Steve Andreas > Articles > Escaping the “Black Hole” of Judgement

The Consequences of Judging

Judging sets in motion a recursive circular process that typically builds upon itself, and “snowballs,” becoming more and more widespread and intense as time goes on. The more I judge, the more I delete the details of my own experiencing. The less I am aware of my own experiencing, the more defensive and threatened I am likely to feel, so I will tend to rely on judgement even more.

In preference it is much easier to move away from the negative and toward the positive, while attending to both. In judgement, however, we are usually focused exclusively on what we don’t want, and since it is impossible to reach a negative outcome, we get stuck in a dead end.

When someone judges someone else, they set themselves up as a superior authority, “I know what is right, and you don’t,” separating the judger from the judged, and disregarding the other person’s views. Judgement changes a disagreement between equals into one between unequals, and the question becomes, “Who’s right and who’s wrong?” “Who is in a position of rightness and power?” in contrast to “How can we resolve our differences?” or “How can we continue to get along while acknowledging our differences?” By focusing on right and wrong, the content of the disagreement is usually completely lost, making problem-solving extremely difficult.

Judging others by an abstract universal standard is always disrespectful of their unique individuality and particular situation, and I don’t know anyone who enjoys that. In response they will usually judge me back. “You’re so judgemental.” “You shouldn’t say ‘should.’ ” Being judged in return is unpleasant and threatening to me, and that gives me something else to judge about you! I will usually redouble my efforts to make you agree, often by verbal or physical coercion, “You should do what I say,” “You have to do it the right way or you’ll roast in hell.”

When someone makes a judgement, it is usually hard for them to go back to review the underlying preference. If you ask for the experience that is the basis for the judgement, they will usually say something like, “What do you mean? It’s just wrong, that’s all.” If they were to change their mind about it, that would mean that they were wrong, and because they are so focused on the importance of being right, that is unacceptable.

When someone believes that something is wrong, there is no point in talking about it, and that leaves only two alternatives. One is coercion, in which the judge forces another to do the right thing, and the other is to isolate or eliminate the person who is doing wrong. The process of judgement inherently rejects communication and problem-solving and leads directly to conflict.

Of course, like any other communication, judgement can also be expressed nonverbally. A certain tone of voice, a raised head, a stiffened neck, a raised eyebrow, or a barely audible “hmph,” can signal judgement as well as a verbal condemnation. And since these are nonverbal, they are more likely to be out of consciousness, which may lead to confusion in the listener “Why do I feel so bad?”

All these feedback loops create a system that can easily trigger what engineers call a “runaway,” in which the process of judgement becomes more and more extensive and extreme, rather like a “black hole’ that swallows our experience.

In self-judgement, both sides are played out within one person, with one part being the judger, while another part of the person feels judged. “I’m so dumb at math; I’m really stupid!” A common example is the fear of public speaking. One part of the person wants (or needs) to make a presentation, while another part vividly imagines all that could go wrong, and the critical and ridiculing comments that others will make, so the first part responds by feeling criticized and diminished. Usually these two aspects are so jumbled together that it is very hard to understand what is going on until they are separated clearly into the part of the person that judges and the part that is being judged.

The chart below outlines the processes already described, as well as the later consequences of judging described below.