"the golden rule" ~ of everything; duality does not exist!

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

the golden rule ~ of everything; duality does not exist!
is that a valid rule?
it is kinda obvious for buddhist and hindus etc, but i thought i would extrapolate this meaning for general use.

a simply universal rule, to generally take into account when understanding a given field. it sounds simple enough, but the more you look into it the stranger it gets, the implications are profound. here are some simple examples of those implications:

religion;

  1. god/gods [if existent] are not separate from us and existence.
  2. heaven, hell, eliseum, tirnanog the other world or anything else you care to think of, cannot be separate from existence!
    both of the above means that if either exist, then it must be possible to find evidence for them.

philosophy, physics and math;

  1. self; there can be no duality of soul [or whatever you care to call it] and body. the self - if existent, must be a universal attribute or quality applicable to all entities capable of containing it. in short whatever we have, animals and even insects have [at least to some degree].

  2. mind; the mind if existent beyond a mere program of the mind [or perhaps a projection of it {?}], must also be universal and would belong to all that can contain it. this means that our minds animals minds and gods mind are all the same. this also applies to buddha self ~ where mind is an abstraction of buddha reality i.e. where it is blended with manifest existence.

  3. wholeness; nothing is a fraction. if you cut a piece of paper in half, rather than having two halves you have two wholes, everything then is actually whole no matter how much we divide it! “the whole of all the wholes are just parts of a bigger whole” so there is only one real number which is the number 1, all other numbers are illusory. 1=1 but 2+1 does not equal 2 as no two “1’s” are the same.
    if we take a bite out of an apple do we have less that a whole? we have less than the original whole yet a whole remains and you who have just taken the bite out of that apple are too still whole. in short then there are only wholes ~ wrong! …the whole apple is part of a whole tree which is part of a whole earth and all are composed of whole elements to which the entirety can be regarded as the whole and that is the only true equation of its meaning.

in short then, no part of reality can be divided ~ there is no such thing as duality.

2

I agree and enjoy this post. I hate dualities, because they’re outdated and stupid.

Only stupid people are dualists anyway. :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

:-$

:astonished:

3

:laughing:
indeed. the point of this thread though is not just that it is wise to follow a non-dualists approach of non-attachment etc, the point is that duality really does not exist.

the difficult aspect is when we reconsider buddhist reality, nirvana is usually noted as the state where duality ceases to exist. for that we have to imagine that existence is an illusion, but here we say it is not an illusion and it too has a non dualistic basis.

it messes with literalist christians minds quite nicelly too :smiley:

4

Christianity just built too many propositions without reasonably thinking about them. And when change was introduced, Christianity started cutting off people’s heads. Other religions can be just as cruel, but the dualistic and ‘objective’ systems in Christianity are just too far removed from the ‘better’ scientific and philosophical explanations of reality/the universe.

5

indeed. i feel they [religions etc] will all be superseded even buddhism. hopefully science too ~ by philosophy, of course it will always remain to keep us grounded though. i do think there are simply some aspects of reality that transcend the physical realm.

i went to a christian meeting once, there was a chap there learning the trade - so to say [to be a priest], i asked him what he thought about christianity being a dualistic religion, he replied; what is duality? :laughing:

6

One Space where all within are one.

I agree.

7

the empty whole may be nirvana, but it is part of all within.

8

Bumping a very important and relevant thread.

Everybody should read and respond to this…

9

Possible yes.

Agree

The same? I dont think that the mind of any animal is the same. I think you will have to ellaborate on this.

Well sort of. I mean half an apple is half an apple. Although you could call it a whole half of an apple, its realy only persepctive surely. So a whole life could comprise of a mind body and soul all of which can be considered a whole in itself. But can also be considered as a fraction of a life. A single human can be considered a whole but also a fraction of the human race. The human race can be considerred a whole but also a fraction of life on earth.

A material world can be considered a whole, but “if” a separate “spiritual world” or whatever exists then it too can be considered a whole and together they exist to make everything.

All you have there is a method of perception. It realy doesnt show us anything

10

I think duality is a necessary human creation. I consider myself a subjective dualist. What that means is that duality is the most quintessential human creation. It was the creation of unreal and opposite boundaries in a meaningless reality that gave humans the ability to create meanings and definitions in such a reality. That would explain why dualities are so common in ancient religion and philosophy, because the concept of dualism has been around since the beginning of the evolution of human thought. That does not make duality real, or objective, but rather a subjective necessity for human consciousness. Just a thought.

11 
if you could cut H2O in half though , would you still get water ?
12

I agree with your post up to this point.

This is the only world, and it’s free of disembodied intelligence- I am body entirely and nothing else besides. However, one aspect of my Self is God, and it’s power fluctuates continuously. Other people (and animals) posess a similar aspect of Self.

13

realunoriginal

thank you, even if i didn’t explain it correctly i think the idea is a useful tool. :slight_smile:

rhinoboy

essentially. imagine that mind has a starting value of zero [infinity possibly, maybe], then as things evolve and develop consciousness becomes relative i.e. if a creature has a brain then mind as a universal entity reacts to and interacts with is causing thought. a plankton has no consciousness, ants may have a collective consciousness, animals have individual and collective consciousness. eventually you get to humans which are almost entirely independent entities of consciousness.

they are all wholes. however paradoxical it is comparatively, it remains as factual [beyond the holistic realm] that their does not exist ‘half of a thing’ ~ you don’t get half a particle etc. all there is are a collection of wholes, the halves only exist as comparatives.

yodajosh

good point! duality is a product of language and perspective. animals probably see things dualistically too even without ‘language’ ~ esp if a lion is running towards them! so i would presume that the perception is quite universal.

north

isn’t hell and heaven, god and satan separate from us? most people seam to think it/they are?

if duality does not exist, then in some way satan and god [etc] all belong to a universal whole. so you cannot then arrive at an ‘all-good’ or ‘all-evil’.

well we could talk for hours on this one lols. in short i think that i am primary individual thoughts are secondary and hence the collective ‘program’ is existential to the primary nature of mind. this would mirror the general universal nature of the whole to the parts nature of existence, where you get the whole [0] which cannot be defined because we can only define the parts, then within that we get the ‘parts’, all of which are wholes of the whole ~ its kind of like saying ‘everything is in everything’ [indirectly].
the mind cannot be found by dissecting the brain and we must ask if its nature belongs to the greater universal too [is infinity ‘0’ mind nature?].

see above. you get hydrogen and oxygen which are both whole and entire, what you don’t ever get is oxrogen lols.

impious

the only world? ~ i presume you mean the only universe or dimension, reality etc. i don’t know if we can truly say that it is free of disembodied intelligence…
if mind is universal then add an infinite amount of monkeys and typewriters ~ a metaphor for events working as a universal collective in the whole and in ‘mindness’, then eventually the monkeys write sheakespear ~ infact they write everything that is possible to write!

thence if we have universal mind and intelligence the they belong to all according to how much a vessel can carry.

thanks all, nice read.

14

The problem that I am having is that this doesnt fit with the normal definition of duality, which normally refers to the rift between the physical and the metaphysical ie soul, mind etc.

With your definition of Monism Ie, everrything is constructed of collectives of wholes. which by the way I have no problem with but am still not convinced that it is anymore that a view point rather than absolute truth. After all we do not know that the particle is the smallest substance. We once belived that an atom was the smallest. Not to mention waves such as electrons etc. Anyway Im going off on a tangent here. My point is, does it make any difference to the orriginal argument between monism and dualism? Does it hold any problems for those that belive in the metaphysical? Because it seems to me like this way of thinking about monism poses no obvious problems towards the principles behind a dualist belife

15

Could it be because the “golden rule” is an impossibility, a hypothesis, an “as-if” scenario to begin with, that no sense can be made out of it?

“…as you would want to be treated if you were him.”

“…as you would have them do unto you.”

How would I know what I would want to be treated like if I were him? And if I were him, I wouldn’t be thinking like me, I would be thinking like him. I don’t know how he thinks he should be treated simply because I cannot know, not because I’m not trying to think logically or ethically or whatever.

“As-if” hypothetical circumstances such as the golden rule are almost a complete waste of time.

16

Your taking an argument and making it absurd. We can logically see that virtually every in fact I would say every human being does not like to have his wife raped in frount of him and then have his head caved in with a brick. Saying that everyman is different is a gross overexageration in this case. As a general rule of hand, treating someone as you would like to be treated makes everyone feel alot better than being treated the opposite.

Anyway the golden rule as it is normally understood is not what is being discussed here

17

Then I will be forced to present to you this paradox- a crew of framers. A carpenter who is not doing a satisfactory job gets a pay cut. The person who cuts his pay could not apply the golden rule as a standard by which to judge his action; if the person who cuts the pay does so because he thinks the carpenter wants a pay cut, he’s got to be out of his mind. Contrarily, if the carpenter understood the economics and knew how he was, indeed, not doing a satisfactory job, he would give himself his own paycut…that is, he would understand why he got his pay cut and would cut his own pay if he were the boss.

You can extend this model to even this extreme- if people are not physically or intellectually equal, those who are inferior in either condition would have to condone their own loss of rights and privileges in order that the better ones (the better carpenters in the crew) get a satisfactory payment for their work (the better physical and intellectual ones do not suffer the mistakes of the inferior). The metaphor here is simple- the objective at hand, as it is the “ethical ends” which are reached through means, must be at the advantage of the ones who are already closer to that end. In the event that an inferior person compromises an effort toward reaching a mutual goal, the inferior must be dropped. One cannot compare, justifiably, a better person and a worse person, and determine that they have equal rights by default. This is already contradictive to the ends…the very reason their is morality to begin with…the evolution of a more efficient animal.

One must get back to Darwin and get away from deontological ethics. There are no inherent rights to begin with…so how can there be any golden rules?

I agree though, in a consequentialist way. It is almost imperatively true that “dousing your neighbors wife in used motor oil” is a universal undesirable. Such an activity would not only be useless but extraneous in evolutionary terms. But I don’t agree because God said we shouldn’t do that or because it is “a priori” true that we shouldn’t do that.

18

Which is why I said as a general rule of hand and not. Every action. More often than not the argument that you are presenting is abused and in doing so creates alot more problems than the occassional framer getting a slightly better paycheck than he deserves

19

Think about it, do you think when this rule was given thought they were thinking of it as you are? of course not, its a rule that we teach our children so that they can understand the feelings of others.

If you think about how you would feel about a cirtain action, you are more likely to see if what you are doing is causing the other person an injustice. Also if you are kindly to other people its more likely that at least a few of these people will repay your kindness.
One must not become a door mat and uphold his own ideals of fairness for himself, but not being walked over does not require a person to walk over others.

What you have done is taken a good idea and over-anaylised it, creating arguments that realy dont quite relate, because of a perdantic interpretation.

20

I will show you your best argument. If you said that since people are more alike then not, their ends are more alike then not, therefore their interests are more alike then not and their opinions of “good treatment” (loosely) are more alike then not…you would be pointing out the fact that although there are exceptions to the rule, there is an identifiable standard and average which remains constant throughout, and you would be correct, sir.

In the end I must agree with you, though it was necessary for me to confound you for a moment so that you might arrive at the conclusion honestly. People are not equal, rights are not inherent, but interests always are similar enough to establish a material objective which is universal to all of the type. The administration of this should, of course, be taken up by a socialistic government which endorses and practices historical materialism as science dictates, not philosophers or politicians. These two are idealists. They actually believe the golden rule is real and that God has it so. There are even atheists who still believe that deontological ethics is possible, that “objective morals” exist (they do, but not as rationalists such as Kant believe). It is all very complicated in the hands of philosophers because they are, ironically enough, asking questions like “hey, should I do unto you as you would do unto me?”