re: #130 Obdicut is an Obdislut apparently

I would like to point out this is a terrible moral rule, unless you get really meta with it, and even then it’s non-functional as an ethical rule.

For example, I wake up at five or five-thirty and I’m immediately happy and filled with energy. I’m a morning person beyond morning persons. So what I like first thing in the day is conversation, working out, energetic things.

My wife wakes up, if she wakes up early, painfully and grumpily. The last thing she wants is conversation and activity. She needs coffee, food, and to wake up slowly.

If I treated her the way I want to be treated, or her me, it’d be bad for both of us.

So maybe we can broaden it to “Do unto others as they would have done unto them”? But then we run into the problem that some people’s desires are greedy, unethical, or bad for them. A heroin addict wants another hit, they don’t want to get clean. So in order to really make the golden rule work there, we either have to argue that it’s not about what people want, but what they really need, or that we all really want to be treated in our best interests and ignore the current ‘want’ in favor of the larger assumed ‘want’ of getting over heroin.

I think the: Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Would include being respectful of what they need.