Passing Judgement on Judgementalism is not itself Judgementalism

Judgementalism and shame walk hand in hand. For it is through casting judgement at another person that he hopes to make that other person feel shame and then correct his wrong behavior. Fair enough, but when the majority of the content that a person casts is judgmental, it seems to me that person may be possessed by the spirit of judgementalism and its companion, shame. And something ought to be done about it. The first thing that ought to be done is to make the person aware of their current state.

When passing judgement on a person possessed by the spirit of judgementalism (i.e., pointing out that another person is being overly judgmental) one has to be weary of a specific and all too common counter argument. The counter argument is that judgement of judgementalism is also judgement (perhaps from a higher level) and is therefore invalid. But a simple examination of this counter argument will display its weakness.

First, passing judgment on judgementalism is not itself judgementalism because judgementalism is the act of being overly judgmental on a consistent basis over time. One act of judgement clearly does not fit this definition.

Second, even if passing judgement on judgementalism is itself judgement, that does not negate the negative nature of judgementalism. We can all agree that one who sits and broods in a constant state of negativity, periodically lashing out at the world (impotently) with critical, judgmental blog posts (for example) is not in a positive state of being. Now, if another fellow comes along and observes this first person and in a kindly and compassionate gesture of goodwill suggests that there is a better, more positive way of existing, surely we would not tell him that he is being judgmental just like the person he is trying to help and therefore his gesture of goodwill is invalid.

Finally, the tactic employed by the counter argument above betrays the twisted nature of shame and its allies. Shame hides in the bushes from God (Gen. 3:8) and never admits to fault if it can avoid it. One way of avoiding fault is accusing the accuser of the very crime itself. Considering the fact that the crime in this situation is a form of accusation one can see how twisted this can get. But let us not get caught in that trap of obfuscation and leave it be.

I would close by quoting the Lord Himself:

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Matt. 7:1-5

In this famous passage Jesus warns about getting into the business of constantly judging others. The warning is this. If you judge others, you open yourself up to being judged yourself and then looking like a hypocrite. I would also argue that a person who is constantly judgmental (i.e., possessed by the spirit of judgementalism) is also very likely to hyper judgmental of themselves. Which puts them in a constant state of shame and as we have talked about quite a bit on this blog, one unhealthy way of dealing with shame is to try to shame others. Perhaps this might be what the Lord is really getting at in the passage above.

A Little Secret about Feeling Judged

I have said it before, but it bears repeating, the only person judging you is you. Other people may judge you, but their judgment can only impact you if you allow it, agree to it and believe in it. When you do this, you adopt their judgement as your own. But it is still you judging yourself.

We have all experienced embarrassing situations. Maybe you have given a speech and forgotten what you wanted to say. You see the audience looking at you and you think, “They must think I am a terrible speaker.” Or perhaps you absentmindedly rear end another car when driving. The person whose car you rear ended gets out of their car and approaches you with an angry look on their face and you feel their judgement unmistakably. In both situations you feel the other people judging you, however, in both situations you have made the choice to feel judged. Therefore, in both situations you are the one judging yourself.

There is an assumption made that the person judging you is sending the feeling of being judged into your body against your will. Perhaps that is what that person wants you to think because when you feel judged you tend to want to defer to the judging person’s judgement. When you do this they can manipulate you. It is important to see, however, that on some psychological or spiritual level, you chose to feel judged, perhaps because you felt you did something wrong and wanted to appease the person you feel to be judging you. When you do this, that person (if perceptive) can perceive your vulnerability and is then in a position to take advantage of it. But, you chose to feel judged. How else could it have happened?

Now, with this realization comes a choice: Should you or should you not feel judged? Feeling judged is a negative psychological state and feels uncomfortable. It can be seen as a form of self-punishment. When you feel judged you want to feel bad partly to atone for what you did wrong, but also to broadcast to the person you feel to be judging you (something like) you know you did something wrong, are sorry for it, and wish to do better in the future.

Let us look at thee two examples (forgetting your speech and rear ending another car). Both situations were accidents and you have no intentional moral fault. If you could go back in time and change those events (I suspect) you would gladly do that. Accordingly, feeling judged accomplishes nothing in this respect. Nor is it guaranteed that feeling judged will prevent you from making the same mistake again. Many times the feeling of being judged is so uncomfortable that it causes the person feeling judged to simply avoid those situations in the future and thus ensures the person feeling judged does not learn from his mistake. It is learning from the mistake that is important. If you aim to do that then there is no need to feel judged.

Feeling judged is an abdication of sovereignty out of fear to the person you feel to be judging you. Perhaps this is what that person actually desires which is (perhaps) why they wanted you to feel judged in the first place. The previous sentence is laden with “perhaps” because it is entirely possible that the person you feel is judging you might not be judging you. My use of “perhaps” is also to demonstrate that this is all in your head to begin with. Whether or not the other person is judging you is all in your head. And if it is in your head, it has to be your choice whether to feel judged or to not feel judged.

Now, you might think that if you do not feel judged you are committing a sin or moral offence. You might think that there is virtue in feeling judged or that it is the price you pay to live in a society, it is how we all get along and that it is not up to you to determine what is right and wrong. But none of this is true. There is a delusion inherent in this line of thinking that you cannot be the one deciding what is right and wrong because these things exist independent of you. But even if they do exist independent of you, you still must be the one to decide whether to accept and believe its truth. There is no one else making these decisions. It is just you in there. So even if someone outside your mind tells you what is right and wrong, or you read it in a book, or see it in a movie, or hear it from your priest or minister, or read it on a blog, you must decide whether to adopt it or reject it as true.

It really is up to you and it always has been. What is more, you can handle this burden. I know this because you have been handling this burden since the day you were born. You have only been unaware of this fact or perhaps you have been pretending that you were unaware of it.

The Prodigal Son’s Older Brother and the Conservative Mind

In a previous post I wrote about how Christ’s parable of the prodigal son gives insight into the dynamic of ego and shame. I recently re-heard this reading and was struck by how the older brother in this story provides valuable insight into the mind of the anti-liberals who write and contribute to the Orthosphere and other related blogs. I use the term “anti-liberal” rather than conservative because this group of people are far to the right of what would pass for an average Republican in the United States. For example, some of them advocate a return to Monarchy. Some reject the notion that freedom is a good that a society should strive for. What seems to bind them is their rejection of liberalism, leaving aside the fact that it is always unclear just what any one person on these blogs actually considers a liberal to be.

In the parable of the prodigal son, the younger son of a rich man asks his father for his inheritance. His father gives it to him and the younger son then goes away and squanders his money on riotous living. He subsequently falls upon hard times, sees the error of his ways and returns to his father begging for forgiveness. Surprisingly, the father welcomes him home with loving arms. He clothes his son and orders the slaughtering of the fatted calf in celebration. Meanwhile the older brother who had remained loyal all this time arrives home from working in the field to see this new state of affairs and becomes angry. When his father tries to convince him to join the feast he retorts:

‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’

LK 15:29-30

We can all sympathize with the older brother. Surely there should be some reward for remaining loyal. At the very least there should not be a reward for disloyalty and sinful behavior. On the other hand, the older brother is using his loyalty to justify his lack of compassion and his judgment of his younger brother. In a very similar way the folks at the Orthosphere seem very justified in judging and blaming liberals for all the evils in the world.

Now the father in the parable represents God the Father. His attitude is love and compassion and does not seem to be concerned with matters of fairness, property or finances. To him, the important thing is that the prodigal son has returned. To the older son the father says:

‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’

LK 15:31-32

Jesus ends the parable here leaving it unclear as to whether the older son was convinced by the father’s argument. I suspect that he is not, primarily because the father’s argument does not provide any new knowledge that the older son does not already possess. The older son already knows that he shares in the father’s property. In fact, this is probably part of what is upsetting him because the return of the younger son presents a challenge to the remaining portion of the father’s estate that he will eventually come to own. The fact that the younger brother was ‘lost’ and is now found probably does not change the older brother’s attitude either because while the younger son was lost he was doing all the things the older brother had the discipline not to do.

The part of the parable that does not fit the analogy where the Orthospherians are the older brother, God is the father and liberals are the younger brother is that the prodigal son actually returns to the father. In the view of the Orthospherians the liberals left with their inheritance a long time ago and never came back. They are the ones who remained loyal and are out working in the fields. Perhaps the fact that the liberals have not yet returned justifies the Orthospherian lack of compassion and judgment of them. Perhaps they would in fact join God in a feast if the liberals ever returned. But I am not so sure about that.

I suspect most liberals would interpret this parable differently as it relates to them. I suspect at least some of them would argue that they never left with their inheritance in the first place and continue to work the fields with their older more conservative brother. Perhaps they would argue they work on opposite ends of the field but are still working in the field none the less.

 

Looking Back on New Years Resolutions

It is interesting to see how much I can change in one year. Last year I wrote a piece about making New Years resolutions. It sort of makes me cringe to read it now. At the time I wrote it I was very interested in dissecting and deconstruction the emotion of shame in an effort to better understand it and by doing so, liberate myself from it. The fact that reading this post now makes me cringe (which is a physical reaction to shame) whereas I did not cringe (presumably) when I first wrote and published the piece suggests that I am indeed now in a different place psychologically. I am aware that imbedded in my cringe is a judgment of my former self. There is a sense that I am now better informed or that I have matured and am now in the position to look down upon this former me. On the other hand, I do not think that me judging my former self is any better than me judging another person. It is essentially criticism and comes from a negative and egocentric place that uses criticism of the other to make myself feel superior.

In that post, my former self began:

So you have decided to make a New Years Resolution and you feel ashamed for various reasons a good deal of the time. Here is what I recommend based upon my life experience dealing with shame issues.

Reading the phrase “[s]o you have decided to make a New Years Resolution…” makes me feel embarrassed. It has an amateurish quality to it. Perhaps this suggests that I have matured as a writer. The embarrassment comes in part from my current self judging my former self but it also comes from me assuming how other people reading this paragraph might have read it and thought that I was acting like a douchebag. This presumes these readers had the maturity then that I have now which may or may not be the case. On the other hand, I am aware that my writing last year comes from a place of compassion for other people who might be dealing with the same shame issues I had dealt with. The fact that I am now judging my former self in this way suggests that maybe I have regressed in terms of my relationship with shame. I am not sure about that because I feel pretty good about myself right now.

My former self continued:

First of all, do not make a New Years Resolution out of a sense of guilt. Only make New Years Resolutions for your own benefit. Of course, your shame ego will tell you this way of thinking is selfish and something to feel ashamed about. Remember that the shame ego is the same thing that will convince you that maintaining the resolution you made out of guilt is too difficult to keep up and then once you stop maintaining the resolution will then tell you that you are weak for giving it up. Of course this requires awareness of when your shame ego is sabotaging your efforts and looking for reasons to feel ashamed (but that is a topic for another blog post).

What I was referring to with the term “shame ego” is that negative, critical, internal voice that probably most people experience to one degree or another. I believe this voice is the result of bad programing and is passed down from generation to generation through the line of fathers. It results from the combination of shame and misplaced loyalty. A person is shamed by his parents. Because they are his parents he must internalize this feeling of shame or else he will be disloyal to them. Being disloyal in turn brings on more shame. When this person becomes a parent, if he remains unaware and has not achieved autonomy from this dynamic, he will shame his children in the same manner because it feels good to his ego which is really in charge. This dysfunctional ego is the source of shame, judgment, jealousy, racism and all the other sins.

Making a New Years resolution seems to me to be an attempt to strive towards some perfected version of the self. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what the motivation behind this striving is. If the striving comes from a whole hearted place, an honest and loving place then it is good. If it comes from an egocentric, shameful, judgmental place then it will always be dysfunctional and will end in harming the self and others. It is ultimately doomed to failure.

My former self continued:

I recommend your resolution should either be to stop performing some self-destructive behavior or to take up a behavior that improves yourself. It should be something you are capable of doing with your whole heart. That is, it should be something you want to do. People with well-developed shame egos have a hard time knowing what they truly want because they have bonded to the message that what they want is wrong.

I think this last point is important. I believe a person cannot be successful in life if he is incapable of articulating what he wants. If he believes what he truly wants is wrong he will sabotage his efforts to achieve this secret goal. If he pursues goals that are not in line with what he truly wants he will not be satisfied when he has achieved them. Shame teaches a person that his desires and needs are selfish and wrong and to the extent he is aware of his true desires he should feel shame. So he buries them and they remain unconscious. The only entity this dynamic serves is the ego which revels in this morass like a pig in its own excrement.

My former self continued:

A good way to tell if something is what you want is to pay attention to how it makes you feel. If it makes you feel good then it is (most likely) good and something you like doing. If it does not make you feel good then it is (most likely) not good and something you do not like doing. Be careful. Some things feel good in the short-term but are destructive in the long-term, like addictions. Addictions are another trap of the shame ego. At first addictions seem like an escape from the shame ego’s constant criticism. That of course feels good. But eventually the addiction becomes self-destructive and gives the shame ego another reason to criticize you.

I would imagine that this last paragraph might irk a person who self identifies as conservative. Perhaps I should clarify that feeling good is an indicator that one is acting in accordance with his true purpose or indeed God’s will. It has been my experience that true purpose is almost never in accordance with the ego and acting in accordance with the ego gives rise to anger, resentment, jealousy, racism and hate.

I believe most people make New Years resolutions because they find themselves lacking and they want to improve. A person’s motivation to improve, his plan to improve and his execution of that plan can always run afoul of the wants and needs of his true self. To right the course of the ship of self, I think it is always a good thing to increase awareness of the self and the ego’s attempts to undermine the self. Awareness of the ego brings about a separation from the ego. In a sense the self becomes autonomous from the ego thus allowing it to act more fully in accordance with its true purpose.

Loving Thy Neighbor and Ebenezer Scrooge

It should not surprise me that my neighbor reads Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and takes the position that Scrooge was better off before his conversion. He feels the problem in the story truly lies with Scrooge’s liberal neighbors who judge him negatively for his conservative values. My neighbor feels that they are hypocritically disobeying the Second Commandment to love thy neighbor when they judge Scrooge in this manner. I cannot entirely dismiss my neighbor’s point of view. Often times “judgment” does not come from a place of love and compassion. Frequently judgment of others results from the ego trying to mitigate the pain of its own shame. In this sense judgment is the ego telling itself, “Look! I am better than him.” Accordingly, to the extent Scrooge’s liberal neighbors did judge him in this way they certainly were not acting in accordance with the Second Commandment.

However, not all of Scrooge’s neighbors judged him in this manner. Certainly, Scrooge’s nephew did not judge him this way. Fred made a special point of inviting Scrooge to dinner despite his uncle’s abusive behavior. Fred did judge Scrooge in the sense that he made clear that he disagreed with Scrooge’s perspective on Christmas. But in my reading of the story this judgment came from a place of compassion. Fred truly wanted to connect with his uncle and not to put himself above uncle for the purpose of gratifying his ego.

It could be argued that Dickens himself is judging Scrooge in the egocentric sense. Certainly the following paragraph exudes this type of energy:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster…

Now, if I know my neighbor (and I think I have had enough experience with him to know him well enough although he does possess the ability to surprise me often enough) I can anticipate how he would react to that description. I suspect he would say that this is Dickens’ description and Dickens is the same type of judgmental, hypocritical liberal as are Scrooge’s neighbors. Assuming this actually reflects my neighbor’s potential reaction, it is interesting how he can project such a consistently schizophrenic view of the world into every situation. To him, even the author of a story (the creator of a universe in a sense) is unaware of his own warped, destructive and self-annihilating view of the world. It is as if there is a real story about Scrooge that exists elsewhere and Dickens’ version is a contrived piece of propaganda serving some nefarious purpose. If I am correct, my neighbor sees the story “A Christmas Carol” itself as a humbug in the fullest sense of the word.

I would argue, however, that the story is not written from an egocentric, judgmental perspective but from a compassionate one. True, in the opening scenes we see him acting abusively towards his clerk, his nephew, the two solicitors and the young caroler. When the first of the three spirits displays scenes from his past we see that he seemingly valued money more than the love of his fiancé. All these exhibits display the negative aspects of Scrooge’s value system. But then we also see the reasons why this behavior came about. We hear of Scrooge’s neglectful upbringing by an abusive father who blamed him for Scrooge’s mother’s death. We also see glimpses of Scrooge’s good nature; his gratitude for Fessiwig’s kindness and his compassion for Tiny Tim. We see his remorse for pushing away his fiancé and his fear of dying an unredeemed man. All these examples are to show that Dickens wrote this story from a place of compassion for Scrooge. As readers we pick up on this energy and root for Scrooge despite his negative behavior.

Therefore, I cannot agree with my neighbor’s assessment that Scrooge was better off as a bitter, lonely, old man. Nor can I agree with my neighbor that all of Scrooge’s neighbors were hypocritical, judgmental liberals who hated Scrooge for his conservative values. Nor can I agree with my neighbor’s shame-based, egocentric judgment of the “liberals” he seems to despise. His judgment does not come from a place of compassion and in my assessment is in violation of the Second Commandment. I now must examine my conscience to determine where my judgment of my neighbor comes from.

Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged

I used to think the phrase “Judge not lest ye be judged” means “Don’t judge other people because you then open the door to be judged yourself.”

Now I think it means “Don’t judge other people because then you will judge yourself.”

The “judgment” referred to in this phrase does not mean legal judgment exercised by a judge or a jury in a courtroom. Legal judgment is conscious and (in theory) exercised for the best interest of society.

Nor does the judgment in this phrase refer to good judgment exercised by a person facing a moral dilemma. This type of judgment is also exercised consciously and for a moral purpose.

The phrase “Judge not lest ye be judged” refers to the ego driven and shame based judgment. This judgment takes the form of criticism, gossip and complaining. This type of judgment is exercised unconsciously and does not serve a moral purpose. Its true purpose (although typically clothed in the trappings of morality) is to make the judge feel better by putting another person down.

The source of this judgment is “constant criticizer.” This is the internal voice that replays prior embarrassments in your mind, tells you that you are not allowed to do certain things or that what you are doing you are doing wrong. This constant criticism does not feel good physically and mentally. The only way to feel better is to criticize someone else.

This form of judgment generates negative emotions such as vanity, shame, defensiveness, anger and depression. These feelings are generated both in the judge and the person being judged. This negative energy feeds on itself, growing and spreading to other people creating a negative feedback loop.

I used to work with a very negative woman. She constantly criticized the company we worked for and our supervisors. She complained about the work we performed. She talked about our co-workers behind their backs. One day she came into the office with the most depressed expression on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she hated herself. I realized at that point that she judged herself with the equal intensity that she judged everyone else. When I saw this in her I recognized it in myself. The constant criticizer performs both functions. In other words there is no difference between self judgment and judgment of others. It comes from the same place.

The constant criticizer is like a foreign entity that takes possession of your thought process. Because it is unconscious, if you do not make the conscious decision to not be judgmental the constant criticizer will think for you. The more you allow yourself to judge the stronger it becomes. Awareness and conscious decision-making is the key to starving the beast that is the constant criticizer.

This is what “judge not lest ye be judged” truly means. If you allow yourself to be ruled by the constant criticizer and cede control of your thought process to it you will end up judging yourself. The more you judge the stronger it becomes. Only by making the conscious decision to not be judgmental will reverse this process.

Hierarchy and Blame Attract Shame Driven People

Shame driven people are attracted to hierarchical organizations that espouse “us against them” mentalities. The reason is simple. The only way for the shame driven person to feel good about himself is to shame others and thereby place himself higher on the hierarchy existing in his mind.

Two good examples of shame driven organizations are the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Both organizations arose out of environments of defeat giving rise to low self-esteem (i.e., shame). The Nazis rose to power after Germany’s defeat in World War I. The Ku Klux Klan arose after the Confederate States’ defeat in the American Civil War. It is easy to see how the environment in both situations gave rise to resentment and shame and thus the need for the inhabitants of these environments to feel good about themselves again. Both organizations became attractive to shame driven people because they offered an opportunity to rewrite the directionless narrative of defeat into something more organized and aspirational.

These organizations accomplished this in part by creating scapegoats to blame for their problems. The Nazi’s blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat and societal problems in the time between World War I and II. The Ku Klux Klan blamed and continues to blame the non white races for what they perceive to be the decay of American civil and moral society.

Consistent with this theme is shame’s love of uniforms and rank. The uniforms identify the shame driven individual as part of a larger group and cloaks them with power and prestige than they would not otherwise possess on their own. The rank insignia clearly designates their place on the hierarchy within the group. But more than this, the uniform masks their identity allowing their true self to hide from the pain of shame.

Shame itself is completely ego driven. It is highly judgmental. It constantly compares itself to other things. It constantly compares other things to each other. For example it is common for the shame driven person to say, “things were better in the past than they are now.” A shame driven person will point to other groups and say, “I am right, they are wrong.” Once this judgment is made, it then becomes easy to hate the other group and attempt to impose their will upon them through shame and bullying. On the international scale you might see one country invade another because they believe themselves to occupy a higher rung on the hierarchy of nations.

Of course shame driven people will never admit their real motivation is to deaden the pain of shame. This would only bring about more shame and pain (in the short run). It is far easier (although ultimately less effective) to hide in groups and uniforms blaming others for their problems while claiming to act in the name of morality. From this perspective they can feel better (relatively) about themselves. Ultimately, however, shame never leads to victory. In most cases it subconsciously self-sabotages and leads to self-annihilation.

Shame Resulting From Bad Programming and the Compulsion to Defend It

In a previous thread on contraception I had an issue with a semi-stalker who followed me from the comments section of another blog to my own. He accused me of being desirous of “self-annihilation” because my wife and I use contraception. I pointed out that we both still exist and we reproduced twice already. But in his mind (I assume this person was male) any use of contraception is equal to “self-annihilation” without exception. This individual also accused me of posting in the comment section of the other blog for the sole purpose of confusing right thinking Christians who were seeking the truth. I find this behavior fascinating.

I recognize a bit of my old self in him. It is a mixture of close mindedness, judgmental-ism, obsessive compulsion and denial. The mere fact that I believed something contradictory to his beliefs seemed to threaten him. This feeling of being threatened motivated him to blast my blog with comments. I ended up having to delete some of his comments because they were verging on inappropriate. What I find so fascinating about this behavior is it displays how powerful the urge to lash out becomes in a mind dominated by a shame ego. He made personal attacks presuming to know not only my conscious but also my subconscious thought process and motivations. His tone was very angry and aggressive.

As I said, I recognize this state of mind because I have experienced it personally. It is the same state of mind that caused me to obsessively bait a conservative bully on a Star Trek message board. I have described this state of mind as a separate entity called a “Shame Ego” that takes control but sort of masks its true identity by convincing its host that it is the host. In other words, the shame ego thinks for the host and the host believes the thoughts of the shame ego to be its own. This shame ego is the result of bad programming early on in life and divided loyalties. The source of the programming is typically the host’s parents. The host feels bad while running the program but also feels loyal to the source of the programming. As such, he cannot reject it. Often he will turn it around the other way and vehemently defend it by lashing out at those people who question the truthfulness of the programming or whether the programming serves a useful purpose. This is what I believe happened to the person I described earlier in this blog post.

The only way out of this mindset and the misery it generates is to give up defending it. This is difficult because it feels disloyal and wrong to the host. But to continue on with it is not desirable both because it makes the host miserable and because the host tends to spread the virus that is the bad programming on to other people. This bad programming is spread through shame. I have written a lot on shame in other blog posts so there is no need to get into that now.

The part of me that wants to hate Anchormom

My last blog post was a critique of a post written by a woman calling herself Anchormom. Part of me tried to write my critique in a non judgmental way but that was really impossible. There is part of me that judges her because I expect she would judge me (if she read my blog). I was preemptively judging her so to speak. I feel like I have encountered her type before. She is Admiralbill from Sistertrek. She is Michael Voris. She is that conservative, self-righteous, judgmental, I’m right and you are wrong type that really gets under my skin. (Note: I fully realize that I am basing my condemnation of her on one blog post she wrote and to a lesser extent the smug picture of herself she attached to her blog, and the fact that she calls herself Anchormom. All these facts about her annoy me and I know this has more to do with me than her). I don’t like these types of people because I don’t like being judged. I don’t like being judged because I was judged as a kid and it hurt me and I never really got over it. Now when I am judged (or I perceive that a person might be in a position to judge me as is the case with Anchormom whom I assume will never actually read a word I have written) it stirs up these old hurts within me and I then feel the need to lash out at other people. I do this in a judgmental way. I do this in a passive aggressive way (to allow for deniability).

Still there is another part of me that feels my critique of Anchormom was legitimate. I should not let the petty, ego driven, shame based part of me derail my criticism of her entirely simply because it piggy backed on to the logical points I made and thus derived a sense of satisfaction out of the hurt feelings I imagine Anchormom could potentially have if she ever read my blog post. (Note: so far I think only one person has read the post and I think he is part of the Entitlement Generation Anchormom originally criticized in the blog post I criticized in my last blog post).

So where do we stand here? Anchormom criticizes the Entitlement Generation because she thinks her point of view will somehow reform them or cause other people to agree with her and eventually tip the scales against the Entitlement Generation in favor of the Silent Majority of neo-conservatives. I in turn criticize Anchormom by opining that her real motivation is to shame the Entitlement Generation out of a sense of loyalty to her parents generation who originally shamed her into adopting this conservative outlook. And now I acknowledge  that I (or part of me) wrote my critique of Anchormom motivated by a desire to frustrate her and make her feel ashamed just as I was frustrated and made to feel ashamed when I was young. I did this because her condescending tone stirred up these old feelings of inadequacy inside me.

If this does not adequately encapsulate the crazy, insane, overcomplicated, dishonest and exhaustingly self-defeating nature of shame I don’t know what does.

10 Life Lessons I Feel Comfortable Posting in a Blog

I am 44 years old. If you were to ask me my top ten life lessons off the top of my head here is what I would probably come up with:

1. Don’t worry about what other people think of you. I spent far too much of my time worrying about this. So much so that I lost sight of myself and what I wanted out of life. I only really came to terms with this fact a few years ago. There is a big part of me that wants to regret this but regret is a facet of my ego and my ego is what convinced me to prioritize other people’s thoughts over my own.
2. In terms of a career Do what you enjoy. Don’t do what you don’t like doing. Again, because I worried about what would make me look good in the eyes of others I made choices based on what I thought they would like. As a result I worked a miserable job I hated for eight years only to be laid off and unemployed / underemployed for a few years before I got back on my feet. I am now in the position of reaching for what I enjoy but it feels like I am racing against the clock. Far better to figure this one out in your twenties or earlier if possible.
3. Avoid debt. I wish I was better about this early on as well. Any debt you take on is lost opportunity. It is better to have compound interest working for you with investments than against you with debt.
4. If you never felt like you pleased your parents in childhood it probably will never happen when you are an adult. As such, stop trying and free up that energy for your passions. It might actually improve your relationship with your parents.
5. Don’t associate with people who make you feel bad about yourself. You can recognize them if you pay attention to your feelings. Trust that your feelings are real, there for a reason and never wrong.
6. Loyalty is earned. For so long I felt I needed to be loyal to things and people who had no loyalty to me. As such the rewards I thought this loyalty would bring if I just hung in there long enough never materialized until I was able to let go of this obligation.
7. You are entitled to happiness. Everyone is. If you are unhappy there is a reason for it and it probably is not because you are bad, wrong or otherwise defective.
8. Don’t judge other people. People who judge other people judge themselves equally as harshly. They do this because they were judged harshly and when they judge others harshly the people they judge will judge others and continue to spread the virus.
9. Shame is toxic. Shame is the source and result of judgment. It is also the origin of misplaced loyalty and probably debt.
10. Religion and politics are voluntary. Because no one can know what’s on the other side you should not and probably cannot force you beliefs or values on others. Nor should you judge another person harshly for believing something contrary to what you believe. If you find yourself doing this perhaps you should ask yourself what am I ashamed of? Who judged me harshly when they should have had compassion for me?