The Golden Rule

One of the pleasures here is the opportunity to engage in substantial communication with many young adult individuals. I guess this is familiar to professors everywhere, but teaching language is even better, since a teacher can hold discussions on any topics he chooses as long as he maintains the students' interest. Naturally I have lost little time in focussing on some of my pet themes, central questions of human existence which practically no one in the West ever bothers to talk about these days.

What's preferable, truth or illusion? Suppose you're a doctor, and a patient's lab test results indicate he's got only a week to live. Would you reveal this to him?

Just about everyone in the class initially said no; then after a bit maybe a third wavered and said they'd tell the truth. A few said they'd tell the relatives.

OK, now what if you're the patient. Would you want to know the truth? No one hesitated. The class immediately said "yes" in unison.

Hello?

"You Chinese," I had to confess, "are simply weird."

Talking individually to a few other students (from other groups) subsequent to this class, I get this same dichotomy: as doctors, they would withhold the truth which, as patients, they would want to have.

I wrote "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" on the board. No one recognized it. I had another confession to make. Famous as this prescription is, I actually couldn't remember where it comes from. Is it one of the Bible's ten commandments? Or was it formulated by the philosopher Immanuel Kant as his "golden rule"?

Hey -- like everyone in my culture, I'm clear on the crew members of the starship Enterprise (Capt. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Lt. O'Hura, Checkhov), but how the heck am I supposed to know the ten commandments?

Back at my computer, a quick check suggests it appears in the gospel according to Matthew (chapter 7 verse 12). But curiously, it was also among the teachings of Confucius.

Confucius? They never heard of him here. But that's impossible. We all know him in the West as the old Chinese guy with the white mustache who wrote the first fortune cookies. Surely he's well known to the Chinese.

In fact, they know him under a different name. My handy MS Bookshelf produces:

Literature, 495 B.C.

The Chinese philosopher Kong Fuzi (Confucius) resigns as prime minister of Lu at age 56 when the ruler gives himself up to pleasure. In the next 12 years, Confucius will wander from state to state teaching precepts dealing with morals, the family system, and statecraft, with maxims that comprise a utilitarian philosophy. A brief record of Confucian teachings will be embodied in the Analects, one of the Four Books of Chinese classics, and his Golden Rule will be honored (often in the breach) throughout the world: "What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do unto others."

The People's Chronology is licensed from Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Copyright (c) 1995, 1996 by James Trager. All rights reserved.

We didn't have time in class to resolve their apparent indifference to the Golden Rule, but I had them do some writing on the topic. Here are one young lady's thoughts:

"If I were patient, I didn't want to know the troth becaus I think I feel sad. it's a pain in the neck. I'll keep my fingers crossed for me because I don't want to die quickly.

"Because the life is full of sunny!"

The logic is less than impeccable -- but what a poetic soul!