Before certain misguided individuals take my call to start judging people too seriously, here are some important caveats. In order to judge someone, you must be willing to be judged. That just reflects a condition of our existence, because people are often judged for their judgments. But it is my intention that no one use this system who doesn’t wish to participate in being evaluated by it. No one can stop you from using the Care/Aware Index if you intend to avoid being assessed by it, but your deceitful behaviors will be obvious, especially to trained practitioners. Since using the CAI requires you to assert your opinion of another, the more you use it, the more exposed your thoughts become.
The ultimate goal of making these assessments of others is to understand oneself and each other. Some seek this information for the sake of knowledge itself, but I think it is also important for knowing how to life a good life. A good life is one that is satisfying intellectually, emotionally, physically, that also agrees with your values. How do people with conflicting values interact and still lead fully satisfying lives? That’s an important question facing all of us, and one that should be fun to explore here. I suggest that a crucial element of understanding other people, especially understanding attitudes or behaviors that affect you negatively, is the capacity to forgive. Understanding that term outside of a religious context may be difficult for some. What does it mean exactly? Letting go of anger, bitterness, or hate? Accepting that if circumstances were reversed you might be capable of the same act? Understanding forgiveness will be an important area for us to explore.
We may discover the need for a universal value. A simple, easy to agree upon value might be that one should always strive to avoid hurting anyone. Yet, there are probably examples where one person deliberately hurt another for a well intentioned reason. An easier to defend overarching value I want to promote here is that one should seek in all interactions with another to reach mutually satisfactory ends. That’s wide open. It’s flexible enough to accommodate a lot of different philosophical and religious viewpoints, and yet absolute at the same time. It requires us to know each other well. But while it sounds good, it may seem impossible in practice. How do people with conflicting interests or values arrive at mutually satisfying interactions while sharing the same space? Careful use of the CAI may enable us to peel away insignificant differences until only the most important values are exposed and through that process reconciliation or compromise revealed. None of that is possible, though, until we know each other better.