The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule

This is called the sum up of all the laws and prophets. The universal morality.

Jesus said "in everything, do to others what you would like to be done to you".

In the other words, do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you.

Prerequisite:

My understanding is before you can apply this golden rule, it requires that you take an affort to understand and comprehense the situation, place, time, feelings and thoughts of another person without which your judgement may not be what is really supposed to be. This effort is never perfect though but at least in most situations it should work.

Put yourself in the shoes of the other person and you now you can understand him or her better. This requires you to spend some time focusing on the other person rather than thinking about yourself.

The Challenge:

• This golden rule generally works well, however, for situations such as a person harms himself by words and deeds, it wouldn't be adviced nor recommended for him to take this golden rule into practice!
• People may expect different things in different situations so what you would like another person do to you if you were in his shoes may not be exactly the same.
• Maybe what another person expects is not fair. For example a proven and serious criminal would like that the the judge releases him as the judge wishes to be released if he was a prisoner himself. So, it's a bit tricky sometimes.

More details:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity