The "Golden Rule" is Loftily Unattainable!

This is a rather unsophisticated observation, but it took me the better part of a century to fully grok the obvious truth. As it's gradually revealed itself over the years, I've remarked, again and again, "I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad!" and, hallelujah, I've finally touched bottom. I see precisely how bad it is.

Here's your final assessment, humanity, with thanks for the lasagna.

People who behave badly usually don't know they've behaved badly and hadn't intended to. In fact, they'd be surprised to hear it—though they wouldn't believe it, and would react (unsurprisingly) badly.

There is a fundamental narcissistic skew whose severity is far worse than suspected. We only miss it because we're too narcissistic to register how extremely narcissistic everyone is. That plus the suspension of social disbelief prevents us from paying attention to social bedrock we were never supposed to examine. It's "behind the curtain" stuff, however absurdly ill-concealed.

People treat others in ways they'd bitterly complain about if they were on the receiving end. But it's not because they're inconsiderate shitheads. Well—wait, they absolutely are inconsiderate shitheads, but my point is that they're not trying to be inconsiderate shitheads. It's that they feel distinctive, so there's no reason to link or contrast outbound and inbound treatment. The two are unrelated, because they're THEM, while you're just you.

And—this part is critical, and also the sole consolation—that's not a judgment or a deliberate insult. It does not reflect on you. Rather, it's based on an intrinsic skew. They're as unaware of it as a fish is of water, or a polar bear of the cold. They truly don't know.

When the Bible suggested doing to others as you would have them do to you, it turns out this wasn't a helpful reminder. I always figured it was like "Sit up straight" or "Eat more vegetables"—a sappy homily people sometimes need reinforced, despite its blatant obviousness.

No. I see now that it was flabbergasting existential judo—a Copernican flip of perspective. And it was received as a lofty principle which, like other forms of godliness, could only be aspired to, and never put into actual practice.

This explains why a sappy 1960s self-help book proposing a mild step further ("I'm OK – You're OK") was even more paradigm-flipping and gasp-inducing, and became a giant best-seller, though it struck me, even as a small child, as ludicrously banal.

No. That was the heavy advanced shit.


Here's a cheerful re-framing: One can normally walk down the street without being clubbed over the head and robbed or raped. Things are vastly better than in pre-civilization days, and we're incomparably more considerate and empathic than the animal kingdom we recently crawled out of. So just adjust your expectations and it will all be fine.