So What Should Be The Guiding Principle For Life?

You've got your Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

You've got your Rule of Thelema: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

You've got your Prime Directive: Do not reveal anything to any alien civilization that will upset its natural evolution--no references to space, no revelations of higher technologies--no interference in its own advancement at its own pace.

You've got your Metalaw: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.

(I am sure there are other such guiding principles, but 4 is a large enough number with which to deal in one sitting.)

I'll come back to the Golden Rule in a moment. I've already explained my objections to the Rule of Thelema (see "Son Of Misuse Of Logic"). The Prime Directive seems more honored in its breach than in its keeping, if you believe what you see on Star Trek in any of its incarnations, that is. Despite what Trekkers will tell you, Star Trek has not yet become reality. [We could fervently wish that it were reality, but that is after all a wish. Doesn't make it so, alas.--Ed.] The Prime Directive seems to be an offshoot of the Golden Rule, anyway, so I'll say no more about it here.

Metalaw, created in the mid-1950s by Washington D.C. attorney A.G. Haley (and promoted by other forward-thinking jurists), was a thoughtful response to the question of what would we, Earth-born human beings, do upon our first contact with alien civilizations. It seemed like the time to ask and answer that question, as our first successful forays into space were then becoming increasingly plausible. In that regard, it's an intellectual grandparent to the Prime Directive.

On its surface, Metalaw is intriguing. On its surface it is appealing. On its surface it is also dangerously seductive. I did some research into it in the late 70s and was impressed with it. But it wasn't until I started this whole "Misuse of Logic" theme I've been writing about lately that I realized Metalaw's fundamental problem.

Treating aliens as they want to be treated is a recipe for disaster if they want us to treat them as our conquerors. Anyone remember the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man? (Yes, I intended the connection by using the word "recipe" in the preceeding sentence.) If we treat the aliens the way they want us to treat them, and they want us to treat them like we are their food supply, we've just engineered our own destruction. ("Not that we aren't really just a bunch of cows anyway," she remarked dryly.) Remember: "It's a cookbook!"

So that leads us back to the Golden Rule. I can find no logical reason to abandon it as the most simple and elegant guiding principle for living a fulfilling life. It's a question of enlightened self-interest. The best way to be treated well is to treat others well. I keep thinking of the wise mother who had one child cut the last two pieces of cake and who had the other child take first choice as to which piece s/he'd get. You can bet the cutter would strive mightily to make those two pieces as even as possible. In its very simplicity lies its elegance.

You got a better idea? Let's hear it. And your reasons for supporting same. For now, I choose to strive to live by the Golden Rule. Kindness is almost never wrong--the only time it's an obvious error is when one shows kindness to one who will do nothing but take advantage of that to one's own detriment. [In the larger scheme of things, kindness may be the better course even then. I'm just not that saintly all the time.--Ed.]