The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's a ubiquitous moral axiom that has been with us since the dawn of civilization. Or at least as far back as we are told. My question though is, does the golden rule really hold up to everyday life? What would you think of a masochist following that line of thinking? To him/her pain would be the preferred method of treatment so therefore pain should be the proper output to others around him/her. So at that point, you have a questionable moral attitude towards other people. Unless this is accepted to be the way things need to be given the nature of the rule, then there seems to be a major flaw in the Golden Rule.
This leads into my next point that if these very same people who consider the Golden Rule the proper way to follow things then I would assume that many of them if not all believe that they would prefer people treat them nicely and in a helpful manner so therefore they are supposed to treat others in this exact same fashion.
But what of the people everyday that go without food, shelter, blood, vaccines, medicines, schooling, luxuries of any sort. Those very people are being hurt because you aren't being helpful to them. When walking on the streets in a major city, would you honestly say that you would truly help a homeless man who might come up to you begging for a few dollars for some food. Maybe 50% of people out there might give the man a few dollars but I doubt 1% of the population of the world would take the time to see to it that the man has a place to sleep and food to eat every night of his/her life. Now take that homeless man and multiply him by a hundred, a thousand even. Would anyone be able to help every single one of those people survive? The answer is no. no normal person would have the resources or the time to see to it that every person in the world was free of suffering.
So therefore people choose to be hurtful, you and I both choose to be hurtful in order to survive ourselves.
