How far does judgement go?

I think everyone interested should check this site out.

Really cool site..

Some of it has to do with this topic, some of it has to do with most of the topics i take part in on ATS.

Wow you might have saved me a huge thread that may have end up dead in a day :-p

I think labeling is horrible sometimes. I’ve discussed psychology and the stigma that follows labeling. The act of observation is benign and safe. When we act ego to it (which is practically inevitable in many situations) I think we run the risk of damaging the relatively safe light in which we first perceived the item.

Again going back to psychology. You OP might hear a person referred to by a disease and can freely look at that person without judgment. I generally can do the same. I can hear terms from mildly depressed all the way up to intense terms like serial killer and I still refuse to judge. I get all the facts of each case and make my impression. Now clearly I went to an extreme there and of course an action harming others (such as murder) carries with it a whole other set of issues. On the other hand, picture a layperson hearing the words bipolar disorder. Someone pre-introduces them a friend and explains that they are bipolar. How does the lay person change now? Do they understand the new friend because they themselves suffer BPD? Do they fear them? Maybe…just maybe the person who introduced the friend just thinks he is bipolar and now judgment has already passed.

As for the original argument, you are getting into some fine quantum thinking and one heck of a thread IMO.

Yes I believe concepts are concepts to people until they perceive in which case I think it is nearly impossible to not label that which we perceive. How do we exhibit to others what we perceive? That is where language causes me some heartburn. I don’t mean in foreign terms. Cheese is still cheese if you call it fromage (French). The ego is the problem. I think we prejudge constantly without ever knowing it and the ‘language’ I speak of is the language of the perceptive portions of the brain. You have to form your own language, right or wrong. You eat the cheese I set out and I hate it but you love it. That’s a difference right there. How you perceived that piece of cheese is not how I did.

I think it is sketchy but in the end I don’t think naming and judging are one and the same. Close…and I think judging can sometimes arise from naming but I do think they can exist without each other.

In my personal opinion, zen is the safest way to be (if one can truly attain it). You just are. Each experience, even if you eat two separate apples from the same tree will be new to you and your taste buds.

We as a people are trained to judge and label (IMO of course)

Awesome topic

-Kyo