The Golden Rule, Do onto others as you would have them do onto you, is a moral principle that seems to persist across temporal and cultural boundaries. The basic idea is that you consider whether you would appreciate something before acting in response to another. For example, the notion that criminals should be punished in a way that they consider fair.
The negative golden rule, Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you, is less often expressed as such, but regularly implied.
Despite not all people accepting the Golden Rule as their guiding principle, most (including philosophers) believe that moral values are good things to have because they guard against individuals misbehaving, and that humanity is the only species that possesses such moral attributes.
Some scientists even go as far as explaining the human ability to use imagination as an evolutionary attribute that is there for the sake of morality. They say that humans, unlike chimps, respond to pictures with faces on them – they feel watched and therefore they will not misbehave.
In other words, they praise peer pressure for its ability to keep people behaving ‘properly’.
Of course, there have been philosophers who have questioned that moral view. Plato had his Ring of Gyges, which when worn would render one invisible and thus able to commit crimes. Many people admit that they would indeed do a ‘wrong’ if they couldn’t be caught and we see it around us all the time. If you walk on the main street most people keep their litter in their pockets until they come across a bin, but if you turn onto a back path – where there are no eyes watching – you often have to step around the litter; the same applies to people picking up after their dogs. And people don’t just act ‘wrongly’ where it concerns annoying but relatively harmless acts like littering if they cannot be seen, but also in traffic. Many (even intelligent) people have the notion that if there is no police man around to write tickets, you don’t have to stick to the speed limit.
Now, in principle I have nothing against that idea – if the presence of police men writing tickets keeps pedestrians safe on the road, then that is fine – but don’t deceive yourself and put humanity on a pedestal by calling it morality, because most animals also protect group members and turn on the one who doesn’t behave.
The difference between legal rules and moral rules is that the former are written down and imposed by an authority, while the latter represent the “public opinion” or the general sentiment of the people.
For example, some fifty years ago everybody smoked and nobody thought anything of it. Even more recently than that, it was common for nurses and doctors to smoke when on their break in the hospital. Then smoking became seen as unhealthy. About twenty years ago I worked in a school, so if wanted a cigarette at lunchtime I’d leave the grounds and walked up and down the street. Over and over again, I got frowned at by pudgy office workers who were using their lunchtime to do some jogging. However, this was California and the temperature in midsummer in the nineties. Their ‘healthy’ behaviour put them at an immediate risk of heat exhaustion and heart failure, but they couldn’t see that because the morality of the day was that smoking was unhealthy and bad and that running was healthy and good, and therefore they had the right to judge me. I must admit that on occasion I would have liked to stick out my foot a little too far.
Now, many people argue that groups need their members to conform or we get chaos, and up to a certain degree that is correct, but behaviour is superficial. People may stop littering or speeding in public, but that is not because they have moral principles, but because they fear the consequences – being cast out, berated or gossiped about.
And here comes the division between conformists (Js) and non conformists (Ps): Conformists, who make up about half of any population, may truly believe that the group cannot exist without moral behaviour and that they have the right to frown, but moral values are conformist values and the other half of the population will take these rules as a test to see what they can get away with – they will make it a sport to see how fast they can go before the police catches them – and they will retaliate for the frowns.
All the hurt in The Happiness Inquisition is because of people taking the liberty to make judgments about others – to shake their head or frown at the one who doesn’t behave like them – and it isn’t just hurt from retaliation for perceived judgment, but hurt caused by fear of judgment.
Now back to the Golden Rule.
A common response made by those with a natural tendency to criticize others is “but I would allow you to tell me when I do something wrong.”
Implied in this are two assumptions: That because I would appreciate criticism so that I may improve (my thinking or my behaviour) I have the right to tell you the same thing and that we all consider the same things equally valuable.
That last one is based on a naïve awareness of psychology: it ignores the natural type differences. The above expression is most likely that of a T, who isn’t aware of how much hurt his criticism causes an F, because he would not be thus affected by the same amount of criticism.
Just like chimps whose natural habitat is a forest that doesn’t have pictures so that they don’t respond to them. The value for the human is in the image as equal to reality, but the chimps understand that the picture does not match reality, so they value it differently. That doesn’t mean they lack morality; it means they don’t share our morality. This kind of generalization is therefore usually made by people who believe in universal moral facts.
The first assumption is based on a misconception of the Golden Rule itself, because instead of considering it a moral principle to guide your own actions, you now use it as a weapon. If we replace “criticism” with “hitting” – after all moral behaviour is about right or wrong action – then what he is effectively saying is “I have the right to hit you, because I would expect you to hit me when I do something wrong”, in which “wrong” is the above mentioned value that is usually different for different types; some feel much more hurt by a slap than others.
We cannot use the idea that if we wouldn’t feel hurt by something, others won’t either and therefore that hurting them is justified. We may consider it “fair”, but that is an objective (T) assessment which is unaware that criticism touches Fs personally, because Fs have a different relationship with criticism than Ts, who experience it as positive and constructive – until I criticize their knowledge or thinking ability, in which case they will feel personally attacked.
So, if a T criticizes an F, the F gets hurt and may show that – some Fs cannot contain their emotions – in which case T gets irritable and criticizes F for being too sensitive “because…” and then comes the same argument that he would never feel it that way, so F shouldn’t either.
And, of course, this doesn’t apply just to criticism, but also to moral assessments, like the idea that we are obliged to exercise and not smoke or that we should not litter, and even to the notion of making moral judgments in the first place, because Js believe that this is positive and thus expect Ps to judge them in return.
And it applies to forgiveness: If a person gets hurt, he is often told he should forgive the other because that is better for both. But Ps have an issue with that, because their natural tendency is to retaliate (equal pay-back). And it may be difficult for Fs to forgive repeated criticism – if somebody slaps you every day, you eventually develop a bruise.
So what about the reverse? If I don’t criticise you then I expect you to refrain from it as well. This seems equally fair, but Fs don’t realize that by withholding their criticism, they are actually hurting Ts. Fs use the exact same argument as Ts do: “If I wouldn’t say something like that to you, then you cannot say it to me.”
So the Golden Rule has a dark lining, because in assuming that we can assess what somebody else will feel, we fill in that what is obvious to us and project onto the other the expectation that they also experience it this way – we assume objectivity.
Judgment Hurts 