Judge Judy

Is Judge Judy a zen master?

Crime is diminishing but you would never know it, the sense in the Australian people is that crime is on the rise with 65% believing that there is more crime in our country than 12 months ago but the actual data says otherwise. (Taken from our world in data)

In 2016 we had 2.37 people per 10,000 commit a violent crime

In 2017 we had 2.22 people per 10,000 commit a violent crime

In 2018 we had 2.08 people per 10,000 commit a violent crime

There was a mysterious drop in crime rates 24 years ago across the globe that continued to half the crime rate in the following years. Here are some reported theories as to why

1. Policing shifted from aggressive tactics to healing community relationships, inter-department cooperation and building trust on the streets.
2. More security and technology.
3. Gentrifications of neighborhoods.
4. Mental health medication reduces aggression and extroversion.
5. Less alcohol being consumed
6. People don’t carry much cash anymore.

One of the biggest (if not the biggest) predictor of crime rates is something called the Gini coefficient. It is the wealth disparity in the same suburb or neighborhood. If the whole neighborhood is dispossessed and in poverty the crime will be very similar to if the whole neighborhood is wealthy. The greater the gap in the same hood the greater the violence. Ok, so what happened 24 years ago?

Well, Judge Judy claimed midday television, ten million viewers worldwide, three times more than Ellen, doubled Dr. Phil and beat Oprah five years in a row. I’m kidding, kind of, you could say there was an evolution towards a more civilized world through greater adoption of rules and roles.

This is where litigation and Judge Judy can be a beacon of hope for us all. She uses the currency of egocentrism, Domination, aggression, ridicule, and personal responsibility to blast us out of our tribal warrior egotistical ways up into the world of rules and the law. A liberation out of egocentrism to ethnographies-centrism.

She unthreads the part of us that is ignorant of the reality of other people’s perspectives and convinced of the righteousness of our position. She detonates that and opens us up to the role of ‘other’. Judge Judy doesn’t care about your feelings or sensitivities she is a self-proclaimed ‘truth warrior’.

” I don’t care about your feelings, that’s Dr. Phil, show me the receipt”
Just the facts and the law seem counter-intuitive to the idea of freedom but there is a real liberation through limitation and common sense because you have to walk a mile (or even just a few steps) in someone else’s shoes. It swaps out the ‘I’ mentality for an ‘it’ mentality, a fair and just third-person view that by default means SOMEBODY IS WRONG and being wrong is nutrition for the soul.

Judge Judy out bullies the bully and then proceeds to give a civics lesson to everyone watching at home, which we know that people who watch day time television certainly need a good dose of that. It somehow quells the ‘I need to get mine’ perception into, I have a lot to lose if I don’t take full responsibility for my actions and life circumstance.

“You didn’t have to get out of the car, you call the police and report it. You’re a hot head and a big child.”

In all its satire Judge Judy has some truth for us all, the time-honored archetype of drill Sargent or Zen Master that punches people in the nose and wakes them up to the world is something that the therapeutic culture just cannot do. The ego-centric person deadly focused on getting what they want will walk all over someone’s sensitivities and the only way to snap them out of it and evolve them is masculine compassion. In other words, holding them to account for the law and
the view of ‘other.’

Now replace Judge Judy with a man in today’s time and its a public shame fest… I really do have some fears that we will lose the drill sergeant archetype because its the people that challenge your sense of self on the deepest level that will be your greatest teachers, painfully kicking and screaming because you made an error and now your entire mental model of the world is getting a well-needed upgrade, civilising the uncivilized in you.

Thank goodness for Judge Judy.

Liberating us since 1996.