THE GOLDEN RULE; What can we learn from it?

The golden rule says to treat others as you want to be treated. This principle is about teaching people to have integrity when interacting with others. It's trying to get us to imagine ourselves in someone else's shoes in an attempt to better understand their perspective. If you wouldn't like to be yelled at, then you shouldn't do that to others.

But the golden rule on it's own isn't enough. It's just a rule of thumb, and like all rules of thumb there are exceptions to the rule. The point is that you shouldn't try to follow this rule by the letter and instead you should follow it in spirit. The spirit of the rule is about avoiding being a hypocrite and learning how to think about things from other people's perspectives. More generally, what's needed in relationships is to find mutually-beneficial ways of interacting with each other - to treat others in ways that are compatible with your preferences and their preferences.

In many cases our preferences are in harmony. But sometimes there's a conflict of preferences. So what should be done in these cases? One option is to leave each other alone, and as long as all parties are ok with that, then the conflict is resolved and everybody is in harmony. The goal there is to avoid hurting each other. It’s a good option to always keep in mind as a last resort. Another option we have is to change our preferences so that we’re still interacting with each other but our preferences are in harmony instead of in conflict. These two options mean that we should maintain a degree of flexibility with our preferences. And this makes sense because we're not perfect; sometimes our preferences deserve improvement.

Our preferences are ideas, and like all ideas, we should apply the principles and methods of reason to them. That means recognizing that whatever our current preferences are now, we should always be aware that they might not be good enough. There’s some conflict that needs to be resolved. And that means there's opportunity to find better preferences to replace our current ones with the goal of finding preferences that result in harmony.

To properly understand reason we must properly understand freedom. They are inherently connected. People need the freedom to think and to act on their thinking, which of course means that one's actions must not infringe on the freedom of others to do the same. If someone forces or coerces you to act on their ideas which conflict with your own, that takes away from your opportunity to change your ideas. So force and coercion has two effects; firstly they deter people from applying the principles and methods of reason to their ideas, and secondly they impair people's ability to pursue happiness for themselves.

So many people get this wrong. Some atheists have discussions with theists where they mock and shame the theists for their beliefs. That's coercion. It’s hostile. And it doesn’t create an atmosphere that fosters critical thinking. So if the atheist's goal is to help the theist to change their mind, then their actions are counterproductive to their own goal. Further, why would a theist want to adopt the atheist’s views when the atheist is clearly being a jerk? They wouldn’t. Most people who believe in God do so because they care about morality, about living a good life, about being a good person, about treating others and ourselves well. 

Many people will misunderstand what I've said here in two ways. First they'll think I'm saying that I shouldn't say truthful things if somebody might get offended by my words. This is a mistake. If they get offended it could be due to their own bad ideas about the topic. It's not necessarily my fault that they get offended. If they don't want to get offended then they can stop reading my words. I should have the freedom to speak my ideas and I should give them the freedom to ignore me. 

The second way that people will misunderstand what I’ve said here is that they’ll think I'm saying that mocking and shaming is always wrong. That's a mistake too. Shame is like a gun, and sometimes using a gun is the right choice. Guns are good for defense. But like guns, shame should not be the main way that you engage with people. Your main method of engagement should be persuasion; in other words, non-coercive discussion.