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- Rebellious Thoughts #76 - 🤘 Judgment Call
Rebellious Thoughts #76 - 🤘 Judgment Call
By Gus Balbontin
Edition #76
Hey!
This is perplexing.
I write 75 newsletters in a row - that’s a newsletter a week for almost 18 months and then - I loose my rhythm.
It’s like I went all shy.
Since I stopped writing, another 400+ people have joined my newsletter!
We are over 7200 now.
Yet here I am struggling to put finger on screen (pen to paper) and share with you what’s in my mind.
Anyway…. perhaps a topic for another newsletter “how we lose habits” - or why - maybe. Did I let go to make space for something else? Maybe the book?! Not sure.
So - a few weeks ago I did a podcast - and I don’t often do them, I may have done 4-5 maybe max. I’ve written about how the médium becomes the message and it is so true. Being able to sit down and converse with another curious mind (Dain in this case) with no time limitations in a safe space created by his team means you get to explore things and concepts in a different way.
Somehow, from the depths of my brain, comes a thought I had years ago - the difference between judging and sentencing.
Something I have observed a long time ago but never really spoke about till the podcast.
Let me explain (you can go watch the podcast and hear the rest here).
We often judge and are judged.
It’s a constant. I think it’s very human. Sometimes we judge for really important reasons like safety, and sometimes we judge for really trivial reasons.
The judgement itself, although influential and potentially harmful, can, and often is, ignored.
Judging AND sentencing are more problematic.
The sentencing bit is far more final than the judging bit.
It’s like judgment alone leaves the door a little open to an evolving process, but sentencing is forever. It’s the stuff you start believing and struggle to ignore. Both you can do it to others or it can be done to you.
It is a vague observation, perhaps not an observation that will provoke you in any significant manner, except to hopefully make you pause and reflect when on those times you have gone too far and delivered an immovable sentence.
Example - my pretty wife twice in the last say 6 months - pulled me up and effectively pushed me to reconsider my sentencing of an event.
I kept arguing back that I was simply doing what is human to do - but when I think about it in detail - I realise that the judging was not the problem, it was my sentencing, my final decision on the situation that was the problem.
So - judgement can be more “this is what it makes me feel” “here are some thoughts about this based on what I know and have experienced” “this is how it fits or doesn’t with my principles or beliefs”
Sentencing is the judgement plus a final sentence. A permanent state.
The finality is the shit bit that we do sometimes in the most subtle of ways. It's the difference between "I'm disappointed by what happened" and "You're a disappointing person." One is temporary, the other permanent.
Maybe the worst is not how we judge and sentence others, but actually how we judge and sentence ourselves.
"I'm not a consistent writer anymore. I missed so many newsletters”…. am I doing it without realising?
CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK:
What have you sentenced lately that maybe just deserves temporary judgment? What doors have you closed that could be better left open?
And perhaps more importantly, what sentences have you accepted about yourself that should be revisited?
Love
Gus
Recommendations:
If you’re curious about how to actually use AI in real life—not just read about it—check out HumanAI, a newsletter by my good friend Lucas.
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