What do we get wrong about the Golden Rule? - Headspace (2024)

FAQs

What do we get wrong about the Golden Rule? - Headspace? ›

"It also helps you distinguish between the similarities and differences between your and other people's situations." She says "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" assumes that people's experiences are alike—but that is simply not true.

One, it fails to explain how to deal with non-reciprocation. Two, it fails to make clear that my obligations are obligations regardless of how I would wish to be treated by others. Three, it lacks any special value in explaining the right occasions for benevolence. And, four, it has no power to motivate benevolence.

First, it is not universal; but even if it is generally reflected in all major cultures, the Golden Rule can still hardly be the core of all morality. It offers little resistance to weak, inconsistent or morally-questionable applications, and it fails to reflect our highest moral standards.

In his chapter on the Golden Rule, for example, Gensler is quick to note that one of the problems with it is that it does not take into account the fact that people stand in different relations to each other and in different sets of circ*mstances: it does not take it into account that you and I will be in a different ...

The Golden Rule fails in practice because we really can never tell instinctively or otherwise how someone wants to be treated, or why they do what they do; what their motivation for action happens to be. Attribution errors are the cause of most negative conflicts in life, miscommunication, and other missteps in life.

The “golden rule” is usually expressed as “treat others as you yourself would wish to be treated”. Its flaw is that it rests upon an assumption that everybody has the same desires as to how they would like to be treated … and they don't.

For example, the negative version, taught by Confucius, states, 'Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you. '2 This version, viewed as a moral prescription associated with social morality, seeks an agreement to avoid certain actions.

A major disadvantage of The Golden Rule is that judges can technically change the law by changing the meaning of words in statutes. They can, potentially infringing the separation of powers between legal and legislature. The Golden Rule won't help if there is no absurdity in the statute.

And so the answer to why is it so hard for us to follow the Golden Rule is that despite the good intentions of our teachers to teach us to respect one another, we've been taught far more examples of how not to treat one another.

By modern philosophical standards, the golden rule is not commonly viewed as an adequate basis of moral theory. The problem with the rule “treat others as you would like to be treated” is that it does not, and cannot, distinguish between the 'good' and the 'bad' ways in which one might like to be treated.

What do people think about the Golden Rule? ›

Normally we interpret the golden rule as telling us how to act. But in practice its greater role may be psychological, alerting us to everyday self-absorption, and the failure to consider our impacts on others. The rule reminds us also that we are peers to others who deserve comparable consideration.

It is sometimes called an ethics of reciprocity, meaning that you should reciprocate to others how you would like them to treat you (not necessarily how they actually treat you). Various expressions of this rule can be found in the tenets of most religions and creeds through the ages.

It's actually the Reverse Golden Rule that is much more challenging: Treat yourself how you'd like others to be treated. There's an excellent article by psychotherapist John Mathews that unpacks the reasons this is so crucial to our well-being and why it can be so difficult.

The problem is, the Golden Rule has a massive flaw. It assumes that everyone around you, is just like you. That other people want and need the same things that you want and need, and that you should automatically be able to figure them out based on your own experience. But individuals do not work like that.

The golden rule is very limited in its use as it is only used when the literal rule leads to absurdities and, therefore, it is only used on rare occasions.

"The golden rule is steeped in empathy: the basic premise of do to the other as you want done to you or even what you hope for others is what you hope for yourself," says Ramani Durvasula, a professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. "That actually means attending to other people."

Kant reasoned that the Golden Rule fails in its alleged purpose because a consistent moral formula cannot be subject to contingent personal inclinations but, rather, our inclinations must be subordinated to universal moral norms.

Golden rule argument is an argument made by a lawyer during a jury trial to ask the jurors to put themselves in the place of the victim or the injured person and deliver the verdict that they would wish to receive if they were in that person's position.