This post was inspired by a recent email I received from Joe S who expressed some issues with the Golden Rule which is often written as:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
As I was initially reading the email, I was surprised. How could anyone take issue with the Golden Rule?
Joe provided an example of where he potentially saw problems.
“Being an introvert, I do not want any attention when my birthday rolls around. If I go out to dinner with friends to celebrate, I do NOT want the restaurant staff to sing “Happy Birthday” to me. I have an extrovert friend. When her birthday rolls around, I take her out to lunch/dinner and make it a point to let the staff know it’s her birthday because she LOVES it when the staff sing “Happy Birthday” to her. I do unto others what they want (provided I am comfortable doing it), not what I want.”
That is 100% fair. Just because one person likes to have Happy Birthday sung to them doesn’t mean they should make that happen for someone else.
My counter to this was that it’s not “Do X because I want X.” That would be the same as saying I’ll buy someone a sweater for their birthday because that’s what I want. (FWIW, I don’t want a sweater for my birthday… especially since my birthday is in July where it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere.)
Rather, the Golden Rule would say: I will respect others wishes (to the best extent I can), the way I want others to respect my wishes. This is hard because we might not know what someone’s wishes are… so, I’ll extend that to add: I will attempt to know others, in a way that I want others to know me.
In the end, the Golden Rule is all about showing others respect, courtesy, grace, etc… in the way we would want others to treat us. So, while many times the Golden Rule is written “do under others,” I believe the intent was always “treat others the way you’d like to be treated.”
I sent this back to Joe, who appreciated my response and let me know that he’d never thought of the Golden Rule for that perspective — the perspective that I’ve always looked at the Golden Rule.
Then Joe told me something really interesting… he’s on the autism spectrum.
This is what makes his different look at the Golden Rule fascinating and a wonderful example of the Golden Rule in practice at the same time.
We are all unique individuals made up of a combination of our physiology, our experiences, etc. This shapes how we view the world and interpret things. We should never make the assumption that another human sees anything the same way we do. Hence, we should never judge other people’s opinions based on who we are or our own experiences. We should seek to understand them first and try to understand how a difference arose. This makes no one necessarily right or wrong, but it does mean we can actually communicate with each other.
In this case, the Golden Rule becomes things like: “I will try and understand other people because I’d like for them to understand me.”