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Certainly to a nonpartisan they sound alike. They're different enough, however, that the partisans can fight over who's right and who's wrong. C.S. Lewis saw Jesus' Golden Rule as clearly a moral advance over Confucius' version because it is more active. Meanwhile Bruce Holbrook, in The Stone Monkey, promoted the traditional Chinese worldview and advocated Confucius' version. He said that letting people be is better than trying to intervene and help everyone. A problem with doing unto others (as opposed to not doing unto others) is that it encourages intervention. This can culminate in an attitude like the one you see in the DragonRaid roleplaying game, where Christians beat nonchristians senseless and drag them to their homeland to be converted. This reprehensible fantasy follows Jesus' Golden Rule, as in: "If I were an lost soul living in sin and the only way I could be saved would be for someone to beat the crap out of me, that's what I'd want them to do." In this interpretation, forced conversion is following the Golden Rule. In real life, I guess forcing Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity on pain of death might also be following the Golden Rule, in some perverted sense. A Golden Rule that's stated in the negative doesn't encourage this sort of intervention. True, someone gung ho for intervention could come up with a statement like, "If I were a lost soul living in sin and the only way I could be saved would be for someone to beat the crap out of me, I wouldn't want them to ignore me." Then they could go beat the crap out of nonbelievers rather than ignoring them. But that's a stretch. The emphasis of Jesus' rule is on action, which can turn into unwarranted intervention. The emphasis of Confucius' rule is letting people be, which can turn into apathy. I like Confucius' rule because it's more practical. I'm not going to mail $10 to random people just because I'd like to get free money in the mail. But, contrary to what I wrote here three years ago, I guess I prefer Jesus' rule because it's done a better job of promoting equality in Western culture. —JoT |
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