Our ability to judge is a powerful yet dangerous tool in our toolbox. In this video, Einzelgänger, shares some lessons from Marcus Aurelius on how to judge the right way.
Key Takeaways
Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. This video goes a bit deeper into how we approach life by a powerful, yet dangerous tool in our toolbox: our judgment.
One thing that is up to us is our ability to judge.
Life consists of a series of events that aren’t inherently good or bad. This could be a fried egg, a traffic jam, and a plate of fried rice somewhere in Asia.
Nevertheless, people seem to be overly judgmental these days. Judgment makes reality good or bad, desirable or undesirable, fun or boring etc. Thus by our judgments, we categorize the universe which defines our position towards it.
The problem with judgment is that we will prefer some things over other things. Strong preferences and strong dispreferences generate cravings and aversion, which are both potential sources of misery.
"Take things you don't control and define them as 'good' or 'bad'.
And so of course when 'bad' things happen, or the 'good' ones don't, you blame the gods and feel hatred for the people responsible or those you decide to make responsible."
An example our minds conclude that money is necessary to survive in this world, so we make sure we have enough of it.
However our judgment towards money might result in the opinion that wealth is good and poverty is bad. Thus we start craving money which makes us greedy.
- I’ve experienced this myself when I was hung up on cryptocurrencies. Two years ago when a market went up, my mood went up, but when the market went down, my mood went down. As soon as I realized the vicious cycle I was in and made an effort to detach myself from it.
Aversion is the other side of the same Bitcoin (pun intended).
The problem is that both wealth and poverty aren’t up to us. Therefore judging one as good and one as bad, will make us chasing the one and avoiding the other.
This means that we live our lives in fear and worry and be miserable when the things we averse overcome us and when the things we crave for, don’t.
Non-judgement is a difficult thing to do. Personally reminding myself that whatever I pursue, I do not control the outcome, has helped me to regain my peace of mind in times of worry.
This Stoic mind heck is called amor fati.
So how should we judge?
Marcus Aurelius proposes this:
"Much of our 'bad' behavior stems from trying to apply those criteria.
If we limited 'good' and 'bad' to our own actions, we'd have no call to challenge God, or to treat other people as enemies."
To harvest the power of judgment, we should judge ourselves.
Stoics aim to live virtuously because virtue leads to happiness.
Self-judgment means that we evaluate our own actions and decide if they indeed are aligned with nature. This way we can use our judgment to learn what we did wrong and make better choices in the future.
Simply put, don’t judge what isn’t up to us, judge what is.