This is a great article, @anarcho-andrei, thanks! :-)

I agree with most you're saying here and want to thank you for the erudite manner in which you dissect The Golden Rule; I've seen it described in many, many ways, but this legal variant is new to me :-)

But, this one rule to rule them all is even biologically encoded in us through mirror-cells or mirror neurons. It's the neurological mechanism by which children learn by mimicking everything they see us adults do, and it's also why men involuntarily make a painful face when they see another man being kicked in the nuts: we don't feel the pain, but act as if we do, all on auto-pilot :-)

Also in all sorts of network-sciences, social studies, heck, all religious books... All through historie we've known this to be true, but our current era is one where not only a universal set of ethics, but all kinds of universality are likely to be rejected without any further consideration. All so called "big ideas", you know the -isms, are rejected because of a deeply ingrained sense of pure individuality where there's simply no place for any shared truths: everyone is entitled to their own truth and that's the road that leads to the defective "live and let live" moral of our times.

You're already a legend in my book for sharing this. I said in in one of my latest posts already: I have a feeling we are close to some kind of shift in consciousness, I see more and more people like you that are trying to point out where we are the same, instead of the modern paradigm of exaggerating our differences. There will always be violence, there will always be dishonesty, but there's no need for wars or marketing campaigns if we all just adhere to this one simpel rule...

Thanks again, @anarcho-andrei, for this valuable and thought-provoking message :-)