In the current age it is thought that each individual one of us has the power of intellect in some capacity within us. The finest tool of that intellect is rationality as wielded by the skeptic. This would then indicate that it is our powers of discernment and memory that are the most useful. Specifically in the determination of the veracity and value of any object or idea. To use a more common word; to make judgements.

It’s not a bad place to start when beginning to assert yourself into the world around you. In many ways it helps us to categorize all that we inhabit. Most directly though it is used to differentiate the outside world from ourselves. In being that it’s usage is, in truth, subjective and taken from only our personal perspective our judgements are useful to us.

We then take our conclusion from the discernment and we tuck it away in our memory to be used in similar situations in the future. With our intellect in play, maybe we can also extrapolate meaning from our new “knowledge” and apply it in places that it may not have been fitted before.

Once married in our consciousness with memory and relative application we create a fairly strong bond with these notions. They became laden in the foundation of other ideas to become far more reaching than the original case that had spurred the original discernment.

So, in essence we have taken our own individual and personal perspective and made it a type of universal imperative through repeated application and the faculty of memory. But, does that make our individual discernment applicable to any other cases? Does our localized opinion also become universal law just through one persons judgement of it? If we look at judgement acutely in how we deal with other people the quagmire is easily identified.

Let’s say I am walking down the street and I see a car that is a particular shade of red. This color makes me physically ill right then and there. It is an awful experience. So I have learned that this particular color is evil and horrible. So the next week I see the same car and become ill. Then someone gets into the drivers side and rolls their window down. I scream into them “don’t you see how horrific your car is! It made me ill both times I have seen it.” Then the driver says “It’s the only color of car that doesn’t make me sick. How can you stand the others?”

In both instances we are responding honestly to our particular perspectives. Some of them ingrained some of them learned. Very obviously though they are individual and particular. Each of us reacting personally.

Rationality and judgement are tools that we posses. It is a way for us to learn and process life individually. Like most (if not the totality) of life only exists in any sort of “real” way within us individually.

While our intellects give us the faculty of long teaching thoughts; Those thoughts are still localized to our minds and no one else’s. Unless of course our goal is to fill our minds with only the thoughts and insights of others. At which point we are borrowing the judgement of others and are not ourselves making any.

So, are judgments of value or quality in the actions or ideas of others existential beyond our particular minds? This would only not be the case if we were to manifest our judgements physically toward the offending person.

To go back to the car analogy. What if I reached in and grabbed the person and forcibly remove him from the offensive colored car? That would surely make our judgement mean something to more than our selves wouldn’t it? Well, if your attacking of this person were to make them never get into another car of this color again then possibly. But, if the attack deters no one despite the flexing of your opinion, then possibly not.

Ultimately these judgements we make about others and the world only involve us individually. Our actions only serve our personal thoughts on the matter. The purpose is to affect the only being that is experiencing them. Namely, us individually. It changes how we personally are affected or think about the current object of judgement.

In the expression of these judgments in behaviour or speech we feel full of the power of our discernment. We feel as if we can change this person or thing that has been judged by us in whatever manner. This is a complete fabrication. While it may feel as though we have affected the world through our judgment we cannot directly do so.

In our expression of favour or disgust we succeed only in disseminating the shell of what we mean to. And in fact only succeed in expressing or transmitting our behaviour that comes from the judgement. We are only ever affecting ourselves and no one else.

This is not to say that people will not react to our pronouncement of judgement upon a situation. That is not us but, their own minds that are engaged in their own discernment. We did nothing but lay an obstacle before another. None of what we think can or will change anything as to it’s intrinsic value to anyone but that whom is engaged. Again, that being our individual selves.

So, what about when the expression of our personal judgement does cause an action in another? Isn’t that our judgement coming to fruition? As above stated that cannot be the case in an existential or “real” sense. That said there is another context that it could and does impact another. That being inside of shared nonphysical systems. In other words within cultural normatives.

If we have chosen to allow external control of our lives in an immaterial way; then we have created a space where individual judgement can use the existential weight of the shared social system to make it “real”. As a group of humans adhering to a cultural system we have given it a manner of existence and therefore control over our actions.

While this is a system that does allow for direct impact of the individual upon other individuals, it is ultimately not “real”. The logic and impact of my judgement is measured by this arbitrary social system. And make no mistake to the individual, any influence from an outside source is in its own manner completely arbitrary.

Whether or not we decide to follow the arbitrary system or not is a truly existential question. If we wish our internal judgement to have weight to others it must be pronounced within the system of the cultural group. We ourselves must give it power in order to exercise our own. But if it is we as well as the other individuals must give over our power to judge upon an entirely separate system.

In conclusion, it appears that if we wish to make our judgments on anything a living thing to other individuals we must give it our power of choice and therefore freedom. It is in this wish to affect our thoughts upon the physical space that we needed to create a dogmatic and uniform place in which to pronounce them upon others who have also given into this rigid system. “If your gonna play the game you gotta know the rules.”

It is precisely this omission of choice in favor of boon that has created the idea of determinism. It is the forfeit of choice to an implied existential system that creates all of the problems with judgement. Without the sheer weight of possibility on every act to counteract the thumb of culture one can never be free in any way. If we have decided to participate in the system of participation given to us then we have no choices. On the other hand if we do not give the implied power of others bestowed to them by systems we may have simply inherited, then choice and freedom from external influence is greatly lessened.

Judgement as well as choice are individual on nature. You cannot make any choices for me that I do not allow you to. And visa versa. Whether or not I exercise my ability to take another road entirely is up to me. Just like every other non physical thing I deal with if I simply, independently, choose to follow my internal counsel and not that of any other.