The Golden Rule.
Life, the Universe and Everything in Four Relatively Simple Sentences.
Burton Weltman
Thesis: The Golden Rule maxim “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not merely an ethical goal, it is a statement of fact. We, in fact, love our neighbors as we love ourselves and we love ourselves as we love our neighbors. The problem is not merely that we do not love our neighbors and ourselves as much as we should, but that we can’t. How we deal with that fact, both individually and collectively, is what makes the world go around, or not.
Explanation: The Golden Rule can be found in some form in virtually every human culture. It is well-nigh a universal ethical rule. But it is also a psychological and sociological rule, despite the pervasiveness in our society of social science theories that are intellectually based on Descartes’ individualistic Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am) and ideologically based on our individualistic economic system (the so-called Economic Man).
Mainstream social, economic and psychological theories almost always start with an isolated self-centered individual and then work toward social relations. It is the conventional wisdom in our society. However, as many of the best psychologists, sociologists, economists, and other social scientists have repeatedly demonstrated, that is not the way things actually work.
The maxim “I think, therefore I am” is literally nonsense. You cannot have any sense of yourself, cannot meaningfully utter the word “I,” without first having some sense of others. It is through interacting with others that we get a sense of ourselves, so that the Cogito should really be “I think, therefore we are.”[1] Once you grasp the facticity of this revised Cogito, the maxim “Love your neighbor as yourself” logically and psychologically follows. What you think of others reflects what you think of yourself. The better you treat others, the better you think of yourself.
There are, however, inherent contradictions and conflicts in our relations with others, starting with even the most loving of parents, so that we inevitably fall short in our best efforts to fulfill the ethical injunction of the Golden Rule. And that is the problem. But it is a problem that can be pragmatically resolved if we face it and do not regress to copout theories of individualism and rationalizations of Economic Man that are nonsense at best and inhumane at worst.
BW 11/17/18
[1] I have written a series of short essays on this subject which can be found on this website: Rethinking Descartes’ Cogito: “I think, therefore we are (not I am).” Part I: Resolving the Popeye Perplex. Part II: The World According to Calvin and Hobbes. Part III: A Cross of Gold and the Golden Rule.
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