Don't Judge

We constantly hear people say, “don’t judge.” Parents tell their children not to judge others; teachers teach students that it wrong to judge others, we hear in the media that it wrong to judge others; and we hear from religious leaders that only God may judge others. So, what is the result of hearing this so much? The result is that people have become sheep; believing, following, and supporting every kooky, crooked, or crazy idea or person with whom they come in contact. If you do not judge, then you are prone to accept everything as possibly being true. Here is a revelation, some things are false, some people lie, and some people are idiots. By idiot, I do not mean they are intellectually idiots, I mean that they gullible. Some intelligent, highly educated people are idiots simply because they are gullible and fall for anything that suits their purposes and make them feel good.

There are all sorts of people with kooky ideas, goofy beliefs, and crazy conspiracy theories in the world. If you do not judge them for what they are, then you give credence to their baloney. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but that does not mean the opinion is correct. Your opinion may be true for you, and still be wrong. You may believe that red is a sickening color, since when you see the color red you feel sick. Other may believe red is a relaxing color, since when they see the color red they feel calm and relaxed. Both opinions are correct for the persons holding them, but neither is correct for the color red. Red is simply a color; it does nothing. Any effects from viewing the color are in the mind of the observers. We may judge each opinion as being just that, an opinion that suits the purposes of the holder, but is not necessarily true for everyone.

All this “not judging” and accepting of all ideas as possibly being valid has led to a proliferation of conspiracy theories. A casual search of the Internet will return a conspiracy theory for almost every major event that has occurred since the beginning of recorded time. People of like beliefs flock to these sites and add their own false assumptions, convoluted data, and unsubstantiated so-called facts. Anything that might even remotely support the beliefs of the believers is accepted, and any facts, reason, or rationality that does not support their beliefs is rejected as being a part of a conspiracy to discredit the conspiracy theory. There is no way to discuss anything with conspiracy believers using logic, reason, and facts, since every time you discredit a part of their theory, they just change the theory so that it again supports their beliefs, or they just discredit your facts as being a part of a cover-up being perpetrated to discredit the conspiracy theory.

An example is the Nostradamus buffs who spend their lives trying to link some of his vague quatrains to some world event. By attributing some hidden meaning to a word, you may make the word mean anything your what it to mean. These people find support for their beliefs in everything that has happened in the world. When they try to link the quatrains to some future event and the event does not occur as foretold, they just say they made a miscalculation in the forecast and then issue a new one. The year 2000 was supposed to be the end of time. When it did not happen they said 2000 was actually the beginning of the end, which will now occur in 2012.

People see what they want to see. Animals can instinctively recognize another one of their kind from a great distance. From hundreds of yards away, a dog knows that the silhouette on the horizon is another dog. not a cat or a rabbit. People are the same way; we instinctively recognize the human shape. That is the premise behind camouflage; you do not have to hide the person from view, you only need to break up the silhouette so it does not appear as human. Have you ever woken from sleep at night and seen a person standing by the window. You lie still and watch carefully; you know it is a person because it looks exactly like a person. Then, when after a while the person does not move, you slowly reach and turn on the light. There is no person; it was just the way shadows were overlapping. You turn off the light and look again; now you cannot see the person anymore and you wonder how you were fooled the first time. People see human shapes in clouds, smoke, stains on walls, shadows, mountains on the moon, etc.; they have to look for other shapes but the instinctively see human shapes. Some people will not be deterred; even when shown the truth; they will not admit their mistake and will make up some new reasons to support what they believe they see.

As stated before, an Internet search will return hundreds of conspiracy sites. However, there are far fewer sites that debunk the conspiracies. The reason for this is that conspiracy zealots make their conspiracies a part of their lives. They reach the point that they do not have lives without their conspiracies; to give up their conspiracies would mean giving up their lives, and sometimes their livelihoods. On the other hand, debunkers have real lives, and when they try to debunk the conspiracies, they find that the aforementioned morphing occurs, where the conspiracy believers just change their theories to account for the facts, and then keep on believing. If debunkers tried to keep up with the conspiracies, they would have to give up their real lives and become zealots themselves. Therefore, conspiracies abound.

It up to the public to start judging the wild and crazy beliefs of others, and sometimes their own wild and crazy beliefs. Educate yourselves, use your intuition, reason, logic, and intelligence to evaluate and judge things around you, so you are not fooled easily by others, or by yourself.

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