Saturday, November 8, 2008

Perspectives (Part 2): New and Improved Golden Rule:


The Golden Rule, as everyone knows, reads as follows:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."


There's another (humorous) version of the Golden Rule that I've heard, which seems to ring true:

"Whoever has the gold makes the rules."


I believe the Golden Rule should be rewritten as:

"Don't ASSUME what you want done unto you is what others would want done unto them."


I have recently come to the realization that we, as humans, generally do not give each other the same consideration we give to a houseplant. We study plants and know that each variety responds differently to the amount of light, water, and other nutrients we give it to help it thrive. As a matter of fact, we make more of an effort to study every other living thing on earth than we do to understand each other. We assume that everyone else does or should think like us.

When a houseplant does not respond to the care that we give it, do we demand that it change its ways? No. We simply try to adjust the light, water, etc., do we not?

Communication break-down happens when we can only see things from one perspective--our own--and make unreasonable demands on the people we interact with (or make unfair judgments). Disappointment and conflict are inevitable when we have unrealistic expectations according to the Golden Rule mindset.


Note: I suspect many people misunderstand the Biblical message from which the Golden Rule comes from (Luke 6:31).

Posted by Linda at 11/08/2008 11:23:00 PM

2 comments:

  1. There's quite a discussion of the golden-rule on the wikipedia page, iirc, including potential reformulations. In particular, they also point out that most versions of the golden rule (apart from the he-with-the-gold version :-P ) can be extended into the "correct" version by taking a broad enough view with enough context.

    I.e. do unto others as you want them to do to you -> including taking what you want done to you as part of the context, and thus realising that they'd want you to take their desires of what they want done to them into consideration.

    In the end, I'd say any tail added onto the traditional one, to make people aware of the "loophole" and considerate of the "true golden rule" as I'd call it, should hopefully resolve the problem, and your addition is certainly a concise and clear illustration of that problem.

    Nice post!
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  2. The frequently abused golden rule has to be interpreted somewhat abstractly.

    If your favorite ice cream is chocolate and your co-workers favorite is vanilla and you decide to get them a treat, would the golden rule have you give them chocolate ice cream because that is what you would want?

    That would be a pretty stupid rule. Yet this interpretation is often used by people to justify their own selfishness and social ineptitude.

    The proper interpretation is that you would want someone to get you your favorite flavor so you try to get them their favorite flavor.

    Any other interpretation is preposterous.
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