ones who’ve always helped their fellow human beings. In contrast, the “bad” lot, the ones who are sent to hell, are the ones who’ve been harming their fellow human beings, or have been indifferent to those in need.

So, Jesus cautions, your actions every day are being watched over by God, so better be honest to yourself, obecause you have to pay the price for all your wrongs on the Day of Judgement.

Unfortunately, most people treat every day as a Day of Judgement. The reason why this is “unfortunate” is because often, people don’t even know what they are to be judged against, how they are to be judged, and how to juggle the many different judges who have conflicting expectations from them. From day one, we are judged by our parents, our friends, by our school teachers, by our colleagues, by spouses, children. Good judgement like “shaabash!” or “well done” makes us feel good and bad judgement like “shoddy work” or “how could you do this?” or “why are you like this?” makes us feel bad.

What we may rationally realize, but often emotionally don’t, is that all the people whose judgements we are accepting, all have their own problems, their own prejudices, their own axes to grind, their own manipulative tendencies. So their judgement or evaluation is twisted, or flavoured, by all these. Moreover, in many cases, they are really powerless over our future, not all of them are as powerful as the God who will put us on one side or the other depending on how we’ve been all our life. So our concern about their opinion is neither based on the value of their thoughts nor so much as the control they have on our lives. So what is it?

For instance, a lot of us have this desire to be “liked”. We manifest it in different ways. Some of us may try being “helpful” to others (whatever that means) such as by doing their homework assignments, or by treating them to chocolate ice-cream or whatever. Some of us do it by “following” or “agreeing”. For instance, everybody around me is having a pizza, and okay, I don’t like pizzas, but I don’t want to be thought of as a non-cool person, so let me also have a pizza. Or, everybody around me is watching so-and-so movie, and I want to watch another one, but why risk being split from the crowd? I’ll go along.

Thus, we not only seek the judgement of others, but we also seek to be “in” the group, viz we seek the stamp of approval of the mass of people. We seek to be liked by the mass of people even if we know that no individual person in that mass really will change his or her opinion. This desire to be liked often results in so-called “peer pressure”. So peer pressure and the desire to help others are often linked to the same root — the root of wanting to be liked, and of doing things so that one is liked. While peer pressure has come to be seen as a weakness in certain contexts (for instance, getting pressurized into antisocial activities), helpfulness is still seen as a noble virtue. In fact, both are signs of the same tendency, and both are just as “helpful” or “harmful” to the individual.

The point that all these judgement things miss out is that ultimately others don’t exist. The so-called group doesn’t exist, there’s nothing like a group mind which accepts or rejects you. Or rather, the group and others do exist, but they aren’t an absolute scale of reality against which to judge yourself — they are peripheral, ephemeral, they move on, they change. If you make certain specific other people, or even worse, certain loose conglomerations of people, your definition of life or happiness, and you feel good about being in the “in” group, then you have given those people and that group control of your self-worth. And other people have their own problems, their own self-worth to tackle. They’ll move on in life — they won’t stick by you. And groups — groups may not even exist ten days from now. Would you put your money into a company that will go bust any day? If not, then why put your self-worth and your evaluation of yourself into what certain poorly defined groups think of you?

In fact, the only person or thing that sticks by you (or rather, has to stick by you) is yourself. The only person who’ll be with me every moment of my life is myself, so the only thing I should be concerned about is what I think of myself. If my goal in life is to serve others, then may be serving others and seeing them happy makes me happy. But if others aren’t happy with the quality of work I put in, that shouldn’t make me put myself in Hell (or go through a mental hell) with the “nobody values my work, so what I am useless” loop.

If I want to chill out with a group of people because I think they’re cool, then of course being “in” matters and counts, but again, the fact that I am not in should not be a matter of poor self-worth — it’s more a matter of restrategizing to get back in. In other words, there’s a lot of difference between relinquishing control of one’s self-worth to somebody or something else, and trying to do well in that other. In the former, one gets hit emotionally by every setback. In the latter, it’s more like one uses every new “rejection” as an input.

An interesting aspect about the whole mess of judging and getting judged by others, is that those people who most fear getting judged by others, are also the ones who tend to judge, and manipulate others through judgement, most. In other words, it’s not the “perpetrator of judgement” versus the “victims of judgement” — often the biggest perpetrators are the biggest victims. The only way perpetrator can make a judgement and not be at the receiving end of it is if the judgement is about a class of people to which he or she doesn’t belong (e.g. judgements about people of the opposite sex, or about people of a different age or “social class” or region). Those who stay away from the whole mess neither pereptrate nor become victims, yet even they need to understand the mechanism of judgement given its widespread implications.

For instance, those who judge that “women should keep the house clean” or that “kids should be neither seen nor heard” or that “one should work hard” are also the ones who feel more pressurized to keep the house clean (if they are women) or to not be seen nor heard (if they are kids) or to work hard. People who judge others on how “cool” they are also feel the heat to appear cool. Which is why Jesus, when confronted with the case of a woman who was being stoned for adultery, asked only those to throw stones at the woman who felt their own life was impeccable.

Unfortunately, in real life, people freely throw stones at each other, even if they know that the same stones can be thrown at them, even if they know that throwing stones at others actually makes them more scared and vulnerable to being at the receiving end of stones. Nor do people seem to mind being sitting ducks for stones thrown at them, and the only thing they do is huddle into a ball where they are, rather than walk out of the place.

And people often justify throwing stones at (viz, judging) each other by the fact that others throw stones at them, that everybody throws stones at everybody, or that throwing stones is the only way to keep people in check. “How would houses remain clean if women weren’t judged on it?” or “How would kids learn discipline if the message isn’t made explicit to them?” In fact, there are people who go as far as saying “How would I study/work if I didn’t fear being judged negatively by others?” or “Why would I refrain from killing people if I didn’t fear the judgement of being a killer?”

No wonder people stay unhappy and feel oppressed and misunderstood by society, if they let others determine their self-worth!

The solution, in my opinion, is only through self-reliance, and through using oneself as the only true determinant of one’s self-worth. To set out what one will feel good and bad about, and to have all these choices based on factors within one’s control. Factors like what one chooses to do, what one’s goals are, what work one puts in, rather than factors like what others think of you, what others say to your face, and what they talk about you behind your back.

After all it’s your life, ultimately. You enjoy or suffer it. Then why let others run it?

Multi-dimensionality

Multi-dimensionality seems to be the new catch phrase these days. Everywhere people are exhorted to “expand their personality” in different directions, to not stay “confined” to one “area”, to “explore” more and more and to have accomplishments in a variety of fields. The mantra today is not “master of one’s trade” but “jack of all trades”.

For instance, school children, after being scolded for spending too little time on their hoemwork, are then told, by the same people, “Life is not all about homework and exams. There’s life beyond school. Go out and see the world.”

Or a person who is seriously trying to prearep for a test in order to secure a good admission, or for some other reasons, is told — “Life is not all about doing well in exams. you should take it easy, chill out. May be explore things a bit. Try dating somebody, watching a film, or just wasting time”.

Actually, multi-dimensionality, used as a tool for manipulation, is really complex, because it can be used by so many different people with so many different ulterior motives, that it can be confusing.

One common use of multi-dimensionality is to justify and pull people towards mediocrity. This is the “jack of all trades” mentality. Working on any one thing for a long time, with dedication, sincerity and concentration, is tough, challenging, dangerous, scary, whatever, and multi-dimensionality is a way of adding respect to what can more aptly be termed “doing nothing”. This is closely related to what I had called “flagellation” in my first post on this blog, wherein people flagellate themselves flagellate others, and flagellate those who are doing well.

More precisely, I should say that multi-dimensionality does nnot itself cause people to be mediocre, but rather, helps them feel better about being so. It’s sily to believe that if people weren’t told the virtues of being multi-dimensional, they would do better quality work. They probably wouldn’t. But multi-dimensionality now actually makes people feel better about not putting in that special effort towards anything.

Another way in which multi-dimensionality is used as a tool is by people to get other people to do work they otherwise wouldn’t do, as a sort of compromise. For instance, a school teacher wants students to contribute towards something like decorating bulletin boards or taking prefectorial responsibilities, or helping out with a school function. So the school teacher extols the virtues of how this will add more dimensions to the student’s personality, and how life is not just academics. Often the same school teachers may go back to the one-dimensional view of “life is just academics” when exam hour approaches.

Or for instance, if A wants company for a movie, and her friend B says she’s got lots to study, or is practising for some important competition, then A can say, “Come on, don’t sbe so one-minded. Learn to chill out. Take a break. Expand yourself in other directions/dimensions”. So the selfish need of wanting company for a movie (which is perfectly respectable then gets translated to a “reform my friend into watching movies” project.

Unfortunately, these simple one-on-one manipulations are given the stamp of legitimacy by the word “multi-dimensionality” which is also encoded in other catchphrases like “expand your horizons” or “broaden your mindset” or “don’t be too narrow in your thinking”. And even more unfortunately there are people who get trapped and pressurized by these, and these are also the same people who get pressurized by a whole lot of other things like “study harder” and “work harder” and “don’t spend so much time over the phone” — rather confusing.

So what really is multi-dimensionality and is there any legitimate basis for it? It is true that the more things one knows, understands, can do and can handle, the better one is equipped for dealing with life. And it’s also often true that there are lot of things that help in unexpected ways. For instance, it may be true that watching a movie may actually refresh one so that one can better concentrate on studies, or that studying history may help one understand the historical context of a movie, or that watching a television serial may awaken one to social problems and realities. (Most of these are not statistically likely, but they do happen)

And it is true, for instance, that skills in debating and skills in presentation and convincing can come useful even in professions that don’t apparently involve selling or convincing — things like the pure sciences, athletics or being a homemaker.

On the other hand, it’s also probably true that there are many skills and hobbies and side-interests that one diligently acquires and that may be completely useless for anything else. For instance, learning how to play a certain card game, or smoke a certain kind of cigarette, may be absolutely no use outside of the immediate enjoyment (or equivalent) that these activities give (they may be of some use somewhere, but it’s highly unlikely in my opinion).

What the “you never know what might be of use where, so might as well do everything” logic misses out is the fact that doing lots of things, desultorily moving from one area to another, may hinder understanding and learning something to a sufficient depth to be able to use it, to make a career out of it, to encash it, or to have it as a “life-companion activity”. Further, being a “jack of all trades” may not get you anywhere with any of them, where anywhere is a level where one can actually encash, or get some good amount of enjoyment out of it.

At the end of the day, it’s the person himself/herself who has to decide what approach is suitable, given his or her immediate goals and where that person wants to go or be. There are people for whom “diversity of experience” itself counts for a lot, there are people who may want to find “something specific” to do. There are people to whom getting a particular job or admission might matter at a certain stage of life, for whom the other things don’t count much at that time.

Even “multi-dimensional” people could be the relaxed multi-dimensional types, who want to casually move around from one thing to the other, and the all-hectic multi-dimensional people who arrange for a complicated way of juggling across multiple activities to “achieve” something in each of them.

The sad thing is that people who are already under a lot of pressure (their own, and that from the others) to perform and achieve, are now subjected to this additional pressure to be multi-dimensional. Of course, it’s usually true that those who offer pressure to be multi-dimensional, don’t give any guarantees alongside. For instance, a person who tells a friend to stop studying and chill out and join him for (some activity) doesn’t take any guarantee that not studying at that time will not adversely affect the other person’s knowledge gained, or marks scored in an exam, or future career opportunities. Ultimately, a person’s successes or failures are his or her own, and they are for him or her to face up to, so others who act as reformists and “multi-dimensionalizers” are talking in the air, not risking anything, letting this person take the risk.

this brings us to the more basic issue of why people let themselves be judged by those around them, and why they let some selfish manipulations by others in the name of multi-dimensionality get to them. I’ll get back to this in the next blog post.