Why The Platinum Rule Fails

Written by a human, for humans, always.

How are we supposed to treat others?

It is a question that has been asked by people since the beginning of time.

When I was younger, there was a standard that was given...

The Golden Rule.

It claims...

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

In more recent times, there has been an alternative that people have also proposed...

The Platinum Rule.

It claims...

Treat others the way they want to be treated.

Is one of these better than the others?

To get to the answer...

We have to look at how these ideas came to be developed...

What they actually mean...

And what the consequences are of each.

Now...

Let's start with where the Golden Rule comes from...

And what it was designed to actually mean.

If you are not familiar, the Golden Rule is derived from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.

If you read the Golden Rule out of context...

It can sound self-centered.

"I" am going to treat others as "I" want to be treated...

With the out-of-context implication being that you treat them this way "regardless" of how they want to be treated.

That does not seem very good...

And it is also not what Jesus meant in the slightest.

To actually understand the essence of the Golden Rule...

You have to understand it within context.

The Bible makes a claim (which you may or may not agree with, but is important to understand for the purposes here)...

That mankind, left to their own devices, has a limited sense of right and wrong...

And because of this, mankind tends to do more wrong than right.

Even the best-intentioned individuals, based purely on their own judgements, end up committing wrong in the world.

No one gets it right, only some people get it "less" wrong (maybe).

The Bible then makes a further claim...

That there is a consequence to committing those wrongs (just as a judge holds someone accountable for breaking the law, even if they did not intend to break it)...

Which is spiritual death...

And the only way to overcome this spiritual death is to be forgiven for our wrongdoing...

With the payment being made by the willing sacrifice of Jesus (Just as a parent could pay a legal fine we accrue for a mistake we make).

This is the context that we need to understand what the Golden Rule actually is saying...

It is not self-centered...

It is a recognition that, even when we do our best, we will not be perfect...

And that we need forgiveness when we make mistakes.

This is also how we are expected to treat others within the correct context of the Golden Rule...

That we forgive others as we hope to be forgiven for our wrongdoings...

With the in-context implication being that we have the capacity to grow and become better human beings, despite our past failings.

That is how we are supposed to understand the Golden Rule in-context.

Now...

How did we get to the Platinum Rule?

Well...

Some people do not believe in the Bible.

So...

They do not believe in or hold the same ethical beliefs about humans.

For many within that context...

They do not believe that they are in need of forgiveness...

Because they do not believe they have done wrong...

Or are beholden to any sort of spiritual consequences in death.

I'm not here to argue about theology, philosophy, or ethics...

This is simply understanding the "where" of how the Platinum Rule came to be today.

So...

Within that worldview and context...

If I am not in need of forgiveness...

If I have not committed any wrongdoing...

If I am not subject to some form of spiritual consequence in death...

If our ethics can be argued from person-to-person or culture-to-culture...

And no one is inherently right or wrong...

Then the Golden Rule stops making sense.

When the spiritual context of the Golden Rule is stripped from it...

Its meaning changes completely...

To the out-of-context meaning that we discussed above.

If "I" want to be treated by "this" set of ethics (or lack of ethics)...

And I "push" that onto others...

It can become problematic very quickly.

We have seen many cultures impose their ethics onto others...

Usually at the expense of those others, causing them detrimental harm.

(Ironically, Christianity in-context teaches against doing this. And perhaps, double ironically, Christianity out of context has caused this detrimental harm at different points in history.)

So...

In that context, the Golden Rule can be seen as problematic...

So, as a way to design a new ethic that followed a similar structure...

The Platinum Rule was created.

Instead of treating others as "I" want to be treated...

I treat them as "they" want to be treated.

They can create or have their own ethics and beliefs...

And I will respect that and allow them to do so...

Treating them in the way they expect to be treated.

Now...

In some contexts...

This can be a very positive thing.

If I go into a different culture and abide by some of those cultural norms...

That may be very respectful.

I just recently went to Japan, and it is a quiet culture, where people mostly speak in whispers and rarely talk on their phones in public...

Which is very different than the culture in the States, where everyone always seems to be yelling and constantly talking on the phone.

So, while I was in Japan...

I talked in whispers, and never talked on my phone in public (which, I must say, was a bit refreshing because I could hear others better than I typically do).

I would say that is a great use of the Platinum Rule.

But...

There are many ways in which the Platinum Rule ends up going wrong.

Why?

Often, there are many things we "want" that are not good for us or for others.

If we treat an abusive alcoholic the way they want to be treated...

Is it right to give them more alcohol and allow them to abuse others?

That is what we call enabling behavior...

And that is not healthy or beneficial.

There is another way that the Platinum Rule goes wrong...

And it is in encouraging Sycophantic tendencies.

This includes a plethora of likely results...

Including...

Encouraging a distorted reality...

Delusional spiraling...

Reinforcing errors and a loss of critical thinking...

Destorying interpersonal conflict resolution...

Abuses of trust and overreliance on that misplaced trust...

Erosion of social support systems...

And flawed decision-making in high-stake and risky situations.

None of that is good...

But we have seen dramatic rises in all of these since the greater adoption of the Platinum Rule.

Yet...

Perhaps in the most ironic twist...

The purpose of which the Platinum Rule was designed...

Can actually end up "encouraging" those who believe that their ethics "should" be pushed on others.

When you say...

Treat others as they want to be treated...

And they want to be treated as conquerors, masters, tyrants, and worse...

And you "allow" them to be that way...

You can be certain that they will take that as permission...

And...

That creates vastly more problems.

So what we end up discovering...

Is that even if the intention of the Platinum Rule was positive...

The result, by and far, is that it fails to produce positive things in the world.

So...

Where does that leave us at the end of this?

Well, that is perhaps the trickiest to answer.

The Golden Rule only works within the context of a specific ethical context...

Which not everyone seeks to follow or believe...

And the Platinum Rule is not a substitute that makes sense in applied reality.

If we do not have some agreement on certain ethics...

Or we go so far as to say that ethics are completely relative...

Neither of the frameworks of the rules will work.

For these types of rules to work...

We have to come to agreements on some things...

Such as all humans having inherent worth and being worthy of life...

Even if we do not agree with them or if it is not always convienient to what we want.

But even this is something that we, as humans, seem to struggle to agree on or successfully live out.

If we cannot agree on something as simple as that...

Or consistently live it out...

These types of overarching rules will always fail to suffice.

This is also why cultures tend to collapse over time..

The rules do not work as they were designed to in theory...

People use and abuse those rules in ways they were never intended...

People suffer...

They revolt or abandon those cultures...

And eventually new rules arise that attempt to remedy those that did not work...

But continue to fall short of their intended goals.

What comes next is to be seen...

But one thing seems to be certain...

Different rules and ideas seem to be needed within different contexts.

Even if we could all agree on the Golden Rule or Platinum Rule...

There would be other rules and laws which would not work from culture to culture and context to context.

Perhaps then...

We should seek to find value in different people, cultures, and contexts having different types of rules and laws to govern them...

While simultaneously not pretending that all of them are equal or that they all seek to help humans at large in truth and reality.

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