Golden Rule

I’m a big fan of work that’s stood the test of time; great classics that are hundreds if not thousands of years old. Well, I mainly enjoy their Wikipedia pages as many of them are thicker than a 70’s phone book and are in an English prose not used since the Wars of the Roses.

There is an earned wisdom to Seneca, for example, whose lessons on morality, virtue and living a good life are just as true today even though they are close to 2000 years old. (and a book I’ve actually read — twice!)

There’s a passage in Letter XLVII to his friend Lucilius which sounded familiar to me:

“Treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors.”

This sounds strikingly similar to Christ’s own Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:12 don’t you think?

“Do to others what you want them to do to you.”

I did a bit of digging on the similarity and it turns out Seneca wrote these letters between 63–65CE. It could be that he heard the Sermon and got the lesson from there, though not likely given Seneca was most likely in Rome at the time. It is far more likely that it’s a case of parallel thought: when two or more parties have the same idea, though there was no contact between them. ‘A good idea is a good idea’ as they say.

This notion of treating others the way you want to be treated is known as the Golden Rule, and it is found in every major religion, dating as far back as ~500 BCE in Confucian China (according to my hasty scroll of Wikipedia). Anything that has been true for 2,500 years or so is probably worth keeping in mind in your daily life.

I know it’s cliché — even a bit “first year philosophy student” — to mention, but it’s worth knowing why its cliché and why parents will be telling their children for generations to come not to hit their sibling or steal their toy because ‘they wouldn’t like it if it happened to them.’ It is simple advice which in our hearts we know is logical, reasonable, and, poetically true.

It’s been said many ways by many people, and I don’t much want to copy/paste every incantation uttered by prophets and deities alike, but I will highlight my favourite said by Princess Diana:

“Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.”

That’s my challenge for anyone reading this over the weekend: carry out a random act of kindness for a complete stranger. Here’s some examples in case you need them:

• Pick up something someone dropped in a checkout while never breaking eye contact,
• give directions to someone who wasn’t asking for them, loudly, out of a moving car,
• break into your neighbour’s house and watch them while they sleep, softly cooing like a baby pigeon,
• Yell ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre while smearing your disheveled torso with mayonnaise.

Really, anything you can do to help someone no matter how trivial it may seem ‘safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.’