🥇 Golden Rule

Overview

  • The Golden Rule is humanity’s common thread; an ancient guide promoting universal harmony which features in the ethical teachings of all the world’s major religions.
  • Though laws, rights, and morality are just concepts, the Golden Rule is ancient and universal, having been accepted as sound wisdom across almost all cultures for a hundred generations. Its essence is reciprocity, mutual respect, and compassion.

What is the Golden Rule in Ethics?

  • Treat others as you wish to be treated.
  • This can also expand to a universal principle that if everyone treats each other well, everyone is better off.

Silver Rule 🥈

  • The silver rule, which says “do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you,” is perhaps even more helpful for anchoring the law, given that laws usually inform what we must not do. No one wants to be aggressed against, so this forms the common fundamental root of morality.

How the Golden and Silver rules relate to 3L

Examples of the Golden Rule in different traditions

  • Christianity: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31)
  • Judaism: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation.” (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
  • Islam: “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” (Hadith, Sahih Muslim)
  • Hinduism: “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.” (Mahabharata 5:1517)
  • Buddhism: “Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” (Dhammapada 10.1)
  • Confucianism: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.” (Analects 15:23)
  • Taoism: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.” (T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien)
  • Sikhism: “As you deem yourself, so deem others.” (Guru Granth Sahib, 480)

More precise than the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule assumes others want what you want. In reality, people have many differing desires. If someone wishes to be treated badly, that is not a justification for treating others badly. That’s why 3L defines ’excellence’ with the Aspirational Values, which appear in cultures all over the world throughout history.

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