溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Why Is "Treat Others as You Wish to Be Treated" Golden?
Beyond doing no harm, is doing good first the true law between people?
Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus set the golden rule in the positive — do to others as you wish they would do to you. And with "this is the Law and the Prophets," he made this one sentence the summary of all the commandments. It steps beyond the negative form of Confucius and Hillel ("do not do what is hateful") — from passively not doing, to actively giving first. Yet the positive form drew rebuttal. Later Bernard Shaw needled its trap: "others may not want what you want, so do not force your taste on them." Kant refined it more strictly into the categorical imperative — "act so that the maxim of your action could become a universal law." By what measure do we treat others — my wish, or theirs?
In an age quick to press our own standards on others, the call to give first — but in their wish — grows more delicate.
The golden rule is so familiar I used to let it slip past.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
The golden rule is so familiar I used to let it slip past. But seen again, it is a startling demand — not merely to do no harm, but to hand others first the very warmth I wish to receive. And as Shaw needled, there is a trap in presuming others like what I like. So I reread the rule this way: with the warmth at which I wish to be treated, but in the way that person wants. Today I stand before the question of whether I can hand someone that warmth first.
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