Golden Rule

Don't Stink Up Other People's Day

DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU'D HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU

Deceptively simple.

But harder to manage in pratice.

Inside industrial society, the impacts of our actions are obscured from us. The results of our choices take place far from where we live, and we are discouraged to understand the ways in which what we do is interconnected.

And we all live inside a propaganda machine which promotes selfishness, avarice, and strength-through-insensitivity (which isn't strength but weakness).

Each of us - you, me, the man on the street - we've all had our minds twisted by commercial and political messaging designed to obfuscate the real issues and get us to buy goods, projects, and ideas that aren't in our best interests.

We are encouraged to hate ourselves - our bodies, our place in society, our thoughts and habits - so that we can be pressured into working for the things that the owners of the industrial system want us to work for.

But consider what the Golden Rule means for people who hate themselves.

We are free - even encouraged - to inflict harm on each other.

All we have to do is project the parts of ourselves we don't like

onto the people it's advantageous for us to hurt.

It's them, not us.

In family units, parents project their problems on their kids, alleviating their own psychological pain.

In political movements, the privileged project the disempowerment coming from above onto groups below them who have less institutional power.

In friend groups, those with the highest status punish those with lower status for disagreeing.

At work, bosses blame their employees for the outcome of decisions that the bosses themselves make.

And across our society, we persecute complainers instead of investigating their complaints.

We have inverted The Golden Rule. We have turned gold into lead. Most of us are more concerned with making others suffer as much or more than we did, rather than alleviating others suffering and trusting that eventually the queue will get to us.

Personal note: I'm a child of divorce. My parents handled it well, staying cordial and never speaking ill of each other in front of me. I wish all kids of divorced parents at least had that.

But when I was 5 I started moving back and forth between my parents' houses multiple times a week. I was there for some things, but somewhere else for half of it. I was a ghost in my own homes. The only consistent resource I had was me.

I've almost always had enough to eat, and usually had a place to sleep, but like billions of other humans, I've also suffered from severe emotional neglect for most of my life.

Whenever I had a problem, I was the problem, and I was expected to fix it myself. Like lots of Gen X, my family mostly didn't teach me how to do things. But they sure did get judgmental when I didn't know how to do them.

The result was shame and uncertainty and anger at a world full of people who had secret expectations of me that everyone seemed to know about but me.

How can a person in this psychological state make sense of what is their fault and what is not? How can they appropriately manage and distribute their emotions?

This went with me into my adult life. I've loved and lost dozens of romantic partners and hundreds of friends and co-workers.

It took me a long time to realize this, but most of the people in my life saw me as a threat or a workhorse or a status symbol and that few people cared much for me beyond what I could do for them.

Sometimes I was an asshole. No doubt. But sometimes I was just asking for what I needed and was punished for it, and these things are not the same.

YOU ARE NOT AN ASSHOLE FOR STICKING UP FOR HOW YOU WANT TO BE TREATED. THEY ARE AN ASSHOLE FOR REFUSING TO LISTEN.

Unless of course you are asking to be treated better than everyone else. But in a propagandized, manipulated state, how do we know which is which?

Humans do often observe The Golden Rule. We help each other in emergencies, we offer sympathy and resources when people have need, we give each other space to be heard and seen. We just don't do it nearly enough.

And as an honest person, how would you want people to treat you if you were hurting them?

You would expect them to complain, and if that didn't work, you would expect them to escalate.

Because that's what The Golden Rule is. It's a way of saying that my shit is just as important as your shit, and if your shit is more pressing than mine, let's deal with yours first, then we deal with mine. But that's not what most of us do.

I'm sitting at my desk on the first floor of an apartment building in Upper Manhattan. I've got the window open. In the time that I've written this, there have been several people crying out in pain. People cussing each other. People screaming in anguish. People shouting and honking horns. Right this second there's a guy shouting "Suck my dick" again and again, and a woman shouting back at him to shut the fuck up. Which yeah, I agree. But I'm also curious why that guy is hurting enough to risk shouting that on the street.

In fact, uncommonly, he just softened, and started to explain why he was saying that, and you could HEAR the hurt in his voice. Why don't we care about that?

Why doesn't The Golden Rule extend to this man in this instance? Why do we start from the place that he's asking for something he doesn't deserve, instead of the much more logical conclusion that he's asking for something that he doesn't have but needs?

There is suffering everywhere. Most of us are deeply neglected and a few of us get far too much attention. And the more that you accept this impoverished state of affairs, the further they're going to push. Whether they be your family, your manager, your friends, or the small clique of self-satisfied fucks whose ancestors rigged this global system to steal your work, your money, your vitality, and your sense of belonging.

But here's the good news.

The honest expect return treatment.

They expect hostility to be met with hostility.

They expect theft to beget theft.

Only a fool wants things his neighbors don't have.

So let's remember what the Golden Rule really means.

You will be treated as you have treated others.

Not with vengeance. But with memory, subtlety, and discernment.

The Golden Rule isn't a reaction, it's a responsibility.

And I want you to imagine a society where every one takes this to heart.

Especially you.