D U O A Y W H T D U Y
I was about to respond to a response from a member on one of their seeds, when the the lock switch was thrown and I was denied the opportunity. The issue at hand involved the ethics of deporting and separation of children from their parents at the border. I didn’t want it to go to waste, so here it is.
A true short story for you:
About 15 years ago I was in a very bad way. The region I was living in was in recession, I lost my job, was squatting in my house while I searched for work to support myself and my kids, getting regular calls and mail about my delinquent mortgage. Though I was an office professional, I would take any odd job no matter how laborious. My ex mother in law hired me to install a wooden privacy fence and fix the crumbling foundation of the garage at her rental unit that my ex wife was (is) living in.
I had few tools so I had to mix an entire pallet of bagged concrete for the jobs by hand. It was torture for $10/hr. It was a four car garage, about 70 years old. I had to remove the old broken concrete foundation, set new concrete, and rebuild the back wall. As I was scoping out the work I noticed something - there were 12 columns evenly spaced on the foundation. I had an epiphany - I could leave my mark forever imprinted into the fresh concrete, discretely placed along the base of the exterior wall. As I placed the hand mixed concrete I etched DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU in the spaces between the columns.
My ex-wife came out and saw it, and said that’s a strange thing for an atheist to memorialize. Her mom is a staunch Catholic (and a Trump supporter I hear), but my ex is just a hippie chick Buddhist-type. I said Christians certainly don’t own this expression, they just pretend to embody it. Nothing has changed in that respect. To turn a parent away who is doing everything they can do keep their family out of harm’s way is the polar opposite of this expression. Intentionally separating them from their children by thousands of miles is unconscionable - but hey, what else would you expect from a Christian? Okay, not every Christian, but if there is a just God, it will put certain ones in those shoes one day.
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Well, in my defense of the rules, the seed went to a page that was "404, not found"
and I offered to reinstate said seed if the author corrected the url.
He too took a shot at me and went meta with excuses about the URL and the moderation in another of his many seeds.
Apparently he was happy with the 14 comments by 4 members.
C'est la vie.
Perhaps this belongs in Metafied?
[deleted]
You can move it if you like. I’m out of touch with the workings of this place since my revisiting.
There are two subjects here: The Golden Rule, and NT Moderation. The latter belongs in Metafied, but the former most certainly does not.
So please... delete any Meta (such as this!
), but leave the Golden Rule.
Actually, I originally thought the member locked their own article, so it wasn’t a moderation issue. No biggie. It seems like that member’s articles are locked routinely.
So many milestones in my life have passed since this concrete incident that I had pretty much forgotten about it. I can probably count on one hand the number of items that I still own since that time. The memory only came up when I thought about how egregiously the Golden Rule is violated over the child separation issue.
I think the Do unto Others is one of the best things in the Bible along with Love your neighbor
I have a book suggestion you would probably enjoy:
Plotz is currently the editor at Slate and a practicing Jew.
It does sound like a good read. Thanks for the suggestion.
(Who the hell flagged Hal's comment and why?)
Or yours for that matter? Some days I just don't get it.....................
Hey, I had to vote you up. Haha
What if you were to do to your neighbour something you like but that others might find offensive, or maybe that you are incapable of doing? I have always prefered it being the other way, i.e. "Do not do unto others as you would not have others do unto you", which, in a way, goes hand-in-hand with "Live and let live".
I can only laugh at the notion some people have that one can only be moral using some scripture as a guide.
I don't get the thinking that morals only come from some kind of religion.
It is almost akin to people saying, if I didn't have my religion, I would have no morals...
Like it is somehow keeping them in check.
I remember some guy on Newsvine years ago who was an evangelical nutjob, and said his faith was the only thing keeping him from beating his wife and robbing banks. Then he berated an article written by Bart Ehrman, asking why a religious opinion written by “some atheist” should matter to a Christian. Bart Ehrman is a former evangelical pastor with a doctorate in divinity and who is fluent in Aramaic. When Bart was given access to some of the oldest scriptures in existence for examination, this fluency informed him about the truth about scripture - what is written today is a bastardized version of the originals, augmented to suit the whims of others throughout history. Bart subsequently lost his faith entirely and wrote many books on the subject. I don’t know for certain but that guy may be a member here.
The Golden Rule probably existed before Jesus... but our records are kinda flaky, that far back...
It has never been specifically Christian. Any ethical religion must assimilate it.
Atheists, too: Emmanuel Kant is perhaps the best known atheist ever... and he worked on refining his " Categorical Imperative " for most of his life.
I’ve read before that it is thought to have originated with Confucius, which doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. By definition it should have originated at the stage in human evolution where it was realized that working against one another is counter productive towards meeting your own personal objectives.
Hal.......is that you?
C’est moi. Hello PJ. How’s things?
Not so bad. I'm don't partake here that much but saw you and thought I would stop and say hello. I hope you are well. I won't derail your thread anymore but wanted to let you know its so nice to see you posting again.
An excellent credo for everyone to live by