The Silver Rule
First, some link pimpage: my friend Cyrano Coyote has a new webcomic up, The Paranormals. (Note: there are a few popups, since he’s using a free service to post ‘em. And we all know about free services and popups. Urgh.) BUT…I started at Issue 1 Part 1, (linked above) and before I knew it was at Issue 3. I am a comics geek, true, but what do you expect from a hack who used to write X-Men fanfic? (This was before the Internet, folks. Those stories are all burned. Sorry.) Anyway, any clickage Cyrano and his friends get will help them keep the comic together, and you might just like reading. It’s a bit thin on Spectacular Appearances to Keep the Story Going, but all comics are. Enjoy!
Today I wanted to blog about something near and dear to my heart, but I don’t know how much time I have. So bear with me.
A while ago, the DHM and I had some nice Mormon boys over for dinner. After they left, I blinked at him and said, “Why don’t Buddhists proselytize?”
“Some do,” he said judiciously. “But most follow the Silver Rule.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, the Golden Rule…You can tell yourself you’re doing something for someone’s good. The Silver Rule, however, runs like this: don’t do to other people what you don’t want done to you.”
“Did Buddha say that?” This was turning out to be the most interesting conversation all night. Because let’s face it, teenage Mormon boys not allowed to read the newspaper or watch the news? Bad boring conversationalists.
“Not in so many words. But he probably would have if someone asked.”
“Huh.” I thought about this for a few minutes. “I think I like the Silver Rule better.” More like karma and the threefold law, I didn’t add aloud.
“Most intelligent people do.” And he dove back into his book on chaos theory with a twinkle in his eye, blushing up to the roots of his little bald head. Bless him.
The Golden Rule is fine as far as it goes, but it is the most-broken and most-twisted rule in human endeavors. People who claim to follow it can be snakes in the grass as readily as people who have no such qualms. But the Silver Rule requires far more contortions if you want to, say, screw your business partner or out someone else’s wife as a CIA agent. If you wouldn’t want someone to do so to you, why do so to someone else? It just seems that the Silver Rule is a lot harder to break and explain to yourself in a polite self-justifying tone. As Machiavelli himself might have pointed out, it’s not what you can get away with. It’s what you can justify to yourself at the end of the day. (Evidence: FOX News. Need I say more?) Even the most amoral of politicians feels the need to dress up his naked power-hunger with Ideals. The Silver Rule seems harder to use in that capacity.
Though, you know, I don’t put it past any politician (or any human being, really) to overcome such a hurdle. Call me a cynic.
A brief aside–why I don’t go to Starbucks if I can help it. The part I’m referring to is on the second page, where it says, “Customers…want their beverages in under three minutes.” Well, kind of, I guess. But the automatic coffee machines? Hell no. Give me a cranky tattooed and pierced barista who swears as she bangs the handle, tapping out a plug of spent espresso grounds and snarling while she foams my milk. Maybe I’m a snob, but I prefer my espresso handmade, with all its human quirks. It’s why I have a bloody espresso machine at home, you know. And why I work at the bookstore, where we hand-pull each shot. It takes a little more time, for the barista (if not snarling, for in truth the Kiwi rarely snarls, as she takes coffee very seriously) to say, “Hey. What have you been reading lately? You like this sweeter or not? Dry or wet? Want whip?” Making sure every latte or mocha or straight shot is exactly to your specifications.
If I’m paying three bucks for a cup of caffeine, I want it how I want it, and I want an experience with it too. Otherwise, we might as well be doing lines of Folgers. *shiver*
To continue with Gold vs. Silver Rules, Libby’s been indicted, but one in four traders are saying they think he’s going to be pardoned. Hey, they read the newspapers and know which way the wind blows.
BUSH: Out a CIA agent in revenge after we drag the public into a war with no good grounds? Hell, you meant well, right? Well, I’d shore want someone to pardon me if I was in that mess. Here you go, fella. One pardon comin’ right up.
CHENEY: Shut up and sign the damn thing. While you’re at it, sign mine too.
BUSH: You ain’t been indicted yet, have you?
CHENEY: Only a matter of time, now that those damn Democrats have managed to get into Congress. Hurry up. Indictments are bad for my investments. And that gives me heart pains.
BUSH: Oh. Well, I’d shore want someone to watch out for my investments. Ain’t I a Christian!
Sheesh. I am bitter, aren’t I. Bad enough that they drag us into a war where our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers die for no good reason except the Bush family pocketbook. Then they turn around and try to cover up the Walter Reed fiasco. How can one call oneself a decent Republican nowadays? Voting Green has never looked so tempting.
It might be a little harder with the Silver Rule.
BUSH: Well, I shore wouldn’t want nobody to out Laura. Interferin’ with a CIA agent while we’re at war is sedition, dammit.
CHENEY: I know. I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to me either.
BUSH: I can’t pardon that jackass. Who gave the order to leak her anyway? They should be shot. Wasn’t it a damn Democrat? We like accusin’ them of bein’ unpatriotic.
CHENEY: Well, only a few of them are damnliberals anyway.
*pause*
Nah. It wouldn’t happen. Machiavelli strikes again.
You know, sometimes I wish that realpolitik wasn’t the order of the day, and I further wish I could keep my starry-eyed optimism. Then reality strikes.
No wonder I write stories.
Anyway, the Silver Rule. One of the DHM’s finer moments. And now that I’ve depressed myself thoroughly, I have a werewolf who’s just awakened to his own funeral and has to figure out what the hell poisoned him. It was the sweet tea, but he’s dense. His vampire hunter wife is certainly the brains of that operation.
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March 18th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
I see what your DHM was getting at, but I still think the Golden Rule is an improvement over the Silver Rule. Why? The Golden Rule requires us to give, love, share, and generally be active agents in the world. The Silver Rule allows passivity, which can be a form of cruelty. If someone is starving to death next door, the Silver Rule doesn’t tell me to help them. It just tells me not to do anything to make their situation worse. So I could sit back, watch them die, and still be a good Buddhist, by this definition.
I don’t think that’s very moral.
Does that make me unintelligent?
March 19th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
No, but I don’t think you quite understand. Would you want someone to walk away from your suffering? If you wouldn’t, then the Silver Rule dictates you do not walk away from the suffering of others.
I do not think it’s a passive rule. IMO, it’s a lot more active than the Golden Rule, and harder to worm your way out of.
March 19th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I dunno, Lilith. You’re kind of arbitrarily determining the definition of the action from the victim’s point of view. To my neighbor, it may look like I’m walking away from their suffering, but I can claim that I’m just going on a relaxing hike. And both of us could be right from our own point of view. This subjectivity doesn’t get cleared up until we start talking about ACTIVE actions that look unambiguously the same to both parties (i.e. giving food and water).
March 19th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Hm. Well, I suppose you have your definition and I have mine. I don’t think we’re quite understanding each other. If you want to actively practice the Golden Rule, I will be the last person on earth to dissuade you. Good luck, and thanks for commenting!