Rules of Reciprocity
True empathy might be possible only if we can first get out of our own way
Back when I used to teach undergraduate composition, I would spring this in-class essay assignment on my students:
- Do unto others as they do unto you.
- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
- What’s the difference?
Most students wrote that the first law—giving as good as you got—described a less considerate way of treating others than the second. Those who’d read a fair amount traced the first law back to the Code of Hammurabi or the Old Testament directive of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They contrasted it with the New Testament philosophy of turning the other cheek, or loving one’s neighbor as oneself. Some called this second law the Golden Rule. If they were capable of this level of analysis and wrote well, they got an A.
No one ever questioned the wisdom of the Golden Rule.
No one, that is, until a bright student who sat in the middle row appended a curious coda to her essay. She went over the two ways of thinking involved in the two laws, then wrote, “Of course, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you also gets it wrong. Other people aren’t you.”
Handing back the essay a week later, I talked with her briefly. She wore the pale, dissatisfied look of those for whom life isn’t quite sufficient. “I liked your essay,” I told her. “You’re the only person I know who’s ever taken issue with the Golden Rule. What made you think of it?”
She smiled painfully. “My boyfriend takes me out to a lot of basketball games. Because that’s what he likes, not me.” In fact, what she’d written coincided with what I’d come to believe myself, that a lot of kindly meant behavior is marred by the egotistical self. The point that other people don’t hold the same assumptions that you do is hard to take. The people close to you may not share your taste in food or opera, and why should they? Still, if love, as some cynics put it, is a triumph of illusion over reality, then it’s certainly understandable that they should—or should seem to. If you truly love someone, the loved one feels like an extension of yourself. That’s because love is partly a matter of projecting your traits onto someone else and then admiring what’s there.
Developmentally, we begin by loving ourselves: We are it, the point of everything. Soon enough, we learn that others surround us and their feelings are also significant. Some of us may even go on to become famous philanthropists or saints, such as Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa, loving others as a vocation. But the essential filtering through the self never stops, since what other true vantage point do we have? You experience others as yourself. Yet as any simile will show, the preposition as is inexact at best.
To be fair, the phrase “as you would have them do unto you” isn’t really about what you’d like. It’s meant to be an exercise in empathy. Yet if we are all born narcissists, and the projection of the self onto others is second nature to us, then seeing through another’s eyes is impossible, except through a form of wishful guesswork.
This idea, the inescapability of the self, has implications beyond moral behavior. It threatens the very notion of objectivity. Isn’t one always imposing one’s own standards on others? Yes and no. First of all, those selfsame standards inevitably reflect communal values: No one is brought up in a void. Parents and teachers can inculcate the value of tolerance or hard work. Second, some people’s standards seem more flexible, more empathic than those held by others. Consider the person who expresses an opposition to charity but still gives money to a homeless person. Herein lies some hope for the Golden Rule: If you can walk a mile in someone else’s shoes or at least imagine what it must feel like, you can properly do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Of course, if you have this kind of empathy, you probably don’t need that kind of guideline.
But I’m neglecting the other law (“Do unto others as they do unto you”), which describes a great deal of the events on our planet. For the same writing assignment, another student decided that he favored the “eye for an eye” mode of behavior. “It’s only fair,” he wrote. “The punishment fits the crime.”
I guardedly admired this essay and talked to this student as well. He was slightly apologetic yet stood his ground. As he explained, he was bullied as a kid till he learned to fight back. “Nothing else works.” How can one argue with this version of the School of Hard Knocks? An eye for an eye often is the way of the world, in everything from schoolyard fights to a judge meting out public service to a defendant who has damaged the community. It also unfortunately describes human nature, as I’ve observed it for more than half a century. Despite millennia of so-called civilization, people derive satisfaction from payback.
As for my other students, who came from many ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic levels, did any of them advocate a system of rewards and punishments other than the two offered? That was beyond the scope of the assignment, but a few astute students did try—including one whose last paragraph, a masterwork of social policy, concluded, “Easier said than done.” Another quoted this witticism: “Do unto others before they undo you.”
After a few years, I stopped giving this assignment. If I found the task too complex, I figured that most students did, too. Eventually I replaced the essay prompt with one about the difference between a good joke and a bad joke—another difficult topic, but one that got more laughs.
