“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — that is the Golden Rule. And it is very DANGEROUS, very HARMFUL and very NEUROTIC. Why this belief does damage, why it is a losing game, how it wrecks relationships — and what doing good should look like instead.
Very often we hold the irrational belief that other people must (or ought to) behave towards us the way we behave towards them. Incidentally, this belief is typical of the depressive personality type, it is very widespread in Orthodox Christianity and across Russia — and hardly widespread at all in other countries, the USA for instance.
Here, by the way, is a motto you can find in Austria at the entrance to a riding school. You have to admit that in Russia it would never occur to anyone to write
"Do nobody any good and you will have nothing bad to expect!"
Very often we hold the irrational belief that other people must (or ought to) behave towards us the way we behave towards them. Incidentally, this belief is typical of the depressive personality type, it is very widespread in Orthodox Christianity and across Russia — and hardly widespread at all in other countries, the USA for instance.
And this belief is:
- unjustified, and
- very harmful.
We often behave as though it were a rule. Yet we never negotiate any such agreement. And the anger, hurt and indignation that follow all revolve around this belief.
“How can this be! I treat him like this, and he treats me like that!” the author
It is a deeply unrealistic belief, and it is worth tracking in yourself and in other people. It is important to understand that it is
- a harmful belief,
- it leads to disappointment and wrecks relationships, and
- it hands other people a strategy in which you spend your resources and cannot get anything back in exchange.
Over to Ellis
In 1956, at the convention of the American Psychological Association in Chicago, Albert Ellis — the founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy — described ten irrational beliefs through which we whip up fear, make special demands and play down what is actually happening. Number 3 on the list was this irrational belief:
“Everything has to be the way I want it. If it isn't, that will be awful and I won't be able to bear it!”
an irrational belief
And what does that have to do with the Golden Rule?
A losing game!
To our assumption that putting more in means getting more out, the other person can reply, quite clearly and quite reasonably:
“Did I ask you to? You did it on your own initiative”
the author
Turn the situation around and it is worth seeing that when the other person holds this belief, it lets us keep pointing out — inside the Karpman drama triangle — that we never agreed to any of it. If someone presents us with such a “bill”, counting on us to act the same way towards them, we can always make the same case:
“that was never our agreement!”
the author
It wrecks personal relationships!
Very often this expectation is refracted through personal relationships, where a great deal is expected by default anyway. But if we take a close relationship to be, among other things, an agreement between two adults, then we cannot expect it by default. We have to agree on what each of us puts in, and only then start “doing each other good” and “doing good deeds”. Because inflicting “good” on someone can have consequences.
We cannot expect another person to behave, by default, the way we behaved towards them — and it makes no difference whether that behaviour was honest and decent or quite the opposite.
So how should we do good?
If we look for an alternative, realistic belief, it might sound like this: “other people deserve the treatment they have earned in this particular situation.” Situations such as negotiating with a terrorist who has just been about to blow everyone up, or keeping — or not keeping — your word after he has broken his, are decided by our expectations.
Among adults, doing good is based on exchange in the first place. If I am exchanging with you, we need to agree on what I get in return right away. Especially if I do something for someone on my own initiative, expecting nothing back. And if we want to keep the balance of good deeds — so that ours are not abused, so that the gift is not simply pocketed — then we ask for an equivalent contribution to be made to someone else.
What does that mean? I have done something for another person, and they already feel indebted. If it was my own contribution, if I expect nothing in return and want to close the subject, I set a condition of my own: “do the same for someone else”
