Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Trumping the Golden Rule


I recently learned of the “Platinum Rule”.  Obviously, platinum was chosen due to its apparent superiority to gold as a way of saying that this "Platinum" rule actually trumps the merely Golden one.

In case you’re wondering, the Golden Rule has been around forever in a variety of formats and iterations and is a pretty simple concept:  Treat others the way you'd like to be treated.

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The Platinum rule is also pretty simple: “Treat others the way they’d like to be treated.” 

As simple as it is, it changes the paradigm quite a bit.  It forces the seat of authority from the actor to the recipient of the action by asking the actor to consider what the other person would want as opposed to inferring or assuming what they'd want based on what the actor might want.

This coercion into active listening and critical questioning are quite absent in the Golden Rule.

Isn’t it funny how this rule seems to have originally appeared in a book about salesmanship?  Even so, its hard not to find global applicability here that forces transcendence from definition to meaning and a recognition that the inherent worth and dignity of others is not so much granted (by you), but defined by them. [ - or, if you're so inclined by God/god.]

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