Golden Rule Radical

Posted By David on November 9, 2009

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages - Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion, it’s roots firmly planted in the principle we call the “Golden Rule”, recognizes not only the presence of mutuality in religion, but also in secular moral codes and ethics.

I’m not sure that we would, today, say that evolution has a “goal” as Edison suggested. We understand its randomness better after a century and more of study. We also, however, have a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that it favours species that cooperate. And even more that it favors species that cooperate not only with their own group, but with other groups and species, to live in a mutually beneficial synergy. While some might argue the source of that favoritism, I think that it is most important to simply acknowledge that it exists. For it seems to me that it’s on that desire for cooperation that much of what we call compassion rests.

The founders of our great religions and philosophies saw the potential that humanity has as part of Creation; as part of the universe. They knew full well that in their times and places we hadn’t reached that potential; that we were still, as Edison put it, a long way from the goal. But they also knew that we could reach it.

Now, for the first time in our history, we have the ability to see the world, not just in its diversity, but also in the unity within that diversity. Cooperation, and harm, have taken on new and more urgent meanings.

It’s time, perhaps, to look again at the potential our revered figures saw in us, at the goal that Edison suggested evolution has for us, and to embrace the compassion that mutuality demands of us.

Categories: Change
Tags: charter for compassion, compassion, cooperation, Ethic of Reciprocity, ethics, Golden Rule, karen armstrong, Mutuality, non-violence, religious diversity, religious pluralism