Hi Felix,
I thought the golden rule was "Them what has the gold makes the rules."
_
The wisdom books appear to suggest it might be prudent to let them think so.
As a rule, I like to think I can back up faster than The Golden Horde can come forward. I've always liked to dance. The most troublesome problems I've encountered in this regard has to do with those dense, obtuse moments when I have taken it for granted that the male gender is supposed to lead due to his natural superiority over the "gentle sex". It has been an extremely humiliating experience to find out it ain't necessarily so.
I didn't really know what a religious fundamentalist church meant as opposed to the religious tenets I was forced to attend to as a child, much less what fundamentalist forbade. Not until I married my first wife in a church of this sort. I had only known this woman for five weeks, and didn't have a clue about the tenets of the church where she and her immediate forbearers had been life-long members. Among other sins I didn't know I was committing was the one where they didn't cotton to no dancing... no how.
This charmingly beautiful creature knew when I tricked her into marrying me that neither of us could hold no truck with no sort of fundamentalism and keep our marriage together. Her religious upbringing was what she rebelled against during puberty. Why would she not? That's what pubescent kids do in some form or fashion in a strong youthful attempt to establish their own identity apart from home and hearth.
A decade or so after she divorced me I began to speculate about whether her marrying a deliberately adventuresome nomad like me was an attempt on her part to get shed of those early fundamentalist drummers she marched to, but when a dogma like that (or any dogma, I suppose) is installed as one's psychological framework from first breath, it is stronger than a mere whim on my part to dismiss it as merely problematic. I think I figured that if I had to sacrifice my career as a homeless bum, it was gonna have to be with some woman it was okay to dance with.
To me, the Golden Rule is about how I seem to go around tediously showing people how to treat me by demonstrating what I respond to most favorably in the be-jinning. In that way I'm being respectful to the first part, literally, by doing unto others what I would have them do unto me. Frankly, I've been disappointed with the feedback contained in their tepid responses.
It appears to be a two-way street by my word. By showing other people how to do unto me, it appears to obligate me to be on the lookout for what they're attempting to show me about how to treat them. Honestly, I'd prefer to live in almost total ignorance. With the advent of old age I may not have a choice much longer. "Free at last! Free at last. Great God Almighty, I'll be free at last." Yeah. Right.
Once I grokked that, it seemed selfish to bother showing other people how to treat me when there was suddenly so much to do about them being theyself, and not knowing what being theyself is all about. It's like I'm a traffic cop with all the right moves of an artful dodger. Okay, maybe "selfish" is not the best descriptor for the dynamic I got in mind. I hate to admit it, but I'm a bit of a control freak (Oh, shut up! I heard that collective groan of "No shit, Sherlock!").
When people I open up to show me time and time again how they want me to treat them by how the way they treat me, that information presents a problem for me. The problem? I gotta interpret what I think their original intent is by referencing my own experiential database, in order to ascertain what-I-think-I-would-intend by imitating the self-same behavior in my person.
Candidly, at the end game, I usually wimp out and settle for so-me random idea of their intent, and for my reasons instead of their reasons. The content of this very unreliable channel of information is horrible for making friends and influencing people. They get all sullied out, and angry that I don't appear to be listening to how they counting the ways they want me to love them, and maybe, by God, I wasn't listening. It seems like for some people, no matter what, I don't have the ears to hear them. What a drag, man. I gotta do mo' bettah.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
