I have decided somewhat late in the game to start blogging about my summer in Washington, DC. Like many others, I love to write, and desire to one day be read out of choice, as opposed to forcing my essays upon professors. Hopefully my blog will be as enjoyable for my readers to sift through as it is for me to compose. I hope to keep this blog from being just another diary of a 19 year young girl, and stick with stories, ideas, and observations. (Which might consequently turn into a diary, unfortunately.)
A funny quote I can't remember word-for-word describes the tendency for people to judge what is in other people's shopping carts when we get groceries. Ever since I heard that, I think of it when I shop, and intentionally look at what other people pick up, and introspectively judge myself on whether or not I am judging them. It's a fun game, you should try it sometime. So today at Trader Joe's, as I was in the famously winding check-out line, I peeked over at a young woman's cart parallel to mine. In it was about 10 cartons of fat-free yogurt, along with other items that were not noticeable in comparison to the copious amounts of yogurt. I realized I was judging her. Unfairly too, considering my cart was just filled with different boxes of frozen goodies. You know, food with calories? I am pretty proud about finding frozen, curried, fried rice though. Score.
Back to the lacking point in this, I thought it was interesting how I could actually care about what this woman was getting to eat. Why should I think twice about her and her yogurt eating habits? As I reached some closure about the subject, I reached to the conveniently placed stand of chocolates and picked out a $0.40 milk chocolate bar. You can't argue with that, seriously. As I dropped it in my cart, I imagined what Ms. Fat-free would think of my indulgence. Picturing her lifting her eyebrows, and possibly making some sort of huff, I felt slightly rebellious in making the decision to eat chocolate. Chocolate with full fat, full sugar, and a 100% yumminess factor.
Looking back at it, I probably formed a poor opinion of this girl I hardly knew just based on the food in her cart. It's interesting, and probably healthy, to think about how easy it is to mindlessly judge others.
So thank you, yogurt-consuming Trader Joe's shopper, for letting me subconsciously judge and then retract judgments about you, in order to take some sort of lesson out of my grocery shopping today. I wish you all the best, and enjoy the blueberry flavoring.
5 comments:
Why are you so surprised that you (or anyone else) judge others. We're hard wired to do so. If you think about it, on the Serengeti (or wherever we came from), we needed to make split second decisions about others. Is that fluffy thing going to eat me or not? Can I trust that other person to not steal my food? Is that other one a viable mate or not? People naturally judge others, and like so many human behaviors, it has it's place and time and purpose.
Furthermore, if you keep going back, a lot of other animals don't have any other way to communicate significant ideas other than visual cues, and so they need the judgements those cues produce to survive and connect with others, even though they're not fully informed opinions.
Like that speaker with Tourettes that we saw said, it's OK to judge others, as long as you keep in mind the implications of those judgments and the implications of your actions - you shouldn't act on most of your judgments, as they will probably do more harm than good, and have a good chance of being misguided. But having them pop into your head, that's not too bad, and there's nothing you can do about it really.
Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that maybe judging books by their covers isn't always so bad, as long as you don't burn or save the book without opening it up and reading first.
(Look at me, using metaphors and stuff - you're english-majorey-ness is rubbing off on me. Then again, maybe not - I did just say "english-majorey-ness" after all.)
Well, I agree that it isn't necessarily a bad thing that we form quick judgments. I just don't want to think badly about someone I don't know based on a silly observation. It's not like I saw her slapping an old lady in the face, and still decided not to make any bad assumptions about her. Moreover I just think it's funny how we can assume a person's personality based on what they buy at the market. Thanks for your comment though, and I do agree with you. :)
Wait, hold on here.
"Well, I agree that it isn't necessarily a bad thing that we form quick judgments. I just don't want to think badly about someone I don't know based on a silly observation."
So basically, are you saying you're only OK with your brain when it makes good judgments about people? Or when your brain makes quick judgments that right? I don't think you can have it that way - either you are OK making judgments, and sometimes you're going to judge people badly for what they do or be wrong, or you can't be OK With judging people at all, in which case we disagree (not that that's the end of the world or anything, but we would).
And while I do agree that judging people based on what food they decide to eat may be taking my thoughts about judgments towards the extreme, I think it is often a legit source of judgments. Granted, when that occurs, we're relying on incomplete information and using stereotypes to fill in the details (something people are VERY good at) presumably there are some founded judgments that we can make based on those data, and sometimes they'll be right and sometimes they'll be wrong - that's just the way the world works.
I'm noticing that I'm rambling a bit, and don't have much of a point anymore, so I think I'll stop.
Will-
It's not that I want to be blind to everything but the good in people. I just want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I want to like people until proven I shouldn't like them, not the other way around. I think the world would be a lot better if we were inclined to think better of each other until shown otherwise, as opposed to giving in to petty judgments. I think we can ourselves assess whether or not a judgment is fair, reasonable, etc., and when we make those assessments we rise about just ignorant prejudices.
I do not suggest that we ignore that which we do not like. I just want to take with a grain of salt the immediate presumptions I make about people, especially when those assumptions are silly or basically meaningless.
I want to be choosy about what I decide to hold against people, and would hope they bestow that courtesy upon me as well.
This reminds me of the time I had to go shopping for my mom and put things in the cart that SHE wanted, and knowing that people might judge me based on HER preferences/needs. The cart items included: pudding, assorted flavors, an extra large bag of Depends incontinence pads, two dozen chocolate bars- Hershey's, a box of Splenda (the granular kind), soy milk, vanilla flavored, and several travel and home decor magazines, including one Martha Stewart. In the end, it didn't matter if anyone else was judging the cart, because I was judging the cart. Irony.
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