You don’t do stuff to get stuff in return. That isn’t the golden rule.
You don’t do to another what you would like done to you if it is in conflict with what the other would like, because you wouldn’t want them to follow that policy with you. In that way, the platinum rule is the golden rule. You even get a hint of silver in there with this example.
You’re equivocating on rape and falsely accusing others of loving consent violation. Don’t do that.
I bet you’re over there thinking you poop rainbows, calling the golden rule shit out of one side of your face while you endorse it as the rainbow rule out of the other.
Reciprocal altruism is not the golden rule. It doesn’t necessarily violate it, either (benefiting from your own action toward others is not in and of itself selfish… or a conflict of interest… in an immoral way). That was Ayn Rand’s misunderstanding. She thought all altruism was reciprocal and therefore selfish and that it ought to be that way because otherwise it is masochistic.
There are two different kinds of reciprocation. In one, you treat the other as self because there is an essential sameness between other and self (while respecting differences that still respect the sameness). You definitely get something out of it, in that it always benefits the essential sameness in both of you, but not in an immorally selfish way. Benefits outside what is essential to both of you are secondary to that primary (essential) purpose. The secondary isn’t the reason you treated self as other in the first place.
In another sense of reciprocation, you’re only treating other as self so that you can get something out of it, and not something that benefits the essential sameness in both of you. What is secondary in the first sense of reciprocation is primary in this sense of reciprocation.
The first sense of reciprocation includes both altruism (without branding it masochism) and rational self interest, and drops out reciprocal altruism without branding it as necessarily bad-selfish (as long as “secondary” benefits are not made primary over benefiting essential sameness in both/all), because respecting what is essential to all selves/others (while respecting differences that still respect the sameness) is in everyone’s rational self interest.
I wouldn’t have a problem with his/their interstellar pursuits if (t)he(y) resolved the resolvable interrelational issues on earth first. Instead, he’s going to take them into outerspace, and I don’t think outerspace is cool with that.
There’s going to be (has been, is) a moment when we realize outerspace is innerspace, and innerspace isn’t space like that … and … very ironically … neither is outerspace.
Pleasure is supposed to be relatively exclusive, otherwise it wouldn’t be pleasure. Same with pain. These are states that exist relatively juxtaposed/contrasted against a given background state. They are “peaks”, mountains in a background of data noise in the brain.
I can feel your pain, Derley Doo. Both Ecmandu and Ichthus need to be disciplined. But the person who can do it, Carleas, is the metathesis of Careless.