I'm introducing this subject with some trepidation, & mainly because I dont want to seem as pushing an alternate religious viewpoint - especially one which lends itself so easily as justification for 'jihad'.
As Glen expressed earlier the Golden Rule is not really compressible. "Do unto others as you would have done to you / Don't do to others what you would not want done to yourself etc" are rather vague. The Gita, however, (as I'm fairly sure the Old Testament does too) expresses that once a man's side is determined, he is obliged by DUTY to do what is "right", even if it involves heinous killings on a massive scale or even the killing of his close relatives. DUTY is one of the core elements of Dharma (the way of righteousness). Of course DUTY cannot be taken in isolation, because the essence of the Gita is the continuous weighing of choices between the Dharmic Law (kill / harm nobody) versus the inferior Niti (Penal) Law (slay all offenders on sight). Gita 1:30, 2:31 etc. So DUTY would probably be compressible. I am an ant, so I'm duty bound to pick up every speck of sugar I can find and convey it back to the mother ship. On 9/29/12, Sarbajit Roy <[email protected]> wrote: > While agreeing that this version of the Golden Rule is somewhat more > "evolved", I don't exactly recall this variant as especially being > from the Gita. > > On 9/28/12, Prof David West <[email protected]> wrote: >> Expected that Sarbaijit might have mentioned this - the Gita has a >> variant of the golden rule that I like much better than the biblical >> version - "refrain from doing to others what you would not have them do >> to you." >> > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
