I'm conflicted. You've brought me back to something I was thinking. We - americans for sure - judge people not rationally but according to their outward threat to ourselves. I won't deny that anyone can get addicted to a substance, or that it can happen by chance rather than choice. When you go this far to "understand" humans, there's almost no one bad left. When do you stop "understanding" people for their situation and get on with judging them for what they are?

If the underlying motivation for understanding or judging is to figure out what public policy to adopt, then the choice of what to do is simply what works best. If some people are irredeemable and locking them away forever ends up creating the safest and healthiest society for the most people, then judge away. If it turns out that helping people and understanding them where possible works better, do that. Most progress seems to me to originate in moving from the former to the latter, in moving more people out of the "irredeemable" category.

I don't think you have a need to judge anyone unless you are an actual judge. As a private person you could just decide you want to stay away someone and leave it at that. You have no need to dehumanize anyone by private labeling.

And, I think this is confused labeling. Substance abuse alone does not make anyone a danger to you.

So, substance abuse: a) person goes to a daily job, drinks a bottle of wine in the evening, does some coke, goes to sleep. repeats ad infinitum. b) person has a really bad addiction, needs money, so he robs you

I presume your talk about fear and judgement was more about scenario b rather than a, but both are about a person with substance abuse problems. The thing we don't actually like in b) is the stealing, not the substance abuse per se.

You could turn the question around: who has a need for some people to be seen as intrinsically bad, and to what extent do we indulge that urge?

> not rationally but according to their outward threat to ourselves

If we did that, it would be rational, and an improvement. The unfortunate truth is that we tend to judge people for being outsiders, so while alcohol causes much more harm to others than heroin or crack cocaine (citation below), “we drink alcohol so it must be fine”.

Same with terrorists: if the killer is one of “us” they are “a troubled lone wolf”, if the killer is one of “them” then “that just goes to show how nasty they all are”.

Same with child abusers: “stranger danger” is what people worry about, but most documented abuses are committed by close relatives.

(Relative harm: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_harmfulness#/media/File...)

How about judging what they do in the context of why they do it, rather than judging them for what they are?

Why this need to judge?

It is particularly odd given a country where such a high proportion claim to be Christian, and perhaps ought to follow the instruction to leave it to their God to judge people.