Judge, to form an idea, opinion, or estimate about. We judge because there is no way around it. I don't think judging is the flaw. I think the flaw is our inability to ACCEPT the differences of others and the prejudices we form because we CANNOT accept those differences. We have a lot of flaws. If we did not have flaws, we would be equal to the GODs.

In your own words smackdat, "Shallow people we be." We are not perfect, and it is unrealistic to think we will ever be. If you can ask questions like that, maybe there IS some hope for you. Read what you have written. "Often at first glance.",....."The judgements made in those initial moments can impact us in greater ways than we can ever imagine." Isn't that EXACTLY what I was trying to tell you about first impressions?

It is a flaw of humankind smackdat, that we judge others based on our own ignorance. We all spend our lives seeking to become better than ourselves, to have better easier happier lives for ourselves and our loved ones, to make some lasting mark on the world through which someone might remember us, to make the world a better place for those who have less than us, whatever our goal we seek and we strive towards it. Unfortunately it has become ingrained into our very DNA that life is survival of the fittest, that only some of us will achieve what we set out for, that some will fly while most will fall. It is because of this that we judge others, we seek to make them, if not in reality at very least in our own minds, less than us. We try to hold others down so that we might climb atop them and stave off our fall from grace, the reality of failure one moment longer.

In the history of man it has been said again and again by holy men, great leader, scientific and philosophical geniuses, the greatest Humanity has ever produced, that we as a species are equal. We as humans are fundamentally different, each one a unique work of art formed to test the world in which we live, and yet each is equal in his own way to every other because each of us is capable of greatness, of genius, and capable of failure, of stupidity. We each are born with the potential to be the greatest good, to lead the world in light and joy and spread happiness and good wherever we walk, but we are also born with the potential for evil, to be supreme darkness and bring destruction and pain wherever we walk.

In spite of this, we seek refuge in the idea that we are not equal, that who and what we are is not solely a product of our choices but rather some quirk of fate or luck, and so we judge. We look at others and seek to find some way in which they are failing, falling, in our world, some way that we can say "I am better than you". We seek some justification for all of the ways in which we may be deficient to someone by saying we are better than them in some other way. People look at the genius people, engineers, scientists and mathematicians and see them as unattractive poorly hygienic social outcasts so that they may feel better about not being as smart. People look at beautiful people such as actresses, models and even rich heirs to fortunes as being dimwitted and promiscuous or greedy with unpleasant personalities; Successful professionals are thought of as being greedy and ethically or morally devoid, the list goes on of assumptions, judgments, and stereotypes made on people whom many of us will never meet even a cross section of. These Judgments and stereotypes are reflected and reinforced by our culture so that we might come to not just make them but believe them and in doing so feel better about our own failure and mediocrity.

Even the Judgments placed upon we who are into BDSM or Fetish or even just Kink are done out of simple defense. We are made out to be sick and twisted to me deviants, either victims of abuse, now seeking that abuse or psychotics one dry patch from rape or murder. In truth even those who make these judgments, these condemnations, know intrinsically that this is not the case. They know from experience that it can be easier to obey than fight, that pain isn't always a bad thing, that sometimes you want control and that yes sometimes you just need someone who will accept you no matter what whether cruel or kind. Yet they judge, condemn, stereotype, and decry us none the less, and why? To know they are better, because they feared leaving the herd to seek what they wanted and we did not. To know they are better because they bowed and followed, did what they were told and we follow our own path freely. To know they are better because we find happiness and sexual satisfaction and many of them never truly find it.
People judge to feel better about their own failures its as simple as that.