Judgment and Fear Theme Analysis

In The Four Agreements, Miguel Ruiz argues that the way in which humans are “domesticated”—conditioned to live in society—is fundamentally damaging to the psyche. Children are indoctrinated to behave according to social rules by being punished for bad behavior and rewarded for good behavior. Due to this indoctrination, most people grow up with an ingrained habit of judging their own behavior and punishing themselves for failing to live up to the social rules they have internalized. According to Ruiz, this way of thinking encourages humans to live in perpetual fear. People fear doing, saying, or thinking something wrong; being imperfect; being judged; or being punished by themselves and others. Ruiz argues that living in this cycle of self-judgment and fear causes humans to suffer unnecessarily, and that this keeps us trapped in a “living hell” on Earth.

In order to demonstrate how society indoctrinates people, Ruiz lays out his concept of the “Book of Law” that governs how people behave. He compares humanity in to an “autodomesticated animal” that is punished and rewarded (often by ourselves) to think and act in certain ways, much like a pet dog or cat is trained to perform or refrain from certain behaviors. It is through a similar process of social reinforcement that society’s dominant belief system about what’s acceptable and unacceptable—whether that be morals, ways of presenting oneself, or other societal standards—comes to be encoded into a kind of Book of Law within each individual’s mind. Ruiz believes that this kind of singular, rigid belief system can be extremely detrimental to human beings because it often contradicts with “our own inner nature” or intuition of what we know in our souls to be true. Thus, people inevitably end up forcing themselves to live according to society’s standards rather than their own sense of what’s right and wrong—a tendency, Ruiz argues, that results in an unfulfilling life of shame, self-judgment, and fear of breaking with the strict Book of Law that is accepted by other people.

Ruiz argues that by adulthood, most people have internalized the socially-enforced method of rewarding themselves for good behavior and punishing themselves for bad behavior, which sets them up to consistently judge, berate, and reject themselves.  Ruiz believes that “domestication,” or social conditioning, causes all adults develop two strong inner voices named the “Judge” and the “Victim,” who rule people’s lives and cause them to hate themselves. A person’s inner Judge constantly evaluates every move they make against the Book of Law in their mind, criticizing their thoughts and behavior when they fail to live up to the belief system they have internalized. Accordingly, a person’s inner “Victim” receives the Judge’s criticism and subsequently feels shame, guilt, inadequacy, and self-rejection. Since nobody can ever think or act perfectly all the time, people are essentially living in a cycle of abuse centered on self-judgment, self-criticism, and self-hatred. In essence, the inner “Victim” perpetually thinks, “I’m not worthy of love” and the inner “Judge” reinforces this belief by perpetually agreeing, “Yes, you are not good enough.” People thus reject themselves for being inadequate and feel miserable instead of loving and accepting themselves.

Ruiz believes that this cycle of judgment and criticism into which people are indoctrinated causes them to live entirely out of fear, which generates such widespread negativity that many people are essentially trapped in a “living hell” or “nightmare” version of reality. People learn to act in ways that will please others because they are afraid of being judged and criticized, which causes people to wear “masks” in society to hide their perceived imperfections. Obscuring one’s true self generates negative emotions like jealousy toward people who wear better masks and thereby move through the world without as much criticism, and this jealousy further motivates people to spread “emotional poison” against others in order to make themselves feel worthier in comparison. The energy a person spends in constantly judging and criticizing themselves, wearing social masks, and judging others often depletes them to the point that they have no energy left to pursue things they enjoy and love. According to Ruiz, given the widespread conformity to society’s Book of Law, this means that most humans live in a world saturated with fear, hate, and judgment—a state of misery, or a “living hell.”

Thus, the root cause of suffering in the world, according to Ruiz, is the belief system that people learn as children against which they constantly measure themselves. Because nobody can ever measure up to the image of perfection that they have ingrained in their mind, they reject themselves instead of accepting themselves, act out of fear of being judged instead of on the basis of their own desires, and are trapped in a limited—or, hellish—way of being that is ruled entirely by fear.