It should be “Treat others the way they treat others”.
You all looking at this through the lens of a civilized society.
The American version is “treat others like if you piss them off, they’ll shoot you, so be nice, but not too nice or they’ll sue you for harassment.”
Your observation is correct, but your conclusion is wrong. “Treat others as they want to be treated.” Different people have different needs.
Except OPs rule would essentially be identical.
When you see someone “treating others as they want to be treated” than that is what you’d do to them. Hence following that rule when it is deserved.
But unlike with “treat others as they want to be treated”, OPs version would mean you respond to malice in kind.
But responding to malice in kind is not always the right option. It is usually only the correct choice when the malicious person has no potential to change. Responding to a badly behaved teen with poor treatment only exacerbates the problem. On the other hand, responding to an oligarch with firm resistance would be the right choice.
The oligarch wants to be treated harshly because that is their core value by which they think the world operates, while the teen is often acting in a defensive posture to avoid harm to themselves and would respond to a more gentle hand.
I think the oligarch wants to be treated with riches and subservience.
And if a teen is bullying someone, I don’t see the issue in them being bullied back so they can learn “hey, this bullying stuff isn’t great, maybe I should stop”.
And what if I don’t know (yet) how they treat others?
Well it was a shower thought not a philosophy one.
But with more thought on it, I’d still say the default rule by itself is broken, so perhaps it should be:
Treat others the way you want to be treated, unless you know how they treat others - then treat them as they do unto others.
This rule is however also broken. For example, if I come to you to ask for help, but you unkindly decline (cause unbeknown to me, you are really having a bad day), you will never receive any help from others, because you treated my like this. And as I will then reject your request for help, I will then be also excluded in the future from help from others. I.e. this rule will spiral into a bad state, because there is no forgiveness.
To solve this, we would need to make a new addition. And then we will be able fo identify another edge case, requiring another edge case. And this continues on and on.
The intention of these simple ethical/moral/social rules is to be as simple as possible, while still being a good approach. The are not intended to be absolutely followed, but to be a rule of thumb, until more information is available, to adapt properly to the situation.
I see everyone else has tried to improve the Golden Rule and completely missed your attempt to add a kill the killers loophole.
At least you got it.
The golden rule by itself just leaves a bunch of killers who don’t care about it surviving.
Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Counterpoint: Getting rid of the people making others blind makes more of the world see.
That includes you.
Sure, the moment I start doing that feel free to take me out. That’s, kinda the whole point. The important part is you remember that it applies to you as well.
Basically MAD except it’s others keeping others accountable.
You’re advocating for everyone to act that way.
If person A acts badly then person B should act badly towards them and then person C should acts badly towards person A and B and person D should act like that towards person A, B and C and so on.
It’s more of a:
“If person A acts badly, Person B to ∞ act badly in the same manner to person A”.
But I can see the programming failure of the suggested rule as written, as it can be implied that only person B should act upon person A, rather than everyone.
The issue with this, is that interpretation of actions as positive or negative treatment towards others are subjective. Treating someone who thinks they’re being a good person badly because you don’t think they’re authentic about it leads to a lot of circular mistreatment.
I don’t think it’s circular, I think it’ll burn itself out eventually.
Since knowledge is woefully inadequate, this would necessarily boil down to “treat others as you assume they treat others,” which is exactly the moral standard already followed by trigger-happy cops, ICE agents, MAGAs and bigots in general.
Is that really the best you can do?
As far as the Golden Rule goes, it’s immensely improved by framing it negatively - do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you.
Navigating the world requires a bit more discernment. Hugging a teenage bully and speaking to him with kind words does more for society and for the bully himself than just “treating him like he treats others”, but it also requires more wisdom and self-control, for example.
Now my experience is purely anecdotal, but the bullies stopped bullying once I fought back, and even more so once I got others to also join me in physically fighting back.
That’s like the shit brown rule
