One word which sums up the basis of all good conduct – lovingkindness. Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself - Analects 15.23– Confucius

The Golden Rule is often invoked as a sort of shorthand for how we should treat each other on an individual daily basis.

Sometimes, we’ll expand the concept to encompass how society should treat a group, or how one country should treat another.

If we really stretch ourselves, we may even consider it in terms of our ecological impact on the earth.

All of these are important.

But they’re not enough.

The problem is that most of us think of the Golden Rule as if it were an Ethic of Reciprocity.Indeed, that’s another common name for it. Reciprocity, however, suggests a “tit-for-tat” sort of relationship; a one-to-one situation where we and the “other” exist in isolation and where our choices affect no one and nothing else.

That’s never the case.

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

An “inescapable network”, on the other hand, is evocative of a perspective where we recognize that the interconnectedness of all things has to be integral to the choices we make; where we act from the understanding that “whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

That’s the Principle of Mutuality.

And we’ve always been aware of it on some level.

But knowing something is one thing. Applying it’s another. It’s not easy.

In fact, it’s the one teaching that Confucius himself said that he could never live by consistently.

Perhaps that’s why more words have been written and more arguments made to curb and contain it than were ever penned or spoken to bring it to fruition.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Every life-affirming faith and secular moral code is grounded in it. Yet the vast bulk of our sacred texts and legal precepts have been devoted to explaining why this universal principle isn’t universally applicable.

Rabbi Hillel said that the Golden Rule constituted the whole of the Torah. He relegated its thousands of pages of teachings to the status of “commentary.”

The consequences of ignoring the Principle of Mutuality are becoming all too clear; our need to adapt to its reality all too urgent.

If we’re to evolve from isolated societies into a global civilization we must also transition from an ethic of self-interest, or even group interest, to one of universal interest.

There are a growing number of resources, programs and movements that seek to facilitate that transformation.

Paul McKenna created the Golden Rule Poster and Golden Rule curriculum

Mussie Hailu works throughout Africa and the world to promote the Golden Rule Day

Karen Armstrong wrote Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life and gathered an international committee of theological luminaries to write the Charter for Compassion.

I wrote the 7 Questions and gathered an international group of ordinary people like myself to write the Golden Rule Resolution.

In fact, there are thousands of efforts underway by individuals and organizations large and small. They seek to build bridges rather than walls; to value understanding above ideology; to encourage compassion over legalism; to identify commonalities instead of conflicts.

These efforts recognize -

• - that each part of Existence is unique; each plant and animal; each ocean and drop of water; each mountain and grain of sand; all of us together and each of us individually.
• - that there’s no single “absolute right” way forward. Nor is there a single “absolute wrong” way – except to fail to act without acknowledging the inseverable relationship that binds us
• - that we will find unity, not in uniformity, but in celebrating our diversity.

The longer it takes to embrace this reality, the more we jeopardize our ability to meet the challenges of a global civilization; indeed the more we jeopardize our continued survival at all levels.

There are those who, like James Lovelock, think that it’s already too late. They believe that the intricate relationship between each of us and the world has already been so distorted that catastrophic change is inevitable; not only from an ecological perspective, but from an economic and societal one as well.

I think they’re wrong.

The Principle of Mutuality embodies the concept that even the most extreme of consequences can be changed by the smallest of actions, if enacted by a sufficient number of individuals.

Working together we can transform the bleakest prophecy into the brightest future.

There are others, like Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Empathic Civilization, who describe our current situation as a “race to global consciousness.” I understand their point. But races have winners and losers. We need to change that paradigm; to think in different terms; terms where, for one to win, all must win.

Otherwise we all lose.

The Principle of Mutuality provides those terms.

It always has.

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart. - Lao-Tse

Those words were written some twenty five hundred years ago. Our world is both larger and smaller than the one Lao-Tse knew. However, what he wrote then is just as relevant now. We have to apply the Principle of Mutuality in ever-more-inclusive ways, expanding like the proverbial ripples in a pond, in order to bring about “peace in the world.”

We can all now see what in the past was perceived by only a few visionaries – that the world is “one”, interconnected and interdependent. That just means that we’re finally ready, as a civilization, to set aside the doctrine and the dogma that we’ve used to limit and qualify the universality of the Principle of Mutuality.

Jeff Wattles, in the conclusion to his book The Golden Rule, says of it that “Only a principle so flexible can serve as a moral ladder for all humankind.”

Ladders are climbed one rung at a time.

We need to start.

Today

You can also read about Exercises in Mutuality here