How to change point of view about people

We all judge others. Sometimes we just need to see someone from the first moment to put him into a pre-existing category of our mind. Then we get to know that person and our judgement starts having a shape. In general we can like or dislike that person, but what do we consider? Of course the way to judge is totally subjective, we tend to appreciate some traits that remind us something about ourselves, we see if the other person follows the same moral… However, our tendency is to extrapolate our judgement and consider it “the right judgement” even outside of our minds.

I’ve been asked what parameter I would choose to define who is the “best person”. When you are asked such a task you don’t start judging with your personal method in order to make it universal, you start thinking about a more rigorous and objective way to express a judgement. My answer (and probably the most common one) is that the “best person” is the one that gains more happiness through his life. This is a simple concept that can be made more complicated. For example, we are considering the instant happiness or the long-term one? In my opinion happiness requires the idea of stability. The first thing that is evident from this way to judge is that it is not moral. Someone can be a “good person” or not either if he’s morally good or if he’s evil. He can be in our tastes or not so we are going out of our strict point of view and considering the point of view of the person we’re judging.

This example will make everything clearer, it consists of another question I’ve been asked: is it right to live our lives in order to leave a sign in the present and be remembered in the future? My first answer was “no”, since I don’t care about being remembered because I won’t be able to enjoy the success brought by a life of sacrifices that lead me to have results after my death. And it was easy to pass from “I don’t care about being remembered” to “no one should care about being remembered”. Again, I was judging in a completely subjective way and then extrapolated my thought on everyone. Then I changed my mind and answered “it depends”, because it actually depends on the person who is living that life. A person who wants to be remembered makes certain actions in life and these actions bring him satisfaction, just with thought of the result he will get even if he won’t see it.

So should we get rid of our personal tastes about people and start analysing their level of satisfaction in life? Of course no, but going out of the personal point of view to analyse a person differently helps us to avoid the generalisation of our thoughts and makes us revalue some people that maybe we didn’t like for some unreasonable feeling. It broadens our horizons of acceptance and accepting others is usually an advantage to live more serenely.

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