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I judge you, and that's okay

The first day of my study abroad program in Morocco was the usual combination of awkward mingling and useless information sessions. After I suffered through a series of hour-long information sessions coordinated by the Institute for the International Education of Students in Rabat (not a Princeton affiliate), only one nugget of wisdom stayed with me throughout the four months of my North African experience — and only because I found it so offensively misleading. The best traveler, we were told, is she who experiences foreign cultures without judging. Separating your own beliefs and values from those you encounter in a new country is a sign of open-minded sophistication. Check your opinions at the door; this is a safe space, a no-criticism cultural observation zone.

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We were never told at what point a good traveler turns her judgment back on. Perhaps she never does — she just wanders through the world recording facts and noting differences between societies without ever checking the information she gathers against any kind of baseline of personal values. Listening to her expound upon marital practices in Tanzania or religious demographics in Australia is like consulting an encyclopedia — informative, surely, but not the kind of intellectual stimulation you seek out unless you’re working on a relevant academic research project.

To my mind, at least half of the value of study abroad lies in first surviving, then embracing the clash between your own value system and a foreign one. A meeting of worlds is only productive if you acknowledge and evaluate the contradictions between them. Acknowledgment without evaluation entirely misses the point. Study abroad is an opportunity to tweak, reject or strengthen your old ideas by exposure to new ones. This is why I (very judgmentally) decided on my first day in Morocco that my program directors were not going to be my travel gurus.

To some extent, I heard echoes of my Princeton experience in the “travelers don’t judge” mantra. Here, though, "travelers" is replaced with "friends." Judging your peers has somehow become the cardinal sin of young liberal social etiquette. “Don’t judge me” is one of the most familiar refrains on campus. We are expected not only to reserve or suspend judgment on our neighbor’s religious beliefs or life choices, we are urged to completely efface our own views lest our opinions hurt someone else’s feelings. We’ve adopted a moral relativist standard: You do your thing, I’ll do mine, and who’s to say which is right? In doing so, however, we’re willfully ignoring the fact that moral relativism is a rigid value system in its own right.

As a self-proclaimed judger, I strongly take issue with the values of a relativist philosophy and deplore its stranglehold on campus culture. I judge relativists. I judge their views first and their characters second, because I see a strong element of hypocrisy in a system that exerts a smothering social pressure on those who dare to judge others. The judgers of our generation are being held on trial, and in consequence we are producing increasingly insipid communities where “some of my best friends” are x, y or z — but the identities and personal beliefs that create these diverse factors are conversational taboos only to be handled while wearing kid gloves and half-embarrassed smiles of loving tolerance. We have not succeeded in banishing judgment. We have only muted it.

There are times when it’s legitimate to ask me to stifle my criticism. When a friend tells me not to judge her dance moves or her tendency to mix ketchup into her macaroni and cheese, I find the request eminently reasonable. It’s really none of my business what she puts on her noodles and maintaining a straight face during her Beyoncé imitations can only be beneficial for our friendship. When, on the other hand, a friend demands my complete and unquestioning acceptance of her moral, ethical, sexual and religious values, that relationship becomes a sterile, perfunctory affair. My closest friends judge me. Although they may pretend otherwise, distant acquaintances judge me, too. An untold number of evenings dedicated to discussing and challenging these judgments separates the first category from the second.

Judge, and share your judgment. Be honest. Be ruthless. Good travelers and real friends are those who contribute to a worldwide conversation about what is right or whether there is a right in the first place. Through protracted conversations that clarify our own positions, we learn more about the strangers we live among and, ironically enough, get a little closer to that utopia of acceptance that the relativist judge-me-nots are preaching. We can and should demand informed, rational, excellent judgments, criticisms and arguments that are free from malice or ignorance. No one, however, has the right to demand that I shut off my mind for the sake of his or her insecurities. I wouldn’t if I could. So the next time you add, “Don’t judge me” to a description of your religious conversion or your future career plans, don’t mistake my shrug for acquiescence. It’s just a passive-aggressive symbol of how strongly I judge you for asking.

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Tehila Wenger is a politics major fromColumbus, Ohio. She can be reached at twenger@princeton.edu.

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