The Golden Rule

Treat others as you would like to be treated.

This is a rule you could live by. It is actually a fairly good backup rule when you having nothing else to stand upon.

But it shouldn't be considered the Golden Rule because it is so flawed. It assumes that other people are exactly like us, which is simply wrong. Everyone is different.

Treat others as they would like to be treated.

There is no single way to find out how someone likes to be treated. You might be able to observe what they like. You might need to ask them how they would like to be treated.

There is no complete certainty that they are going to tell you how they would like to be treated, so the old Golden Rule is useful as a fall back solutions when no other information is available.


There is a dramatic change that goes along with finding out how other people like to be treated, you will find out more ways of how you would might like to be treated. After many hundreds of interactions with different people, you would find out all sorts of things that might help you help other people treat you correctly.

If this were to occur for everyone, we would improve our ability to express how we would like to be treated.

And now the question falls back to me. How would I like to be treated? Here are some of the things I think I would say are important to me.

- Treat me as though I am someone who can answer your questions. This means I would like you to ask me questions. Questions are a good way to get me interested. Even questions about things I probably don't know. We can think about them together.

- Treat me like someone who is interested in a lot of things. Bring me things of interest quite randomly. I will enjoy it.

-Don't expect me to feign support or to lie. I'm not good at lying or pretending I have faith or interest. I am much better at giving support if I see good reason to.

-Be honest at your own discretion. Be honest with me if it will help me. Be honest if it will keep me out of trouble.

-Treat me like someone who is interested in you, because I probably am.

Those were hard and quite difficult to actually think up. Now the floor is open for everybody else to explain how they would like to be treated.

Kyler

1 comment:

Mory said...

Like you say, the rule doesn't make people happy. But I don't think that's a flaw, just something to keep in mind. I always treat other people like I want to be treated, because otherwise I'd feel like a hypocrite. But I always know that this behavior is more likely to offend than to please.

I don't like being given compliments without proper justification. It feels condescending, and I don't learn anything from it. I much prefer criticism, because with criticism I can more often take it at face value and try to correct my mistakes. Regardless of tone, I always appreciate being talked to bluntly and directly, without regard for how it'll effect my feelings. When people do otherwise, I feel like they think I can't handle reality. I can't trust people like that, and in fact I've broken off contact from certain family members who don't level with me. I like to be told when I'm boring people, and when people are genuinely interested. I guess all of this could be summed up very simply: I like to be given valid feedback, and am insulted when I'm not.

You can see why treating other people like I like being treated gets me in trouble on rare occasions.