Scrapping the Golden Rule
The central tenet of the Golden Rule, “treat others as you want to be treated” (sufficiently culturally embedded apparently that my writing software auto-completes the phrase), is a sentiment so universal as to be considered morally obvious.
The Rule centralizes the importance of empathy, the ability to literally feel the emotions of another person. Empathy is to be distinguished from sympathy, which is merely caring about the other person’s emotions. Empathy involves feeling the same way, remembering when you felt the same way, or at least imagining how you might feel in their place. This personal emotional processing supposedly needs to happen prior to me being truly invested in helping someone else and helps me figure out how best to help them.
This is, broadly speaking, nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that.
Here are some of the potential negative impacts of taking the Golden Rule too seriously:
You feel entitled to guess what someone else needs rather than asking them.
You come to believe that there are certain things which objectively Make People Happy, and thus anyone who says that they don’t want or need those things is making some objective mistake which needs to be corrected.
You deeply believe not only that ‘we are more alike than we are different’, but that the aspects of ourselves which are alike are somehow more centrally human than the aspects which make us different. Difference is therefore politely downplayed even as it is ‘celebrated’.
The Golden Rule is therefore immoderately shitty for people who diverge in any significant way from the norm, and notably for neurodivergent people. For example, autisticscienceperson writes:
When I’m having a shutdown, I’d prefer non-autistics to:
not look me directly in the eyes
not ask me what is wrong
not expect me to answer them
not tell me they know how I am feeling
not hug me (hugging me makes it worse. Much worse.)
…..
Do you know what neurotypical people often think would help when someone is having a shutdown? All of the above! Because it would help them when they are upset. But just because it would help them, it doesn’t mean it would help me.
The neurotypical people described here are following the Golden Rule. They are treating others as they would like to be treated. And, depending on how deep a hold the Golden Rule has upon them, their response to these actions being criticized might not be ‘oh, ok, I got that wrong’ but instead a deepening sense of ‘I don’t understand you... what’s wrong with you?’
The Golden Rule’s emphasis on understanding someone’s needs and feelings leads to a kind of hierarchy of moral engagement as expressed in the diagram below:
(Source: https://designerup.co/blog/ux-design-and-empathy/)
Note that according to this chart, compassion - the active desire to relieve someone else’s suffering - has empathy as a prerequisite. “I know what it’s like, I want to help you in any way I can”; the clear implication being that I (only) want to help you in any way I can because I know what it’s like.
This is somewhere between backwards and plain wrong.
Let’s try backwards first.
“ I want to help you in any way I can, so help me understand what it’s like”.
This flipped version is an improvement, because it does not presume that just because you have gone through a similar situation, you have experienced it in the same way. You may in some broader sense know roughly ‘what it’s like’ but that doesn’t mean you know what it’s like *for them in particular*. If you want to help someone, you must treat them as an authority on their own experience of their life. Saying ‘I know just what it’s like’ is not merely false but disrespectful.
The flipped version also repositions the ‘knowing what it’s like’ as an epistemic advantage rather than anything approaching a prerequisite for moral motivation. Knowing what it’s like gives you practical advantages in terms of knowing what will and will not help, and being able to draw on parallels from your own experience is useful - provided you remain aware of the limits of those parallels.
But - and this is where we look at the ‘just wrong’ part of the assessment - if your motivation for helping someone relies on your understanding of their emotional experience, then they simply cannot depend on you. Even if you are giving them the opportunity to help you to understand them, that opportunity becomes a responsibility on their part, a duty that they have to fulfil before you help them. Imposing that responsibility is unkind, and it is not necessary in order to build either your desire or your ability to help and support someone.
So in short: Don’t treat others the way you would like to be treated. Instead embrace what is known as the Platinum Rule: treat others the way they actually want to be treated.
And realise that you don’t need to understand.
You don’t need to have been through grief in order to sit with and care for someone who is grieving. (And if you have been through grief, and they grieve differently, let them).
You don’t need to understand touch-aversion in order to refrain from hugging people who dislike being hugged. (And if you’re a hugger, and you don’t get it... it’s ok not to get it.)
You don’t need to understand the experiences of trans and non-binary people in order to respect their pronouns. (Just treat them as the central authority on their own experiences and needs).
Here is the slight sleight of hand: it’s not exactly that the Golden Rule is wrong. You are indeed treating others as you would like to be treated in these examples, because you would want to be treated as an individual with individual needs. But the change in emphasis really does matter. On the one hand, it encourages a consciousness of and respect for difference. On the other, it allows us to acknowledge our own ignorance without feeling that this marks us as somehow morally lacking. In this sense, it increases our capacity for compassion not only for others, but also for ourselves.
