When I'm feeling fear, that's the time when I most want to make judgments. Otherwise, the fear becomes blindness. Great, then I'll have fear and perpetual anxiety and self-doubt. What a bonus. Can I get a side of onion rings with that?
If you don't think, who do you expect to do it?
Moral judgment is just as important as any other type of thinking. It involves looking at the data, processing it, and taking action accordingly. It involves being a judge: looking at all available evidence.
Watch Judge Judy if you need a lesson. There's somebody with a backbone.
The tough part about moral judgment is that it requires you don't act like a fucking hypocrite. In some contexts, I agree with what my second TV character says. There's nothing worse than the moralizing bastard who indiscriminately tells people what they're doing wrong, but holds himself to no standards. He's to moral judgment what a slut is to sex. But at least with a slut, you get laid, instead of being shot in the head while on line at some abortion clinic.
The alternative is not to shut your mouth and mind. The alternative is consistency. That's right: practicing what you preach. Think it's better to keep quiet? Fortunately, the people who fought against slavery didn't think so.
As usual, no one says it better than Ayn Rand:
The precept: "Judge not, that ye be not judged"...is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself...The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."
(The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 91, PB p. 72)
Contrast this with another old Bible favorite:
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
This is just a bullshit way of getting people to stick a proverbial knife through their heads and cut off the power to their brains. God damn it, who made the rule that if you fuck up once, you're no longer entitled to think?
I say: think. Think about what other people do, what you do, and everything else that's relevant to your life. And speak up when necessary.
I'll tell you one thing. When the US Government offers me a free room at the grand opening of its first concentration camp, and you don't feel like complaining about it, just don't expect an invitation to my funeral.
Oh, and if you still consider what you're reading right now to be the first stone? Then it's time to get yourself ready for an avalanche.
