Be Careful To Not Judge

I just read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, and it struck me about how different we look at things based on the results of the action.

I thought of it because, on the surface, trying to climb Mt. Everest is, in a word, nuts. At 29,028 feet, it is the highest mountain in the world. If you make it to the top (or really, anywhere on the mountain), you will be battered with high winds and cold temps. The threat of frostbite, or altitude sickness, or any of a number of other things that you wouldn't want happening to you are pretty high. (They said in the book that if a person was taken from sea level to the top of Mt. Everest, they would be unconscious within a few minutes because they couldn't breathe, and a few minutes after that, they would be dead.

If you are planning on climbing Mt. Everest, you better be ready to pony up tens of thousands of dollars (for the permit to hike it) and block off a couple of months of your time (to get to the mountain and especially to get acclimated to the altitude). Oh, and even if you do everything right, if there is a storm at the top on the day you are trying to reach the summit, you will likely either not actually be able to make it, or you will die. If you do make it safely, you will not enjoy it. It will be a miserable time getting up and experiencing the conditions.

Now, picture a person that is not all that experienced in climbing, but is a go-getter and is able to afford the time and money that it takes to hike Everest. If that person dies while climbing, people around them will likely wonder what they were thinking. If they make it, they will be lauded for their toughness and determination. In reality, the difference between these two outcomes is often luck or chance. And yet we would likely look at the people differently.

In the same way, we need to be careful about judging people in all walks of life. Often, the reason they are where they are is because of some bad luck, or chance. This seems to be true all the time in how people view homeless people - they might think them simply bums that are afraid of hard work. In reality, for many homeless people there is a bad set of circumstances that led them to where they are. In other cases, it might seem as if the people almost never had a chance.

We can't know the circumstances of how people got to where they are and the people they have become. Because of this (among other things) we should strive not to judge these people, but to understand and help them.