Meditation 23: Golden Rules

Two golden rules have characterized Western culture.  The first is Greek the second is Christian.  Rule number one is "Moderation in all things." Rule number two is "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you."

We can see good reasons to proclaim the rule about moderation. Without moderation all sorts of bad things happen.  The glutton dies young from a heart attack.  The sexually promiscuous person catches some deadly disease.  The excessive smoker gets lung cancer.  Drug addicts overdose.  Greed, which is an excess of wanting possessions or power, leads to fraud, violent crime and war. Carelessness about the long term future of our species leads to a rundown education system.  We need moderation with respect to money, anger, pleasure, and in our dealings with other people.

We can see good reasons for the second rule, which is really the basis of any kind of humane morality.  The second rule reminds us to put ourselves in others' shoes, to look into our own souls see whether we are treating them as would wish to be treated.  If we are guided by compassion, which is not a noticeably Greek virtue, then we won't be so quick to judge others from a position of supposed superiority.  If everyone lived by these two golden rules, all the self-caused problems of human life would disappear.

There is another reason why we need these golden rules, and that is because we show distinct tendencies as a species to go to excess in feeling or action and to act selfishly toward others, thinking only about how we see things, not how the other person sees them.  We need to be reminded to rein back and reflect on what we are doing because we tend to act unreflectively in the first place.  We need the rules precisely because they are so hard to live up to.