Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Wednesday, May 30. 2012

Oxytocin, bonding, and the Golden Rule

Oxytocin, not Oxycontin which also, I hear, produces warm, fuzzy feelings: Kin and Kindness.


I aspire to fulfilling the Golden Rule in my life. Who would wish to grow old and to feel that they had not done so during their brief time here? I aspire to forgive those who sin or trespass against me too. It's all a struggle because I tend to react against fools, jerks, jackasses, the malevolent and the arrogant, but it's a worthwhile struggle anyway, with the Lord's help.


The Golden Rule comes easier with kith, kin and tribe, doesn't it? In a way, it's a definition of community. Ostracism is the community's curative; its purgative, but that is another topic.


End of sermon.


 


 

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:47 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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The Golden Rule is easier to comply with when one lives in a monoculture that shares a morality, in a country with a strong military that discourages assaults from crazies abroad.
In other words, compliance with the Golden Rule is a luxury.
#1 PacRim Jim (Link) on 2012-05-30 15:01 (Reply)
Barrister dear ... We have temporarily suspended compliance with the Golden Rule at our house until November at the earliest, and only then if the Right Person wins the election. With the Mid Eastern scourges loose in our heretofore civilized country it's just plain foolish to give them an opening to hurt us. Which they would.

Marianne
#2 Marianne Matthews on 2012-05-30 15:47 (Reply)
http://www.bing.com/search?q=what+is+a+high+trust+society%3F&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox

--some good articles --the first four, anyway, at first glance.
#3 buddy larsen on 2012-05-30 15:50 (Reply)
T-r-u-s-t. Interesting. You probably could write volumes about why nations rise and fall, marriages begin and fail, industries gather steam and falter, families and friendship break into fragments...because of that one word. T-r-u-s-t.

It certainly is why our country (and dozens of others) are in a depression now. Who trusts the guy in the WH?

Trust me. Yah, right.
#3.1 jma on 2012-05-30 16:24 (Reply)
...and trust is built on integrity, which is a product of (you guessed it) applying the Golden Rule.
#3.1.1 BillH on 2012-05-30 17:04 (Reply)
--i think maybe among the emotions, convictions, feelings, et cetera that form any individual's meeting place with the world, 'trust' is the big one. It's like, the 'good world' --all those untrustworthy things are just the junkyard universe that lets us see the 'good world'. All those thousands of years leading up the development of writing, and what do we get? Ten Commandements, and the Hammurabi Code --The Commandments speak to individuals, The HC to the collective, but both are appeals to people to simply act in such a way that they can be trusted to always act that way, or at least try very hard to, according to permanent principle.

Trust --i think you cannot even have 'love' without it. You can have 'love/hate' tho. In fact that's probably pretty much what 'love/hate' IS --love without trust.
#3.1.2 buddy larsen on 2012-05-30 17:20 (Reply)

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