I’ve heard sentiments like this from most of the people I know who work helping the disadvantaged populations of our society. These are genuinely altruistic people, but they still get tired. For example, an addictions doctor was venting to me last week about how half of their patients don’t show up for appointments, and can’t even be located by the social workers who are employed to keep track of them.
Do you think those who optionally exercise the mental activity of making judgements of those behaviours are likely to suffer more or less burnout than those who choose not to? How useful an activity do you think making judgements of people you interact with is? Who is it useful to? The judge? The judged?
Not everyone exercises perfect control over the activities of their mind, and not every thought is carefully selected for optimum results before thinking it.
The point is just that even altruistic people, who one might presume are disinclined to such judgments, can find themselves making them after a time.
Besides, the doctor in my example was not even judging people, merely expressing exasperation at the inability for the resources expended to hit their intended targets. No one likes to feel like their work is meaningless, and getting paid (in public funds, no less) for patients who don’t show up might feel meaningless.
We agree on the empirical fact that many people generate suffering for themselves by encouraging an inner narrative of complaint about others' behavour.
If there's disagreement, it seems to be about whether or not this is necessary. I contend (along with thousands of wise narrators from just about every culture throughout human history) that it is not. This is just spiritual/ideological/psychological pragmatism (depending on your metaphysical orientation), and is intrinsically unrelated to altruism or perhaps ethics. Indeed someone holding a view that judgement of others is ethically or morally 'bad' merely shifts the target of the wasted mental judging-activity to their own putative ego.
