These days a very interesting idea popped in my mind: is our judgmental opinion related to our instincts? Maybe we are somehow programmed to judge other people as a survival instinct. Maybe we cannot help ourselves doing it.
Crowd and survival
As you know, in our early days, our survival as individuals and as a species depended of our crowd. The stronger we were, the more successful we could be at hunting. We needed trustworthy people around us that were also healthy, strong and smart. We had to rely on our crowd because we couldn’t survive solo. This meant that we had to be careful about the ones we associated with, don’t you think? And how could we do that? We formed opinions based on what we saw on them and also based on our past experience. For example, if someone died because of a cold, then we would’ve been very careful not to stay close to those who sneezed.
So we started to judge people based on what they did. Even though that’s not necessarily linked to our survival now, the habit sticked to us. It became part of our basic toolkit of instincts. We now judge everybody because this way we know whom should we avoid. Is it fair? Of course not. But what if we cannot help ourselves? What if our mind is wired in such a way so these thoughts and opinions have a top priority in modeling our behavior?
Hold on…
Don’t get too entitled to judge everybody just because you might be wired this way. Yes, it is true that these thoughts will automatically come, but that doesn’t mean you have to believe them. You can question them to see if they’re real or not. Not everything that goes through our head is real. Sometimes it’s just part of our imagination, created by our own messed up core beliefs.
What do you think? Can other people’s judgement be an instinctual thing?