The Dilemma of Prejudgment

Prejudgment is the act of reaching a decision or making a conclusion before an evidence is available.  Prejudgment could be an instinctive act originally developed to protect our species by previously predicting what the next step could be and build our move based on that assumption.  For example, our ancestors had to prejudge a wild animal and kill it in order to protect themselves even though that animal might had no intentions to attack.  They also had to prejudge others to protect what they have or else their defense mechanism wouldn't have developed and thus they wouldn't have survived.

However, with the social development that took place rapidly in the last century, humans had to abandon many traits that are not important anymore for their survival.  Laws and regulations protect them and they do not need to develop their defense mechanism on the personal level in directions where the cons are much more than the pros.

In our society though and due to the absence of confidence in the system, people unfortunately still hold onto traits that the civilized world has abandoned. Developing our individual defense mechanism on the judgmental level is still as it was from hundreds of years ago.  For example, if somebody is a suspect in a murder(of course assuming politics is not involved or else people will be highly opinionated); people will conclude the following :

1. Some will say he/she is definitely guilty.
2. Some will say he/she is not; out of trying to be different.
3. Some will say he/she is not; out of being convinced he/she is not.
4. Some and very few will say let us wait for the verdict.  Moreover, many of those as well on the personal level has some sort of a conclusion but they are smarter than others not to share it.

 

At the same time, if people start abandoning this trait, their individual defense mechanism will retreat and this is OK if there is a judiciary system that is well implemented but this is not the case in our culture.