So, opposite of the Golden Rule, eh?
This would be me. “Screw you, I’m not getting in there where you can grab me and hold me down.”
I almost drowned at the age of 21 because my roommates didn’t know I couldn’t swim and they threw me in the deep end after a hard fought drunken attempt not to get thrown in. I didn’t know what threading water was and went straight down. Two of them could not pull me up. I was lucky that one of the guys at the party was an actual lifeguard and he ran from a second story terrace, jumped in the pool and pulled me out. I finally learned to swim in my mid 40’s.
A twelve year old bully drowning in a pool around kids he had bullied? I’d say they’d be hesitant of him pulling a trick and do nothing until he was down and out.
There was a group of them for me in middle school, carrying their ‘attitude’ in to high school. That being said, I’d perform what I’d call a “hollow rescue.” Not rescuing them for the altruism of it, but rescuing them to avoid the hassle/paperwork of the investigation and any legal inquiries/aftermath into the accident.
Tripler
More the avoidance of pain, than the pursuit of pleasure, if that makes sense.
I don’t see the parallels. McElroy was a rapist, a child molester, a thief, and arsonist and an attempted murderer (I don’t think he ever killed anyone, but he shot a few, so he was certainly trying to kill people). He preyed for years, decades, on the people around him.
The debate to be had about the McElroy killing is whether an extrajudicial killing can be justified. The people of Skidmore, Missouri apparently finally got to the point where they decided enough was enough. They believed that law enforcement and the judicial system had failed to protect them, and would not protect them in the future.
That’s a very, very different case than that of a 12-year-old bully who falls into a pool.
The story does not allege that the bully committed offenses on the level of McElroy. Did this bully shoot anyone? Molest children? Go around armed, threatening to kill those who opposed him? Burn down buildings?
And if a 12-year-old was doing these things, over an extended period of time, it’s inconceivable to me that there would not have been some kind of intervention by adults in authority.
I’m horrified by the behavior of the children who would have let another child drown, but I guess I’m not surprised. And to some extent, that behavior is probably attributable to stuff other than malice (or, at best, apathy to the bully’s death). I expect that 12 year olds might freeze up in the face of danger, fear (rightly or wrongly) getting in trouble themselves, and might look around to see what all the other kids are doing before acting themselves. If one of them had acted, all the others might have jumped in too.
As to what I would have done, I’m not quick to say with any degree of confidence what my twelve-year-old self would have done in those circumstances. Who knows.
Actually, I can say a few things. First, I didn’t then, and don’t now, fifty years later, know how to swim. And, having grown up in New York City, pool parties were completely unknown to me.
But we could probably imagine some set of circumstances which don’t involve a swimming pool, but still would require some action from a group of children to rescue their bully. And in those circumstances, I’d say I don’t know what would have happened.
A lot of people (not just 12-year-olds) freeze or flee in an emergency. It could be their best friend in trouble and they’d still be inadequate to the demands of the situation.
I can’t imagine not attempting to rescue anyone, no matter who, if I had the means to try.
That would be my impression as well. Assuming that the story happened as portrayed, if I were a 12 year old in that situation, I’d probably think he was messing around, trying to draw someone in to dunk.
I think that getting an adult is probably the best play (though I have to question what irresponsibility meant that there were no adult supervising 15 kids in a pool in the first place.)
Not quite. The opposite of the Golden Rule would be to treat others the way I don’t want to be treated. Which means I would be a dick to everyone, all the time. With my mantra, if people are nice to me, I am nice to them in return. If they are a dick to me, I’ll be a dick to them.
That seems to be quite a bit of work, having to keep track of who you need to be nice to, and who to keep a grudge against.
Also tends to create a cycle of animosity even from unintentional slights. You do something unintentionally that offends them, then they retaliate against that, then you retaliate in turn… Sounds exhausting.
I keep a spreadsheet.
j/k.
Despite what they say I think most people actually do treat other people mainly based on how they feel they are treated, however, not in such abject terms. If someone had not treated me well I am definitely not going out of my way to treat them the way I’d like them to treat me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to completely turn the tables on them either. Some things people do should result in some blowback from time to time also in my book, but it doesn’t mean I have make it my responsibility to fulfill someone’s karma. I can also understand why you might say something like that, at times I’ve fallen into such a defensive nature I’d just say such things based on my attitude.
I’ll assume for now you do mean something closer to typical behavior. But I’m kind of curious what you really mean and how you arrived there. At least you’re not a phony Golden Ruler.
Having a philosophy that you try to live up to, but fail from time to time does not make one a phony, it just makes one imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I agree. But there are plenty of people who are outright hypocrites.
Are you assuming I’m talking about posters in this thread for some reason?
That explains the new SumGrudge() formula in Excel.
True, but I would say that there are more who are judged to be hypocrites by others than are actually hypocrites.
I’m assuming that you are talking about people who claim to follow the golden rule but fall short of its ideal.
Well as I said, I’m talking about people who aren’t making any real attempt at it and simply don’t practice what they preach. Imperfect people who simply fall short of an ideal like that merely need to apologize to set things right. You might notice the hypocrites won’t admit that they’ve fallen short at all.
I’d say that the natural human state is to give as good as gotten. It’s not easy to forgive others for their transgresses, it’s not easy to care for others who don’t care for us. These are not things that people just do.
Which is why we have ideals of raising ourselves above our base nature, to be better than playing a game of tit for tat. It’s easier to justify treating others poorly by rationalizing that they treated you poorly first than to try to break that cycle and actually treat people as you would like to be treated, not as you perceive yourself to be treated.
If someone claimed that they always follow the golden rule, then unless they have a halo over their head, I’m not going to take them seriously. If someone says that they try, then I’ll take them at face value, and accept that they will probably fail more often than they succeed, what with being a flawed human and all. I don’t see a reason in trying to point out their failures unless I am trying to justify my own failures by comparison.
Now, starting with a philosophy of treating others as you have perceived them to have treated you… well, at least that’s a very easy philosophy to follow. You can justify treating pretty much anyone poorly.
Dr. Cox (Scrubs): People are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.
Just going to say right now that I strongly believe in ideals to strive for. It is way too easy for people to say nobody can live up to an ideal so it’s not worth trying.