Golden Rule Radical

Posted By David on February 27, 2008

Ideas come from lots of places. Mine often come from my readers; others come from casual conversations in one place or another. And of course, a great many come from family and friends.

In other words, the best ideas often come out of relationships.

I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps the reason that we can’t seem to solve the world’s problems isn’t that we lack ideas. Perhaps instead, it’s that we lack relationships.

Martin Luther King Jr. said “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

The Golden Rule is all about relationships. We can’t “Do unto others as we would have them do unto us” if we don’t understand the “others” in the first place. To act without that understanding just leads to “us” imposing our ideas on “them”. That may be a relationship, but it’s not a very good one.

And yet of course that’s what we usually do, isn’t it?

A favorite author of mine, Keith Laumer, wrote some wonderfully satirical science fiction stories based on his experiences as a diplomatic attaché. Laumer found it incredible to watch his colleagues who, though generally sincere, didn’t seem to understand why they needed to make the effort to understand the cultures of the people they were working with. Laumer isn’t describing a simple issue of language barriers. He’s talking about a lack of basic understanding of the concepts, priorities and passions of entire societies.

Laumer’s experiences took place over a half century ago. We have better communications and a more global perspective now. People from anywhere on the planet that has an Internet connection can read this article. But we still lack a basic understanding of the needs and wants of people we have never met.

We may, in a token Golden Rule way, think of ourselves in the “other’s” place, but when we do we still find it difficult not to assume that what we would want is what “others” must want also. To develop a Golden Rule understanding, we have to let go of our own cultural perspective.

That challenge is the same on an individual level as it is on an international one. When our relationships with friends or family become strained, it’s often because we’re trying, perhaps unknowingly, to impose our concept of what’s best on them, rather than striving to understand their point of view.

Golden Rule living won’t work that way.

Accepting other perspectives as equally valid to our own is the first step in the journey to a truly Golden Rule world, individually and culturally.

For an exercise in applying the Golden Rule, try the 7 Questions.

Categories: Mutuality
Tags: do unto others, Golden Rule, Mutuality