By Bert Hetebry

How quickly at times we judge people just because they may not look or act or be like us, (like me?).

Judgementalism: Having a judgmental attitude or behaviour, tending to form opinions too quickly, especially when disapproving of someone or something. (Cambridge English Dictionary).

Judgement: The ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions. ((Oxford Dictionary).

Justice: The quality of being just, impartial or fair (Merriam-Webster).

A conversation with a friend this morning. He’s angry. It appears that all those feel-good Maori names, street signs, alternative names for towns and landmarks in New Zealand are being removed. The anger isn’t because that names are being changed back to their English names, but that they were ever given Maori names in the first place. Not much good trying to explain that they were there first, that just doesn’t cut it. Besides, all the Asians are coming in taking it over now. So should the names be changed to show the Asian immigration and the effect that is doing? No, he’s glad he’s here now.

But then we have this thing about being on this country or that country. In our case, Whadjuk country, and Perth is the Burrell, part of Whadjuk country. My friend bristles at that too.

Talking with others, we see so many things people object to or have issues with, that people do not believe what I know to be ‘truth’, whatever cultural hangups I may have. Seeing people of different races suddenly appear in the neighbourhood, Somalis, Muslims with those letterbox dresses, different languages being spoken. It can be so jarring, so uncomfortable.

I sometimes went to work during the football season wearing a beanie or scarf of my favourite football team, and a colleague would express his contempt for the team I supported, bloody losers! There is only one team to support. Right?

It seems we have this innate thing that measures all we see by the standards we would like to uphold or have others uphold even when we have difficulty living up to those standards. Or the football teams we support, even which football code is actually football!

(Just as an aside, the original definition of football was a game played with a ball on foot, as opposed to polo which is played on horseback, by that definition, even cricket can be considered football.)

And in political discourse these differences become points of crisis, somehow amplifying the ‘Not like me’ as being bad, or at least ‘not good’. It seems we have a wall built around us, an impenetrable wall that rejects things we judge to be bad, and by implication, that we epitomise what is ‘good’. If only the rest of the world was just like me. Life would be perfect.

Or would it?

Judgementalism. We see things through our lens, we want things to be just so, just as it is prescribed in whatever orthodoxy ‘I’ subscribe to.

Every now and again, seemingly less frequently that it used to be, I get a YouTube video of some angry person bewailing an anti-something or other rant. A recent one was the Prince of Iran joining Trump and British Nationalists to fight (in caps) ISLAMISTS.

It seems the Prince would like to sit on the Peacock throne like his daddy did.

I pointed out that I thought it was interesting, the Prince fighting the Islamists, that draconian bunch who now control Iran, having replaced his father’s draconian rule which gained autocratic power after the British and Americans removed the democratically elected Iranian government. It seemed nationalising the oil resources policy was not a good thing, so the National Front government had to go. Democracy is not good when the nation’s natural resources are claimed as national resources. But there was no return comment. And that is not unusual. I get the angry YouTube videos and even when I ask what my friend really thinks about it, there is no comment. There is no engagement, no giving of himself, as though that does not need thinking about, in other words, there is no judgement, no considered thought regarding the angry diatribes.

It is easier to hate when the diatribe is accepted as truth.

And that’s the thing in all those matters that we subject to judgementalism. Accept without question that for example, Russia has every right to take back Ukraine since it had been a part of the Russian Empire since Catherine the Great in 1793 and had finally gained independence after the fall of the USSR in 1991. It belongs to Russia, no matter what the Ukrainian people think! (I was tempted to mention Israel/Palestine here but … mmmm).

Or it is easier to hate Islam and Muslims because of the way Islam treats women. Or enforces draconian laws such as hanging people who ‘wage war against god’, whatever that means, or promote Sharia Law, forgetting that we live in a country which does not have a state religion, in fact this is a secular nation where freedom of religion is mandated by law. And the laws of the land take precedence over religious laws.

Or easy to look disparagingly at the turban wearing, bearded Sikh man as though he must be a terrorist or something else that cannot be good. I was stopped recently by such a man, Guru Singh, a man who asked me for advice a few years back, regarding the education of his daughter. He knew I had been a teacher and we talked about which school I would recommend for his high-achieving primary school-aged daughter and how to encourage her into her next phase of education which will lead to later opportunities. He stopped to thank me because his daughter has got into the desired school and was setting the world on fire as she is working hard and achieving great results. It turns out that this man, Guru, is a hardworking, doting husband and father, a man who values the family he has and the freedoms of living in Australia. Look past the turban which contains his long greying hair, look past the beard, listen through the accent and just honour the man who is worthy of respect. And definitely not the ‘terrorist’ as a leading hand had branded him when he first came to my workplace.

Or to go to a concert featuring music from the Middle East or Persia, listen to refugees who have made this country their homes because their lives were in danger in their countries of birth, Iranian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Lebanese joining a group of classical musicians to present some of the most amazing sounds imaginable, and afterwards delight us with tea/coffee and finger foods from far off places.

The ‘judgement’ of difference, to look at those people as human beings, to talk with them, to understand the hardships, the dangers they have faced to be here, the sacrifices they have made, the incredible enhancements they make to our culture. To understand how privileged we are that we can enjoy the freedoms these people do not have in the lands they have had to leave.

So we have looked at judgementalism and judgement, now we need to consider justice.

The impartiality, the fairness that proper justice demands is more than a legal proposition, it is more than a punishment ordered by a judge in a court of law, it is also the reward or punishment we administer to ourselves and others through or judgement and judgementalism.

Punishment can be the fostering of division, of promoting discord, of a failure to accept the diversity which is inherent in our humanity. Punishment is the violence we see in racial discord, the ugliness of seeing protesters seeking fairness, seeking the best humanity can offer being called out as haters, called out as Antisemitic, disparaging people who are not like us, failing to acknowledge that the land we walk on is part of the indigenous world we invaded, failing to see those people as somewhat less than human.

The rewards are far, far better.

To be stopped by a person who asked my advice, to talk with him about his family, his wife and children, to revel in the achievements of his daughter brings me great joy.

To listen to strange, hauntingly beautiful music from people who have travelled halfway around the world to find a safe haven here and bring with them such beauty, such warmth, such friendship, to listen to their stories of pain and loss, and appreciation that we have given them a safe place to live, to bring up their families, to bring with them the bits of culture which so define them.

To spend time with Aboriginal friends to relate to the land we live in, see it through eyes which respect the land as the origin of who we are, that we are in fact part of this land, that every fibre of our being has come from the land and will return to it. (And yes, I do mean ‘we’, since everything we eat, or use has its origin in the earth.} That the land is ‘mother earth’, far more than just a resource to be monetised.

As we feel the discomfort which judgementalism brings, we need to think through the emotions and fears to reason, to consider, to empathise with those who are not like us. To consider judgement, to make decisions which are sensible, which consider the humanity we share with all those around us, those who are different (and aren’t we all different, isn’t that part of the wonder of who we are?).

And through judging fairly, impartially we can live a life which is somehow fuller, enhanced by the beauty and wonder those we feared can offer us.

But it all must start with ‘me’. That cannot be imposed by anyone else.