The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The most familiar version of the Golden Rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The golden rule, with roots in a wide range of world cultures, has been very influential among the people of the world and found in all the major world religions. This golden rule is best interpreted as saying: “Treat others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation.”

To apply it, you’d imagine yourself on the receiving end of the action in the exact place of the other person, which includes having the other person’s likes and dislikes. If you act in a given way toward another, and yet are unwilling to be treated that way in the same circumstances, then you violate the rule. To apply the golden rule adequately, we need knowledge and imagination. We need to know what effect our actions have on the lives of others. And we need to be able to imagine ourselves, vividly and accurately, in the other person’s place on the receiving end of the action. With knowledge and imagination, we can progress far in the Golden Rule.

These facts suggest that the golden rule may be an important moral truth. Let’s consider an example of how the rule is used. President Kennedy in 1963 appealed to the golden rule in an anti-segregation speech at the time of the first black enrollment at the University of Alabama. He asked whites to consider what it would be like to be treated as second-class citizens because of skin color. Whites were to imagine themselves being black, and being told that they couldn’t vote, or go to the best public schools, or eat at most public restaurants, or sit in the front of the bus. Would whites be content to be treated that way? He was sure that they wouldn’t —and yet this is how they treated others. He said the “heart of the question is … whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”

This is true: the rule of treating others as you would want to be treated in their place will ultimately develop in us the spirit of fairness and concern of morality. Hence, it will lead to our own happiness.

Let us apply the Golden Rule in all of our interactions with other people: help our neighbors, treat our family with kindness, go the extra mile for our co-workers, help a stranger in need.

Now, these actions will undoubtedly be good for the people we help and are kind to . On the other hand, we will also notice a strange thing. Certaily, people will treat us better, too. Beyond that, then, we will find a growing satisfaction in ourself, a belief in ourself and a trust in ourself.

Those are not small dividends. They are huge. And for that reason — not even considering that our world will be a better place if more people live by this rule. Let us make the Golden Rule a focus of our actions, and try to live by it to the extent that we can.

The golden rule, with roots in a wide range of world cultures, is well suited to be a standard that different cultures can appeal to in resolving conflicts. As the world becomes more and more a single interacting global community, the need for such a common standard is becoming more urgent.

With a research from the Internet

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