GRADATIONS in JUDGMENT

The concept of gradations in judgment is so ubiquitous in our life experience that we have maybe never given it much thought—or maybe it is all we think about.  A few examples:  as a student in school we may have been obsessed (or not) with our grades, A, B, C, D, or F; or in the choosing players for a team or being accepted for a university whether or not we made the ‘cut’;  if we were on diving or gymnastics or dance team our score on a scale of 1-10 the judges gave us on our performance; as an engineer or designer or technician whether our product was within ‘tolerances’ or specifications; or if we were still under our mother’s supervision whether our bedroom was ‘clean.’ 

The fact is, we are constantly being judged for good or for ill based on standards. Usually people other than ourselves set the standards and make the judgments (chances are, your mother’s standard of a clean room is of a higher standard than yours). We need to know the standards—the rules, the expectations.  We need to know what rewards us, what is ‘good enough,’ and what disqualifies us.

Standards of judgment are not just hurdles or obstacles we must overcome; they are guidelines of what we need to do to be acceptable, safe, or successful. View them as such; balking against them or disregarding them often just retards our progress.

What often confuses us, though, is that things that are presented to us are not always black or white. They may be near-black, or near-white or any degree of gradation that blurs our vision or compromises our performance or character. They could be, God-forbid, Fifty Shades of Grey (which I did not read or see), or the Sirens in Homer’s The Odyssey that the sojourners were warned not to hear.  They may be sounds that are soft or loud, or somewhere on the decibel scale that we cannot detect or that may damage our eardrums. They could be speeds that expedite our arrival at our desired destinations or they could put us out-of-control and kill us or others. They may be quality of goods such as a Rolex watch or Mercedes Benz automobile that could give us fine service, or they may be a Yugo—junk—or somewhere in between. In most of our lives we settle for something in between. 

So how do we judge and what do we settle for? 

I would suggest that we seek out the best as our standard and draw a line in the sand beneath or behind which we will not go.  For example, we will not go to a bar or a terrorist recruiting rally to find a virtuous potential mate.  We will not hang out whiling-away our hours in a smoke-filled pool hall if we hope to prepare ourselves to take the LSAT or MCAT.  We will not feed with the chickens if we hope to fly with the eagles.

We will establish or embrace a scale that has parameters or guidelines for judgment and we will stay between those lines—always leaning toward the upward end of the continuum. We identify our values, cull out those things, people, and products or activities that don’t measure up to minimum standards, and we let our educated conscience be our guide. I put the stress on ‘educated.’ It becomes ‘educated’ by reading out of the best books, seeking out the best people, and not blunting our God-given conscience by disregarding its promptings.

  And this is key: We will make up our minds ahead of time and remember our rules and standards of judgment every day before we step out into the arena of our world.