Judgement is unavoidable. We do it subconsciously based upon ideals and standards that have been imposed upon us and that we have adopted since birth. We can’t control the immediate impressions of someone/thing that we feel because of what we perceive as acceptable. However, we can choose whether or not to examine why we are making those judgements, and whether or not to act on them.
If you make hurtful judgements, you aren’t inherently a bad person. You just need to understand why you made those judgements, and why they are wrong, so as to prevent you from acting on them, and discriminating against someone.
I believe the point of judgement in theory is to help you make the best decisions for yourself and for the greater good. You can decide that it’s a bad idea to drive under the influence based on your life experience. You can decide that studying for a test is more important than going to a party. However, in practice, judgement is much more messy. People use judgement to discriminate against people for who they are, to fire them from jobs, to kick them out of their houses. Those judgements don’t help anyone. In fact, they do the opposite. I’m not sure I can think of any point for those kind of judgements except hate.
As for choices, I believe we make too many on a daily basis to ever completely be able to eliminate them from our lives. In other words, yes, we do have to choose. We have to choose things as mundane as our outfits in the morning, or as important as our values in life.
I agree with 239bid0073 in that choice is neither a good nor bad thing. Like they said, you can control it, and it all depends on what choice you make. You could make a good choice or a bad choice, but having the choice is not one or the other. It is entirely up to you, so it will vary on a case by case basis.
Regardless of whether it’s helpful or harmful, the concept of choice in America is not going anywhere. Like razzledazzle8 wrote, choosing has shaped who Americans are. It is one of the founding principles of our democracy. Like Sheena Iyenger said in her TED talk, even when having the choice hurts us, we still want it, like the parents who want to be able to decide when to take their baby off life support. Even though the French parents, who had the doctors decide for them, were happier, Americans are so attached to choice that we would still rather have it.
This is what makes choice essential to our society’s ability to function. We have been raised upon the ideal that we have the freedom of choice. It has been pounded into our heads as our right. To try and take that away from us now would be too big a change to handle, and we would rebel. For example, whenever the government has tried to propose legislation on guns that would impose certain restrictions on the availability of guns in our country, despite the fact that it would only mean having to wait a little longer and go through a more thorough process when buying a gun to make sure people with bad intentions can’t get them, many are strongly opposed to this because they feel it takes away their right to choose what weapons they want to own.
However, societies that are built upon the idea that not every citizen is entitled to their choice of whatever they want, like in North Korea, where free speech and choice is severely limited, still function. It is simply the degree of success the society has that varies with how much choice is given.
I do not believe it is possible for a world to exist with judgement. Like I mentioned before, it is something we do subconsciously, so therefore, we can’t get rid of it. However, I do believe it is possible for a world to exist without discrimination, but we have a long way to go. There are many people in this country alone that believe in hate and bigotry, as shown by the fact that 72 million of them still voted for a president that embodies those ideals, a president who, like John Powell says, openly contributes to the“othering” of minority groups like Mexicans, Muslims, and women in his speech. But there are also many people who are becoming more open minded and accepting of people different from them, who are standing up for the rights of those people. And, as proven by the results of this most recent election, those people outnumber the hateful ones. Bitter and intolerant people are a dying breed. As more and more people become educated on the reality of the world around them, it is only a matter of time before what some consider abominable today is normal to everyone. When that happens, children won’t learn to be prejudiced against certain groups of people, so they won’t discriminate against them. This may take longer than my generation, and even a few generations after that, but eventually, I have hope that we will get there.
My lingering question is do you think more choice means a more successful society?