Judgemental

I'm baffled.

There seems to be a general consensus that it's bad to "be judgemental". But I'm going to rephrase that - is it bad to use your judgement?

Here's a quote straight from Facebook. "I don't want to be judgemental, but how am supposed to take your claim seriously ("homeless, single mother, anything helps, God bless", when I just saw you take a break and use your cell phone. I find it insulting to homeless single mothers."

Why doesn't he want to be judgemental? It's good to use your judgement to weigh evidence and have that affect your beliefs about what is happening around you. And when you talk to people about "being judgemental", you'll find that, even though they claim to be against being judgemental, they actually use their judgement all the time. Of course they do!

People who don't use their judgement, leap out into the road without checking the traffic, eat food that tastes bad and trust people who are obviously untrustworthy.

I get a lot of emails offering me huge sums of money - I'm sure you do too. Not all of them are from Nigerian princes; many of them are from lawyers, bankers and devout Christians, or at least, that's what they tell me.

I'm judgemental. I don't send them money.