4.2 The tribal parenthesis (look in here)
There’s a problem with the Golden Rule.
We’re told it goes like this…
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
But that’s only part of the Rule. The most important part is missing.
I learned this Rule in Sunday School when our teacher read it to us from the Bible. Except the people who wrote that Bible were…
A very tribal people.
For them, the Golden Rule said…
Do unto others (within your tribe) as you would have them do unto you.
Other commandments were similar…
Love your neighbor (within your tribe) as yourself.
And…
Thou shalt not kill (within your tribe.)
So now you can see the problem…
The Golden Rule is tribal.
It was developed to keep peace within the tribe, not to make peace throughout the world.
And tribal people did not need to have the part in parentheses spelled out because…
They were tribal.
They understood the Rule applied only to their tribe.
Nowadays, there are activists who use the Rule to promote hope…
If only we would all follow the Golden Rule, we could come together as one coherent global team, and do what it would take to save ourselves.
If only we all committed to this Rule in our personal lives and our politics, we could transcend our ancient, divisive tribal fundamentalism which is putting us in such danger and marching us down the path to extinction.
But of course a deeply tribal Rule can’t save us from tribalism.
So how did the Golden Rule get like this? What went wrong? Actually nothing, because…
It was born tribal.
Which is an interesting story. There was time in our history when…
People actually lived by the Rule.
In those days, the Rule wasn’t a wish or an aspiration, it was a necessity.
And those days were the great, great majority of our days. How so? During the many millennia when we lived as hunter-gatherers in relatively small tribes where everyone knew everyone else and where everyone was accountable to each other, it was expected that…
You would contribute to the well-being of your tribe all day every day without fail.
And…
You would treat everyone in your tribe with care and consideration.
Including even people you didn’t personally like all that much. You would be there for them and protect them and defend them as needed simply because…
They were members of your tribe.
And you were all in it together.
And the Rule was so important to the survival of the tribe it was made sacred, it was considered golden.
And it was enforced. If you got lazy, if you strayed from it, you would be shamed. If that didn’t work, you would be shunned.
If that didn’t work you would be expelled. Which in those days was pretty much a death sentence because humans couldn’t make it on their own out in the wild.
So the Golden Rule was first and foremost…
A survival rule.
Certainly for your tribe, but also for you personally, because…
The better your tribe did, the better off you would be as a member of that tribe.
In our current era, if we want this Rule to work for us, if we want to survive not as tribes, but as a species, then we need to transform it, adding a trans-tribal amendment so it says…
Do unto others, meaning everyone without regard to tribal boundaries, as you would have them do unto you.
Which doesn’t mean we have to like everybody on a personal level or be friends with them. But it does mean that we step up to the challenge of treating all people with care and consideration, first, just because that’s a good way to live.
And second, because we’re all in this together. We either live together in cooperation or we die together in a final, bitter tribal tragedy.
So if someone says to you, “We should talk more about the Golden Rule when we go out organizing,” you get to ask them…
Which version are you talking about? The tribal version or the trans-tribal version?
And they’ll reply, “What are you talking about?” Then you can begin a conversation with them. One that might help them get free of the tribal trap. One which I hope they’d be thankful for. And maybe at the end, they’d even give you a hug of appreciation.