"treat others as you wish to be treated and all will be OK"

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Why do people say this phrase? Is it part of our PC morality?

I seldom judge others on what they do, and be open-minded of others’ tastes. Yet I find others always judge me of my tastes. :laughing:

I find that most seem almost to presume that others must adhere to what they deem normal in life. It seems either people are liars, or they are autistic (another oft-cited PC point is to “accept that others are not the same as you” or “everybody is different”).

My elemental question in this thread is this - in human society, do people often say things as supposed prescriptions, but don’t actually mean them? What is the motivation/rationale behind this?

2

I have never heard that phrase. I have heard versions of the first part, but never with a proclamation that this will make all OK.

I just googled it and the only example is yours.

3

I thought you judged people with aspbergers since they do not follow social norms.

4

My aunt said this while we were camping last weekend ," you know I’m always trying to tell the boys,treat others as you want to be treated and all will go well." To which my uncle scoffed and mumbled “yeah right.” So your not the only one saying this but you definatley have to accept the fact that some people are gunna try and run you over but the philosophy of it works when you sIncerly treat others like you wish to be treated in every sense of the action. It’s a mindset.

5

I know just what you mean. There this guy on this forum who has a really weird attitude like that:

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I do (as do secretly most persons). And?

7

Do I have to like/respect Asperger’s people?

8

I’m not saying you HAVE to do anything.
I’m just saying you’re obviously, clearly one of the people you were describing in that post.
You’ve given pretty straight-forward examples of how you’re a person who thinks that others must adhere to what you deem normal in life.
It’s not rocket science.

9

lol… I’m generally a laissez-faire type of person.

10

Well what’s the other option? What are you going to do, NOT LET someone be autistic?

11

If you know what laissez-faire means, how do you apply it to a personality? The term refers to a type of market economy. If, on the other hand, you mean you’re a ‘live and let live’ person, you haven’t shown it in your posts. Do you bottle a lot of your attitudes in order to appear PC?

12

Unfortunately human’s are not perfect and so do not always act as they think they should.

13

And? it contradicts what I quoted. I specifically quoted you and then said ‘but…’ meaning that what I was raising seemed to contradict what you said.

14

You’ve gone from trying to get others to approve of your dislike of aspberger’s people to thinking others are trying to force you to like them. Do we have to approve your prejudice?

15

The Golden rule is generally a good one, but what happens when someone does something terrible that you haven’t done or would ever do (you hope at least) do you treat them like you would treat yourself?

I wouldn’t and I think this is the time when you cane break away from hedonistic ethics, and punishments become justifiable.

16

,

Hedonistic ethiscs is based on a personal belief that may not coincide with the beliefs of non self-serving ethics. So justifying actions based on ethics, need to be brought in line with that of the “coomon good”. It is not necessarily true, that serving other’s beliefs and actions violate others’ beliefs. For instance, seeing the golden rule as a way to reconcile and validate each others’ beliefs, may be a way to look at self interest in a different way. The above use of laissez fair is more like live and let die, then live and let live. It is to the self interest of individual that the the good of society is considered. Individual examples of social hypocracy, do not entail a discreditation of general moral codes.

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Personally i really despise Hedonistic ethics, I prefer Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism.

18

I’ve always disliked that ridiculous myth. The first part “treat others as you wish to be treated” is about as common as the saying “practice makes perfect” and while it’s true that the next part’s wording; “and all will be OK” isn’t common, there is usually something that conveys that message in its place.

I find it to be one of the most wide spread and untenable sayings thrown around. Firstly, I’ll try to make the saying as literal as possible. Personally I don’t feel like I owe the world anything but I still feel sympathetic to a lot of people. Therefore it wouldn’t be possible to treat all others how I wish to be treated, because I don’t wish to be treated the same by everyone. I’d like people I’m sympathetic towards to not worry about me and just work towards their own interests, but ideally I wish those I’m not sympathetic towards to give me money they don’t need (I wish that, I certainly don’t expect it, the common saying, that I used to have to hear every day, isn’t “treat others as you expect to be treated”).

So now to try to make the saying coherent I’ll qualify it by changing it from “treat others as you wish to be treated” into “treat each individual as you wish that individual to treat you”. Still, while I wouldn’t wish others to give me everything they have I would wish most others to give me more than I could possibly give to each of them. So the saying is still incoherent.

So I’ll qualify it further; “give everyone the benefit of the doubt”. I certainly would like everyone to give me the benefit of the doubt. If I say something mean to someone it’s probably because I assumed they dislike me or that they have intentionally done something to wrong me. It would be wonderful if everyone just assumed I meant the best towards them. So what if I assumed the best about everyone around me? I would be a sitting duck. People I know everywhere, but I’m mostly talking about at work, are always looking for an advantage. If I actually managed to assume the best of everyone then I would have to assume that no one is trying to get me to do their dirty work, and then therefore I would have to assume that all that work is my due. Since I could never do all the work people are asking me to in 24 hours let alone 12, I would have to assume I’m not qualified for my job.

Perhaps I’m still being too literal, the saying is just supposed to be “be nice in general”. Nice how? Being polite and doing small favors for everyone who asks? That would be fine except everyone does ask for small favors. How about, “Always be polite"? It’s true complete and utter politeness will get you far in the world. The most successful people are those who can be polite both when they’re trying to take advantage of someone for personal gain and when someone is trying to take advantage of them for personal gain. If you yell and cuss; in the case of the former people will know what you’re up to and therefore have a chance to stop you. If you yell and cuss; in the case of the latter, people will give you the oldest and maybe worse of all sayings “Well, you’re the one who is yelling and cussing!”

So finally if the saying “treat others as you wish to be treated and all will be OK”, was turned into “Be polite all the time” we would have something useful. Except being polite all the time is no more possible for most than being happy all the time. One may argue that politeness is just an act and people can act happy. Some people seem to act happy all the time, but if you a person people are drawn to dislike (by that I mean a person who worries about doing the right thing, unfortunately the most disliked of all people) you will quickly see their other side. So I would say acting polite all the time or happy all the time is just as hard as acting like you’re not tired at the end of an eighty hour work week.

Yes.

I don’t know why an “unsuccessful” person would say something like “treat others as you wish to be treated and all will be OK”, but one who has gotten far in life, by ignoring those old myths, might still tell them (rather than warn people of their illogical nature} possibly because they were taught them as well and feel guilty for ignoring them in order to be “successful”. An even worse, but probabaly far less common, rationale might be that they want to make others think they are “successful” because they were “altruistic” even though they were far from it.

19

yeah, the several millenia old phrase is just part of today’s political correctness

20

What determines the status “OK”? You or society?