Bringing it ALL down to a simple concept:

[dreamnightwind]

38. Personally I've always found the golden rule to be terribly flawed

Personally I've always found the golden rule to be terribly flawed, and a cause of many problems. I get that it's about compassion...

But it's far better to ascertain what the other person wants, not what we would want. We're treating others the way we would want to be treated, rather than checking in to see how they want to be treated. Different people, different wants. It generalizes, and can be seen as a source of many problems between different peoples.

Can I sum that up for a bumper sticker? Not sure. Maybe someone else can. I've seriously seen this as a huge foundational problem for a long time now, we need The Golden Rule II, or better yet a different name that is more organic.

I'd suggest Do Unto Others As They Want, but I guess the problem there is they don't necessarily want something they should have. That's also a problem with the original, though, doing for them what we would want done to us, we don't always want done to us what should be dones to us. So maybe this revision works a little better than the old one, though I don't think it's the perfect phrasing by any means.