[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: To want to exist and reproduce, to derive pleasure from existence, is something many of us share. We are part of an order that supports our existence – the matter we consist of, the planet we live on, and the nuclear reactions in the sun that provide us energy. All these elements persist because they conform to the principles of existence. In our case, as living beings, this means evolving sophisticated ways to continue existing, perpetuating our species, collaborating with other species, and adapting to the material constraints of the world. All of this, though, is open to being challenged – whether it’s legitimate or not.
Then you get to the golden rule. We’ve kind of set up this shaky foundation, but with enough effort, it could be shown to be more stable than it seems. The golden rule, at some level, is built into what allows us to exist – order and keeping disorder at bay. This leads to considering how humans function in societies. The simplest and most straightforward ethical principle is the golden rule. At first glance, it’s easy to understand and applies to many initial situations. It’s akin to Newton’s universal gravitation versus Einstein’s theory of general relativity, except even less sophisticated than Newton’s theory. It’s a preliminary attempt that covers a wide range of situations and is intuitively easy to grasp. It can be expanded as civilization itself has slowly done over thousands of years.
First, there’s the notion of ‘what do I want?’ and the assumption that others want what I want, leading to behavior based on that premise, at least when it’s not too inconvenient. It’s easier to empathize with and grant similar desires to people who, in my mind, are like me. This fits within the context of overall order, where altruism benefits both me and others. You could argue that the golden rule isn’t really ethical if it’s just self-serving, ensuring everyone else upholds the deal of treating everyone as themselves. But then again, you could argue that if it weren’t somewhat self-serving, it wouldn’t have persisted as a principle.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.rickrosner.org.
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Rick Rosner 