Thread by @Mrpossidez

Don’t judge a book by its cover” is not a statement to be taken literally. I think it’s good to judge or profile people and things based on what they present to you. Just the way they are.

It’s not smart to not judge books by their covers and I’ll articulate my thoughts:

First, It’s impossible for humans not to judge. It is always funny to me when I see people discourage judgments as though we have full control of it. Our minds take signals and interpret them against the background of our existing inclinations, preferences and predilections.

If you are not comfortable with smokers, you judge/profile them immediately you see them do it. It’s so unconscious. You may not cancel them off totally but you already profile them out of certain relations you might want to have. For instance, a relationship.

Why should a thing not be judged based on what it appears to be? I think it’s foolish to do otherwise. To maintain a rational mind, you cannot even live without making certain deductions and creating certain biases based on facts before you until contrary is shown.

Secondly, Profiling people does not mean you should be closed. Teach people to work with facts but also be skeptical and accept that while it is good to make certain reasonable deductions about people, they must encourage the possibility that there is more to what they see.

But, to totally propagate that things or people should not be “judged” based on their covers is a statement that can misleading.

What you owe people is the ability to rationally adjust your first impressions of them when they show that they’re more than that.

Your duty is not to ignore it simply because people have depths to them. You cannot place a possibility higher than a fact before you. When you ignore cues and recklessly treat things with the understanding that there could be more, you run a foolish risk.

They already put themselves in a place of doubts. It is foolish to help them eliminate those doubts without they providing reasons. The reasons do not have to be conclusive but there should be something at least that makes you begin to think of them differently.

If you hold a large tumbler and sit under a palm tree with three kegs around you, drinking milk, you cannot blame people for thinking you’re drinking palm wine. It is always smarter to judge by perception because many times, you’ll be right.

Sometimes when I make these points, people say, “but you cannot be too careful”. An unsuspecting person can still hurt you and you’d not see it coming”. True.

If an unsuspecting person hurts you, it won’t be your fault that they did. You didn’t see it coming.

But if you see someone who already looks like it and don’t profile accordingly, it would then be stupid of you not to have.

Nothing is more painful than being fooled or hurt by something you saw coming and ignored because you’re reading between lines that don’t exist.

Also, many people know the exact impression their looks, appearances and predisposition give off. They usually don’t mind you seeing them in any way.

You see a man with a gun smoking with fiery eyes, profile accordingly.

Your profiling or subsconscious judgments do not have to manifest in your external relations with them. It’s just a way to be more cautious in dealing with people. Whether good or bad.

Our judgments and profilings occur from our minds and it is based on our various moral compasses.

This happens for the people you like too. When they appear as one, you profile accordingly.

If we don’t profile people, there’s no point being cautious.

We might as well associate ourselves with all manner of persons because, really, there is always some good or bad in person or things if we search deeply. But unfortunately, we cannot live long enough to unravel everyone or everything.

Be guided by your instinctive preoccupations. Just be smart enough to entertain more information about anything or anyone. Don’t be closed; this doesn’t not mean you should not be smart or skeptical either.

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