Fadi Zaghmout

We all face the delimma of judging people each day of our lives. We get appalled of other people behaviour and other people judgements of others behaviour. It does differ big time from what we believe is right and what is wrong.

A lot of us have built our moral structure upon a certain religious belief system. Very few look at morality as a relative issue. We usually like to believe that we are right, the others are wrong. We believe that our moral structure is absolute. There is a book that states clearly what is wrong and what is right.

In reality, we face many shocks, even following certain holy books. One can find different interpretation of certain passages along with contradictions from one passage to another. With these contradictions, we can find many sects of people following the same book but each claiming to have the true interpretation with their own absolute moral truth.

Growing up, meeting different people, and getting exposed to different cultures doesn’t help in easing the delimma of placing the guidliness one would follow to judge a certain behaviour.

Covering a woman head is considered to be a highly moral practice in this country (Jordan). In Saudia, they go further to cover the whole face, women who wears only veil in Saudia can be considered as those wearing mini skirts in Jordan. Going further to the west, women wearing revealing clothes don’t trigger a feeling of immoral practice as much as a marriage of cousins would do which is widely spread, and considered normal in our culture, while is considered as incest in the west.

There are plenty of examples that kept me thinking of how to place my judgments.

People don’t like the sound of the idea of judging each other. Some try to back off. Claiming that they don’t judge others, but can’t deny that we all do weight what is right and wrong in our heads.

Maybe there isn’t right or wrong anyway, and as much of a relativity there is to morality, there is also relativity in what is right and what is wrong.

My mind lead me to a small formula that I try to apply to be my compass in weighing things.

1. How much damage an action causes:
   Whether a person hurts oneself or other people. It gives an indication for my judgement.
2. The intention of doing the action:
   It differs if the person hurt another one intentionally or unintentionally. Circumstances dictates our behaviour sometimes. Hitting someone with your car unintentionally differs from doing so intending to hurt him.

Having set the rules one can understand my stand of some hypocrite religious people in comparison of my judgement on particular sexual behaviours.

What is your formula of judgements? Let us discuss this…