I used to be very ashemed when someone brought something up from my past that wasn't my best moment, so to say, but now I own it and simply ask what's the problem if I did. The "bully" usually doesn't know how to react to that and it's fun to see there expression XD

As for other people, I'm not the type to judge at first glance. We were all young and stupid, we all made mistakes, the problem is if you learned from them or not and you still make them.
I only have a problem with people that repeat the same mistake over and over and over again. At one point, even if they are dear to me, I just want to give up on them cuz they don't understand.

I don't know if anyone knows the author Georgette Heyer; she did contemporary mysteries and historical fiction and regency romances.... and her sense of humor was dry but always made me laugh.
One of her romances has these two siblings. Brother and sister. And their father raised them SUPER unconventionally; pretty much the historical-equivalent of a conman, kind of? Except not deliberately targeting people to earn money at all (although they'd do that if they felt personally wronged by the person targeted), more doing things like going from one thing to the next without making a huge success of any of them; so being a professional dueling master and then carriage racer and then dance instructor and then.... whatever all else. Adventure to adventure, but trying to stay on the right side of respectability, and using confidence-man skills to do it.

Point is. Story starts, and come to find out, the father's trying to establish himself as this long-lost noble scion who has recently come into a title on the death of whoever-it-was. And the fellow who would have inherited (putative cousin) is of course fighting it.
And the siblings are confused, because he doesn't seem the sort who'd actually impersonate someone else like that, unless on a dare or a lark or whatever, but there'd been no previous hints at such a past, so they don't know what to believe.

And comes a time, the cousin finds out some of this past.

And tries to throw it in the "imposter's" face.

And the father magnificently owns up to everything, with great panache, and instead of a potential source of shame or downfall, "society" (aka Rich and/or Titled Folk) think it a great story and applaud him for it.




That took way too long to tell.
Just go read the books! You'll laugh; it beautifully points up how silly and superficial it can be to try and judge... and how much we all do it, anyhow. Judging ourselves as well as others.

That sounds like a great book.
Since I think the author has more than this book, could you tell me what it's called?

Did a Google search; called "Masqueraders" or possibly "The Masqueraders".

(The father in that book is my favorite character, but he doesn't show up until several chapters in)

Thank you! Summer is coming and I will have a lot of free time at work and I was really looking for a good book. And this sounds like a really good book. Hope I'll find it.

Back on the subject of judging. I now I said I don't judge that often, but I just realized there are some situation I do judge and really don't care about peoples backgrounds.
Like for example, if I see someone harm an animal, expecially the ones we can consider pets, on purpous and without feeling sorry at all, I can't help but hope that something really bad happens to that person.

Mmm, fair enough.

Question, though.

Why does everyone seem to talk only about negative judgments, instead of positive ones?
Has the word connotation entirely shifted to the one facet of it?

I mean, when you meet someone and you think, "they sound like they'd be a really good friend", that's a judgment you are making. And you might revise it later, "best friend!" or "better as acquaintance" but either way -it's all judgments you make.

Only I never hear people talk about that part of it? And it is confusing for me, because of course I rely, day to day, on judgments, constantly. Walk into a situation, "Is it safe? Shall I stay, can I afford to relax, must I be vigilant?" All of that, all the time -judgments.

So half the time when people talk about judgments, I think they're talking about honing those senses, about summing up people and situations accurately so they aren't misled....

only mostly they don't mean that?



Am I using the word in an obsolete sense?

I think it has to do with the fact that when you say judge, you usually atribute a bad conotation to it. Even the phrase "I misjudged you" is usually used as a form of saying "I had a bad opinion of you, but now I changed my mind", rather than when you change your opinion from good to bad people put it more like "I'm dissapointed in you".

It is true that there is both positive and negative judging, but because the ward "judge" sounds like something bad or that one shouldn't do, you atribute the negative judging to it, wile positive judging is defined more like "forming an opinion". They are sinonims, but the way you say it gives a different feeling.

I hope I made myself understood, I'm really bad at explaining

Well, kind of. I mean, to myself, I've never really felt that negative connotation to the terms for judge and judging before. So I did not have that basis of looking at it. ("I misjudged you" would be, in our family, MUCH more likely to be said to someone who was misbehaving, as a method of correction -where the previous judgement was good, and the current one is bad, and it's like a warning phrase to let them know to start behaving better again to live up to the first judgment).

So as you are defining it, I am indeed using the word in a more obsolete sense, because I never attached a specifically negative trend to it before.

(Again, in our family, 'forming an opinion' was more frowned upon, because 'opinions' carry the implication that one's personal feelings enter into them more, and they are not as liable for revision, while 'judgment' must be based upon evidence and truth and are constantly being revised...)

I've gotten a lot of shit for dating a woman in the past. I really don't understand the big deal. I fell in love with a woman. Why should that bother anyone? Just because I'm married to a man now. I mean, I've always preferred men, but women are gorgeous too. Why can't I like both?