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Is the golden rule really good? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by turnerpike20@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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So when I was in school from 2nd to 6th grade in that school there was a sign saying to treat others the way you want to be treated. And yeah the irony with that was teachers at that school were actually quite abusive that I saw no sense in on one hand treating others the way you want to be treated meanwhile being treated badly by teachers. It might sound weird but yeah I was treated slightly better when I finally got out of that school. But yeah to me it's kind of like how I even understand that logic is if someone treats me badly I should have a right to treat them badly. That's basically one flaw I saw with the golden rule. If I'm treated badly what gives them the right to be treated any better? This whole golden rule idea is pretty messed up when you really consider it. If you wrong me do I have the right to wrong you? That's really the one thing I questioned about the golden rule.

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[–] Mechanismatic@lemmy.ml 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The problem with the golden rule is that different people want to be treated differently, so they may treat you how they want to be treated but not how you want to be treated, and vice versa.

Maybe when you're struggling with an issue, you want to be left alone to figure it out by yourself, but your friend in the same scenario would want someone to start doing anything to help out and insisting on troubleshooting the issue together. So your friend ends up frustrating you by offering to help too much when you just want to be left alone and then when they're struggling, they get upset that you leave them alone to deal with it.

So communication is important. Ask people how they'd like to be treated rather than just assuming they'd want to be treated the way you want to be treated and be honest with them about how you'd like to be treated.

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I think you've got the right idea, but may be overthinking it just a tad.

The golden rule is just a proactive step when meeting and dealing with new people. Since you can't know how others want to be treated from your first interaction, you fall back on the golden rule. So you offer to help someone, they tell you they'd prefer to be left alone, all good. Now you know.

Basically, it's not just "If I were in this situation, I would want to be helped, so I'm going to keep offering to help." It's "If I were in this situation, I would want people to be understanding and gentle, so I'll listen to what they have to say and, if they ask for help, do whatever they need."

Where people get caught in the weeds though is often the difference between being "good" and being "nice", so you'll never have an objective answer to the best course of action. Just this general guideline to hopefully steer you in the right direction until you can figure the rest out on your own.