The (Same-Situation) Golden Rule

It has been just over 2,500 years since the first recordings of The Golden Rule at 500 BCE in India, China, Persia, and Greece. Since then The Golden Rule has been a point of unity shared by at least 13 different religions and all the major ones. The Golden Rule is global and beautifully simple. It promotes justice, consideration, cooperation, and unity.

However, we can turn the The Golden Rule into a fallacy if we screw up when applying it to a behavior. Here are some examples*:

• The literal GR fallacy assumes that everyone has the same likes, dislikes, and needs that we have.

• The soft GR fallacy assumes that we should never act against what others want.

• The doormat GR fallacy assumes that we should ignore our own interests.

• The third-parties GR fallacy assumes that we should consider only ourselves and another person.

To combat those fallacies, we can use a simple consistency principle (a “test” if you will) to apply The Golden Rule most wisely. So, to test a behavior prepare to ask this question: 

Are you willing that if you were in their same situation then this would be done to you?

To prepare to answer that question properly you must be knowledgeable how this would affect others and you must imagine what it would be like to have this done to you if you were in their same situation. Sure, we will never have perfect knowledge or imagination. But we can and should strive to make improvements.

If your answer is not aligned with the behavior then that behavior is not impartial or conscientious. Therefore, you should consider that there is a better way.

Thus, we have The Same-Situation Golden Rule for which we, the people, can declare the following:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that The Same-Situation Golden Rule promotes justice, consideration, cooperation, and unity among all people. That every next interaction — action, reaction or transaction — is endowed with relevance to how people feel next, on their own terms, and in their own ways. 

When interactions ignore relevance and degrade the natural capacity of others to feel what we would want to feel in their same situation it is the right of people to reject those interactions, even those to which people have become accustomed. We do this by using a simple consistency principle to leverage our human power of goodness, for the benefit of us all.

We therefore resolve to enable interactions in which we deal in knowledgeable and imagined ways with each other, control our private persons and spaces, assert fair terms and means of engagement that work in mutually constructive ways for both ourselves and others whom we engage, for the good of all.

We make this Declaration as free and independent persons, each with full agency, ready to act, react, and otherwise transact in a free and open environment we call The Marketplace.

To this we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our precious time and attention.

* Gensler, Harry J., SJJ; Ethics and the Golden Rule