As I See It: Equality and the ‘Golden Rule’ 

In America today, we are reminded daily how dangerous our nation has become. We witness rude behavior everywhere and courteous and polite people seem to be increasingly rare. With mass shootings and fascist politics everywhere, we are very despairing with other Americans.

With one exception.

I have always marveled, over half a century of driving automobiles, how courteous and polite fellow drivers are in America. Indeed, most American motorists, with killer machines under their personal control, are generally well-behaving operators of their vehicle and our driving experiences for the most part remain comfortable and pleasant enough. Just think: If as many Americans carried guns to stores and schools and businesses as often as they drive their cars, I doubt we would ever associate our driving experiences with such comfort or pleasantry. Considering how terrifying our gun behavior is in America, our driving behavior is exceedingly courteous and polite. Most Americans never hesitate to hop into their cars to pick up pizzas or stop at the supermarket or even enjoy leisurely Sunday driving — all normal happy experiences associated with driving. While most Americans overseas are often seen as rude and boorish, they are widely recognized as good drivers. Now, our question would naturally be: Why are we so nice to each other with our automobiles, while we would not be so inclined with, say, guns or overseas behavior? Indeed, why?

There is no mystery in the answer, just commonsense: Automobiles are generally equal in their killing power. They are mostly similar in their mortal ability, in which a smallish vehicle can cause similar damage to a human being as a larger vehicle can. Once you are out on the road, your safety is a lottery pick. Anybody can hurt anybody once they are out driving their vehicles. In all practicality, you will be just as careful in a Rolls-Royce as in Volkswagen Beetle. As driving machines, automobiles are largely equal in their capacity for lethal harm: The Rolls driver shows just as much respect for other vehicles on the road as drivers of more lowly models. It’s just commonsense self-protection among equals. One must respect all other vehicles.

Now, this perspective reminds us how important “equality” is in social behavior and relations. Where people are generally equal in power (or money), say, in a volunteer group, or in frontier America where all were equipped with a gun, people tend to be courteous and polite to each other, keenly aware of everyone’s “equal” status. On the other hand, one’s status drops radically when one is unequal, such as when one is poor or not armed. When I worked for the military, we used to form a Catholic volunteer group to visit a home for the elderly, run by the Little Sisters of the Poor. The volunteers included soldiers of all ranks, from generals to privates and civilians. But not knowing about each other’s rank, all in street clothes, and only aware that everyone was an equal volunteer for the day’s work, even generals behaved humbly like everybody else. Observing such things, I always marveled at the power of equality in human behavior and relations, which almost always resulted in courtesy and politeness. (Once they put on their uniform, and equal no more, it was a different story).

Although the Declaration of Independence made equality famous, the concept was already embodied in what is known as The Golden Rule — Do to others what you want them to do to you. Often considered the ethical Holy Grail of the Christian West, a perfect society of justice and peace is, after all, one that follows the Golden Rule, taught in most religions and traditions. As such, the Rule also prescribes human relations in society as perfect equality. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if you wouldn’t want to be somebody’s slave, why would you want to be somebody’s master?

The idea of the Golden Rule, that we do with others exactly what we would want them to do with us, has always been the central philosophical and theological tenet of the West in defining the Good, the Just, and the Brotherly.  The Old Testament says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Jesus radicalizes the precept by saying “Love your enemy”); even further back, Socrates defined a just society as one where everyone, from the Philosopher King to the bricklayer, does his duty; Immanuel Kant taught that the world you prefer must also be preferred by everyone. All say the same Golden Rule: Be equal. But, alas, the West has miserably failed and this failure is most glaring in the U.S. whose capitalism has transformed the Golden Rule into the Rule of Gold (“Those who have gold rule”).

As we can witness in our daily driving behavior — where the equality of the road prevails all the time — the result is a perfectly-behaving society where everyone is nice to everyone. Even rich white drivers respect all others on the road, including poor Black drivers, without fail. Such good communal behavior would not be possible if Black people rode tricycles and rich people drove something like Sherman tanks on public roads. Tri-cyclists would be in constant fear of the more “powerful” drivers all the time, as we fear those with AR-15s. If you want a just and peaceful society, nothing works better than equality for all.

Now, the Golden Rule of the road teaches us a clear and simple lesson: Where everyone is equipped with a similar means of survival, namely, similar incomes for everybody, we will have a perfect society of justice and peace all around us — just like the justice and peace we enjoy on the road.

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield.