| Talkback | |
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Title: | The Golden Rule and Hillel`s ko`an (and George Washington) | |||
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| Name: | DJStahl | | |||
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| City: | HP | State: | USA | | |
| Centuries before Hillel the Golden Rule was enunciated in a positive form, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," in Leviticus 18. Not a simple statement. It requires that you love yourself, apparently. It doesn`t define what "love" means. But it is expressed in the singular, Hebrew having both a singular and a plural second person form. So with this statement, as with that of Hillel, it may be an unreasonable stretch to apply it beyond the individual. George Washington famously said, "Nations have no friends, only interests." (The historian Robert Ellis attributes it to Washington, tho there are other attributions.) There`s a discontinuity between large-scale and small-scale physics, in the rules that apply to them, between the quantum world and the world of relativity. Perhaps similarly there is a discontinuity between the conduct of individuals and those of groups. Nor is it realistic to ascribe the same values to every group. That`s cultural imperialism. And it`s unrealistic. |
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