STEEMITIQUETTE #8: JUDGE NOT - You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Many of us here may not be religious or even don’t believe in the Bible. But I found no better way someone would have said it than Jesus:
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“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” - Mark 7:1-5
What is a hypocrite?
The origin of the word comes from Greek hupokrinesthai which is further translated as hupokrites or actor or stage actor in modern English translation. Actors in a play or movies “pretend” to be their characters according to a script they follow.
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They are the “great pretenders”. They can act and take any character that comes to mind and transform himself into that character whether by behaviour or by appearance.
Everyone makes judgment about someone everyday. At work, home, party, primaries, funerals, weddings, and in so many occasions we look at others and make judgment about them. Whether the judgment is good or bad, it doesn’t really matter. It is in our nature to judge others.
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But who or what do we base our judgment with? Most of the time we judge others by our own measure or by what we believe is the right measure.
“Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I'm not perfect -and I don't live to be- but before you start pointing fingers...make sure you hands are clean!”
― Bob Marley
By judging others, especially in the wrong way, you not only degrade the subject of your judgment but also your own personal character. Judgmental people tend to justify their weakness by putting others down to raise what little dignity they have.
People who always find faults in others are blind of their own weaknesses. And when they are oblivious of their own faults, they think they are always right. And we know how dangerous that can be.
What Other People Say
“While you judge me by my outward appearance I am silently doing the same to you, even though there's a ninety-percent chance that in both cases our assumptions are wrong.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
“That mess about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin—that's some bullshit. Nobody has the right to judge anybody else. Period. If you ain't been in my skin, you ain't never gonna understand my character.”
― Emily Raboteau, The Professor's Daughter: A Novel
“It's so funny you judge me arrogant after I succeeded. You didn't help me at all when I was so poor and needy.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“One of the most common and most dangerous misbeliefs is that it is impossible for someone to be stupid just because they are a doctor or a lawyer.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.”
― Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
“One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.”
― Oscar Wilde
Application
We are a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and ideology. Some of us may declare our beliefs and maybe at some point impose them on others. Our views differ from each other and what’s beautiful to you may be horrible to others.
And this is where some of us will start to judge.
One looks at Ethereum as superior than Steem. The other believes curating is more profitable than blogging. Yet another thinks the whales are unfair in dishing out rewards while the small fish gets no attention at all.
We get to be a judge every minute we stay in Steemit. By upvoting and/or downvoting we make “judgment calls” as to whether a blog post deserves rewards or not.
We judge whether the contents of a blog post is worth reading or not.
We decide to upvote a blog post by who authored it or by the author’s reputation level. Then we give our judgment.
But the judgment we give should not diminish or minimize our fellow Steemians as a person and as a valuable member of our community. Nor it should diminish or minimize us as the one giving judgment.
Our judgment must remain objective. Not subjective.
It is one of the beautiful things about Steem, although the social regulation infrastructure is far from sufficient at this point. It's not so much democracy as a meritocracy.
If bad Whales curate badly, and the network declines in market share, they abandon it. This lets other people come in and change this.
If developers bring out great new applications that attract more users, and meet needs in their apps that the core system does not address, they will get paid for this improvement, and it is possible even that because of the success of these experiments the core is altered to match the proven modification.
A true meritocracy means that you are elevated to the top because what you say, works. People follow you because you teach them things that improve their lives. People follow you because what you say is true. It is not the same as a democracy, votes are not equal, and the effect of votes should not be the same. Stupid people vote stupidly. Smart people vote smartly. The smart people should overwhelm the dumb people.
At this point, Steem only makes a basic metric of this simply the amount of Steem you have vested into Steem Power. But the entire dynamic that unfolds over time tends towards functioning like a meritocracy. If it can be continued towards this end goal of a real life functioning meritocracy, it inherently must succeed.
I got myself smacked around pretty hard by a Whale when I first started here. I still stand by my position that this guy was not a good commentator, he was not contributing anything, but, his votes were not too badly chosen overall. Maybe he could vote better, I am not really the one who can say, that is a collaborative process.
One nice thing I learned from my run-in with this whale, was to be a little less concerned about directly pointing at the mistakes in other commentators' positions, especially when they are hypocritical, wrong-headed, or even mean and malicious. It is better to focus on boosting the ones you like, if you don't like it, scroll on. Push better posts below it up, and the more that people do this, the further down you have to go to read this rubbish. This is an intentional design feature.
Meritocracy does have its advantages over democracy. And those advantages are somehow apparent to the Steemit ecology. More steem power, more influence. The more popular you are, the likely your presence is felt and your posts get attention. And those who are on the shallow end of the ocean don't get much love. Planktons and minnows are at the mercy of whales who can just as easily be dismissed in a click of a mouse.
I can see democracy playing its part in our interaction with each other and with our interrelationship. I cannot say the same with regards to rewards. Like you said, people follow those who think can help them fulfill some needs and that people follow you because they trust you. People with huge SP are huge influencers, especially with regards to rewards. This is what we have to deal with. And unless a drastic change happens, we just have to live with it. Do what we can and the best that we can. Build our own brand and widen and heighten our influence.
I raised the issue of the lack of proper blocking (mute) functionality on the web page. A developer read the issue and has made a patch. It will probably be online within the next week or two. Banging on about it here did nothing, I had to put it to the github to make something happen. Unfortunately I can't get the reward for it directly, but I am hoping that other people notice and do reward me. I think I deserve it. But who knows how the cookie will crumble.
I'm sure sooner or later a clever whale is going to notice what I am doing and start to push my profile up a bit. As the steem price slowly slides back to 1:1 with dollars, I'd be willing to bet there will be a few whales stepping off and new ones coming in seeing a bargain.