Key ideas
"...it involved absolute respect for the sacred otherness of every creature."
~ Karen Armstrong
- When it comes to practical advice for interacting with our fellow humans, few practices are as clear as the Golden Rule: treat others the way you’d like to be treated.
- During a period called the Axial Age starting around 3000 years ago, a profound shift began to occur around the world. For perhaps the first time in recorded history, compassion, nonviolence, and ethics became part of the core religious and philosophical teachings of the day.
- According to religious scholar Karen Armstrong, at this point in history, spiritual practice became a matter of living ethically with our fellow humans and all other creatures. As she puts it, “It involved absolute respect for the sacred ‘otherness’ of every creature.”
- Practicing the Golden Rule is a matter of cultivating the voice in our minds that seeks to benefit others — whether stranger or sibling — and neglecting the voice that seeks only selfish gain. Whichever of these we feed will get stronger.
Transcript
One of the first lessons I learned as a young boy also happens to be one of the most important lessons I’ve learned to this day. I was about four or five years old, and my mom sat me down on the edge of the bed one evening. “This is the Golden Rule,” she said, looking me gently in the eyes. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I looked confused, I’m sure, since the wording is a bit archaic for a kid. She explained: “You like it when people are nice to you, right? So be nice to other people. You don’t like it when someone is mean to you? So don’t be mean to other people.”
I might not have clearly understood at the time. And arguably, it’s taken me many years to be able to really put this simple rule into practice. But for all the things I’ve learned over the years, I keep coming back to those words. While the rule is easy enough for a toddler to understand (in theory), I would argue that it remains as relevant as ever for us “grown-ups.” Learning to embody this concise wisdom can transform our personal lives, our communities, and our society.
This episode is the fifth in a series looking at dealing with people. When it comes to practical advice for interacting with our fellow humans, few practices are as clear as the Golden Rule. In this episode, I’ll explore its historical background and insights into practicing the Golden Rule in modern times.
In her book The Great Transformation, world-renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong paints an engaging picture of a massive cultural evolution. Four different regions around the globe — the Middle East, Greece, China, and India — experienced a seismic spiritual shift starting around 3,000 years ago. We still feel the effects of this shift around the world as of this day. And as we’ll see, few ideas have since compared to some of the insights that emerged from this time called the Axial Age.
For centuries, violence dominated each of these cultures. Even the religions of each region incorporated violence into the rituals and belief systems. Committing harm against others was embedded directly into religious practice and daily life, handed down directly from the gods.
But each of these four regions started to see a profound change. For perhaps the first time in recorded history, compassion, nonviolence, and ethics became part of the core religious and philosophical teachings of the day. Spiritual leaders had begun to see the futility of the ceaseless violence all around them. Sacrifice gradually was removed from rituals. The gods themselves began to take on more compassionate forms, embodying virtuous qualities that ordinary men and rulers alike should embody.
During this time, the Golden Rule in its various forms was born.
In China, it took the form of Confucius’s “never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.” In Greece, Isocrates (not to be confused with Socrates, although they were contemporaries) taught his pupils they should not “do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.” The Mahābhārata from ancient India has a teaching that “by self-control and by making dharma (virtuous behavior) your main focus, treat others as you treat yourself.” And then what is possibly the first appearance in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the book of Leviticus says: “If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him. You must treat him like one of your own people and love him as yourselves. For you were strangers in Egypt.”
According to Karen Armstrong, at this point in history, holiness and connection with the divine became a matter of living ethically with our fellow humans and all other creatures. As she puts it, “It involved absolute respect for the sacred ‘otherness’ of every creature.” We are all strangers to someone, so treating others with respect seems a wise strategy if we hope to be respected by others.
While it sounds good on paper, it’s clearly not so easy or widespread in practice. Author and evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright offers insights into why the Golden Rule might be difficult in practice. According to Wright, our genes – not just our spiritual teachers – actually lead us towards compassion. But there’s a catch: our genes encourage a kind of compassion that will lead only to narrow reciprocal altruism: you scratch my back, I scratch yours. If you’re a total stranger, I’m probably not going to trust you with a potentially sharp object like a back scratcher behind my back. So I’ll keep that kind of mutual benefit to those I know and love. In essence, from a genetic perspective, the selfish gene only looks as far as “what’s in it for me?”
But Wright offers some good news as well. He believes that game theory can show us how to convince our genetic bosses that life isn’t always a zero-sum game. Not every situation has a winner and a loser. In fact, modern society is largely built around quite the opposite premise, that cooperation leads to better outcomes. Every time you make a purchase, you are making a cooperative agreement with the vendor, in which each of you will come out a winner. The vendor wants your money, and you want their product. So you both win (most of the time). Likewise, our public education system is built around the common good. We provide education to our youth; they, in turn, provide value to society as working adults. The health care system involves taking care of complete strangers, not only for the money exchanged (although there’s clearly a lot of that). But also because society benefits from having a healthy population.
These non-zero-sum relationships are everywhere we look. We have far more mutually beneficial arrangements in modern society than winner-take-all deals, no matter how much the cynics around us may try to convince us otherwise.
Reciprocal altruism is the subtle force behind healthy societies; it’s just a matter of spreading out our conception of who’s part of our network. Practicing the Golden Rule is a matter of cultivating the voice in our minds that seeks to benefit others — whether stranger or sibling — and neglecting the voice that seeks only selfish gain. Whichever of these we feed will get stronger. We can choose to be part of a movement towards greater cooperation, kinder behavior, and mutually beneficial solutions. Or we could watch as greed and destructive behavior slowly degrade our societies.
The historic sages of the world’s great religions recognized the power of the Golden Rule, whatever they might have called it, to reduce violence in their societies. I’d like to believe that we can also use this simple idea to catalyze a cultural transformation. Let greed and hatred wither away, and let kindness and compassion flourish in their place.
Well, that’s all for now. Join me again next week as I dive a bit deeper into some of the themes from evolutionary psychology introduced in this episode. Be sure to subscribe for more episodes. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave me a review; it really helps! And please share this with a friend if you think it will be helpful to someone. Until the next time, be well!
References
- The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong
- The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
- "The evolution of compassion" TED talk by Robert Wright
Podcast soundtrack credit:
Our Story Begins Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/