The Golden Rule: A Need for Action.

A Small Scene Introduction

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

This noble statement rings in my ears. My mind starts developing a vision from the gathered vibrations. At first fuzzy, then the picture becomes clear in my mind and always in black and white.

A small child of nine years holds his head slightly down with shame in a well kempt kitchen. A disappointed female figure slightly angled forward from the hip stands over the child. Her left hand connects to her hip, her right hand waves the pointer finger, and her mouth opens a loud scolding “YOU SHOULD NEVER DO THAT NO MATTER WHAT.” It is an odd interpretation of “I’m a little tea pot short and stout.” The small child lifts his head quickly with conviction and starts a rebuttal “But Maaa.” The mother says the golden rule. Tears fall from his face, his conviction is gone, and his silence reassures us he understands the rule. The scolding is over but the grounding will be sentenced when “your father comes home.” The rule is reinforced without allowance for two weeks and extra chores.

It might be a funny scene. It might be a scene to teach a valuable lesson. Both instances are true but the translated message becomes narrow to most of the people reading the scene. It becomes narrow to the parents preaching to their kids to act with respect. It becomes narrow to the people in charge of companies, states, and countries. To the people in power with control and authority that forget they were that small child of nine at one time in their lives. That ideology is not right in the demise of another no matter which God is by your side. This is a scolding message for all those adults yelling the golden rule collectively at individual kids instead of practicing it collectively in the world.

Golden Rule: From One to Many

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

         In my golden rule vision the rule is taught to a child after doing something wrong. As long as I could remember (which may not be the most reliably source for information but one that I must live with) the golden rule applied to an individual that did something wrong and then was taught the golden rule to realize they did something wrong. A child’s innocence maybe lost in such situations but it is important to teach children ethical and moral considerations for others. Also, I am well aware; the golden rule is a rule that is learned from one individual to another spreading the morel and ethical obligation of the golden rule trickling down from one individual to the next over time. The teaching of the golden rule from this method has brought it upon most of the world echoed in ethical proverbs and parables as well as being found in most religious beliefs.
         The problem with this trickling effect is when an individual forgets the golden rule because their own individuality becomes lost in the collective voice of a group. This is not suggesting that all individuals will fall under the group’s misguided ethical spell or that the individual forgot the lesson learnt before entering the group but that a lapse of individual ethical standing is overwhelmed in the mass of the group. In such a group, an individual can become swept up by the groups ethical conscious and forget their own individual ethical considerations. For the most extreme example of this situation think of the Spanish inquisition. Think of the fighting of the Holy land. Think of the New Englander’s, in my own homeland of Connecticut, burning Indians alive in a fort to allow for the Christian Calvinist expansion. Think of some LA riots where free men were not free of their skin. Think of a mob of soccer fans beating each other after a match. Think of the cultural misunderstandings of ideology for the good of their own people but not for other cultures.
         These examples are not to push blame on anyone but to show that certain situations the swell of the collective voice for some and not for others kills the individual ethical conscious and more importantly lowers the golden rule to a quote to be used only to teach innocent child by a hypocritical authority. Should we throw away the Golden Rule? Give up its application on society to the mass of unethical confusion? No, it would be shameful to surrender the golden rule. In order not to regress, the golden rule trickling method needs to come not from the individual but the collective. This would relinquish the collective ethical conscious from being an absolving ethical force into a teaching ethical source. This is partly a reality today in that religious teach the golden rule to its followers. However, the mass teaching, through a religious group, still becomes a hypocritical authority since it competes with other religions and social ethical ideologies for the power and the right of followers. Instead of competing the collective groups should teach the golden rule not just as an individual rule, not just as a rule for their followers, or countries, or states, or nations, but as a rule for every human being to follow collectively as well as individually.

Golden Rule: Reaction to Action

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

         Another problem developed in the introduction scene of the golden rule, besides who is being taught the rule, is that the golden rule is a reaction to a problem instead of an ongoing action of ethical concern.
         The problem of reactionary when it comes to the golden rule allows the person to do something wrong at least one time. This might not seem to be a huge concern but actually is because has the ability to turn the golden rule into an infinite regression. An infinite regression is something that doesn’t have a definite beginning allowing for a chaotic situation. One example would be what came first the chicken or the egg? It is fun going back and forth except when people are dieing because they are pointing at who started it and no one can remember who actually did. So, what am I getting at? A person that did something bad, be it beating up some little kid for that extra milk money for lunch, be it stabbing a person on the street to get money for crack, be it a pharmacist diluting cancer treatments to insure double profits (happened in Texas, sorry Texans not your fault just one guys act of greed), be it faulty manufacturing with low grade ingredients for better profits (Not blaming china, the United States as well as every country going through a manufacturing surge did unethical skimming for better profits), be it singling out a person because of their differences from you and the status quo, be it killing a bunch of American Indians for existing on a land because some settlers thought to expand their right, be it any atrocity that seemed good at the time but looked horrible to the future looking back at the past. When it is allowed to be a reactionary statement it goes from, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” into another well known reactionary statement, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” bringing a cycle of hate upon hate that could last hundreds of years just for allowing one ethical wrong instead of stopping it with an action-nary method.
         To stop this nonsense of right and wrong spiraling into a back and forth revenge, the golden rule needs an action approach and not a reaction approach. You learn the rule by doing the rule so the rule does not get broken conceptually and literally the first time. You teach by setting examples not setting restrictions onto small children because they did not know better the first time it happened. You understand the different types of cultures and not force one to be right over the other. You set aside what was learned that blocks every other learning and accept that every option is possible to exist.

Conclusions with Problems:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

         This plan to forgo a change in the learning process of the golden rule from the individual to the collective, as well as implying it as an active ethical consideration from a reactionary, one history becomes a problem. Ideas grounded in logical thinking and validity to promote a more harmonious humanity does not have the power to delete the historical atrocities that have been placed as triumphs and travesties in our world history books in the swipe of a single key stroke. Even though dreams can be envisioned and realities can be fought for, the past cannot be forgotten. The fight has to begin by the old forgiving what has been done. Then we will be able to teach the young a different past, forgiveness allowing the present to have a future under a more holistic togetherness and ethical concern.