The greatest form of human intelligence is to observe without evaluation.

 

R. Krishnamurti

 

Again and again I come across this quote from R. Krishnamurti even whilst noticing how often our use of language confuses observation with evaluation or judgement.  So common is our practice of combining the two that our language is woven through with nouns, verbs and phrases in which an evaluation is presented as a fact.  This is true in journalism and politics, for example, when we describe a man or a woman as a “terrorist” or when we use any number of verbs (“struggle” and “cope” are just two examples) which suggest our response to what we see at least as much as they accurately represent what we observe.

And of course, as much as we can look to our journalists and politicians for examples of this conflation of observation and judgement, we have plenty to investigate in our own use of language.  How often do we describe someone as “difficult” or “aggressive”, for example?  How often do we use such words as “bullying” or “abuse”?  What other words do we conjure when our loved ones stimulate in us feelings of anger or irritation, when our staff or colleagues don’t give us the behaviour or results we want or when we do not receive the level of service we yearn for out in the world?  Our language would be much more precise (as well as more wordy) if we were to replace such phrases as “John was so agressive in our meeting” with such phrases as “when I heard John speak more loudly than anyone else in the room and watched him stand up and lean forward mid-way through his response to the Chairman I thought ‘my!  you’re really behaving aggressively today!'”

One of the reasons I value Marshall Rosenberg’s work in the field of nonviolent communication is because it teaches people to differentiate between their observations and their evaluations as a matter of habit.  This is not to say that such habits are gained with ease.  It can be easy to tell yourself that your language is clunky and awkward (hey!  more evaluations!) or that others will not – or do not – accept your turn of phrase when you commit to clearly distinguish between what you observe and how you respond to it.

And in case you’re reading this and thinking, “what on earth is the difference that’s being highlighted here?” or “how can I distinguish between the two?” I invite you to get curious about your own use of language or the language of others.  When, for example, would it work to insert an “I’ve concluded” or an “I believe” in a sentence?  And what do you notice about another person or situation (or even about yourself) that leads you to the descriptive words you use – from “lazy” or “difficult” to “beautiful” and “industrious”?  For whether you are responding positively or negatively to a person or situation the words you use are likely to reflect your response – your evaluation – as much as your observation.

Krishnamurti’s conclusion is that the greatest form of human intelligence is to observe without evaluation.  It may take us all a long time to let go of our evaluations.  Meantime, owning them is just one step along the way.

PS  And if you feel like sharing examples of what you notice, please post them here in the comments section of this blog.