Searching for Lost Treasure: the Golden Rule

Having studied sociology and psychology in college, I have a keen interest in human behavior. As a probation officer, my career centers around observing human behavior, and in many cases attempting to orchestrate a change in it.

Through my education, experience, and focused observations of humanity in daily life, I have come to the conclusion that as a society, we are forgetting an important and central tenet of interacting with one another: treating others the way we expect to be treated.

This very basic foundation of human interaction comes in many variations. Many know it as the Golden Rule. Some know it as the ethic of reciprocity. Christians likely recognize the sentiment from Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31, among other Biblical passages. It's been around since ancient times, and more modern phrases about karma, payback, reaping what we sow, and walking in others' shoes are based on it.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

My Professional Life

I see people breaking the Golden Rule in my professional life.

Probation officers obviously have probationers in a vulnerable position, and yet some officers still feel the need to exert their authority and treat probationers as something less than the human beings that they are.

Probationers, of course, are notorious for interacting with probation officers and other law enforcement in a manner to which they would strenuously object if the roles were reversed.

Probation officers can't even apply the Golden Rule to each other. My recent struggles with a particularly obtuse officer in another state over an interstate transfer of supervision are an example of that. From my point of view, she allows her self-absorbed desire to get out of doing extra work overshadow her professional and ethical responsibility to do what's best for the probationer and for the community.

A uniform policy on handling transfers of supervision between one county and another within Indiana had to be developed for the same reason-probation officers weren't treating each other as they would want to be treated.

Even within my own office, the Golden Rule is routinely forgotten or ignored.

My Personal Life

I see people ignoring the ethic of reciprocity in my personal life.

Feuds between neighbors are commonplace. I see people in public places berating their spouses and/or children. Parents unload on their children's teachers. Marriages fall apart because spouses don't consider the impact of their behavior on each other.

Anonymity makes things worse. When people don't know each other and believe they won't ever meet again, human behavior can be appalling. Parents scream awful things at umpires during Little League games. Recreational softball players feel the need to verbally abuse the one and only umpire for what they deem to be a bad call on the complete opposite side of the field.

Watching people interact with members of the service industry is always interesting. When did we forget to say "please" and "thank you" to the people serving us food, cleaning up our messes, and providing other services for us? What makes us better than those folks that we can't even show basic human courtesy?

Have you ever gone Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving and watched how people treat each other over slightly reduced prices on material objects?

It takes about thirty seconds of driving in metropolitan traffic to find dozens of examples of self-absorbed people doing whatever they want without any regard for others. And of course any opportunity for anonymous comment on articles on the internet brings out a special kind of malice in some.

We Are All Human

We are all human beings with human emotions. We have differences of opinions. We have different perspectives. We have disagreements. That's what makes humanity so colorful. What a dreadfully boring place this world would be if everyone was the same and we all got our way all the time.

It's how we deal with those emotions, those differing opinions and perspectives, and those disagreements that could use some work. It's really quite simple to respect each other, have a civil and constructive conversation about our differences, and either resolve them or agree to disagree and move on without resorting to degrading one another or holding petty grudges that escalate over time.

There's a very simple test for whether or not you're treating another person with appropriate dignity: Would you like them treating you in the same way if roles were reversed?

What if you needed help and someone in a position to assist you simply didn't want to do any extra work? What if someone spoke to you the way you're speaking to that person? What if it was the safety of your children being threatened by the guy recklessly weaving through traffic?

I'm certainly not nominating myself for sainthood here. I'm just as guilty as everyone else of occasionally forgetting the Golden Rule. Probationers-and probation officers-get under my skin sometimes, as much as I hate to admit it, and I've been known to have a sharp tongue from time to time. I don't do near as much stuff around the house as my wife does, and we both have full-time professions outside the home. I'm not always as patient or tactful as I should be with my kids. People make mistakes. Learning from those mistakes and trying not to repeat them is what's important.

What we can't ever forget is that we're all human. We're all just trying to get through life the best we can, and we can't exist without each other.

So could we all make a bigger effort to remember the Golden Rule in our everyday lives?

Please?

Thank you.