I often think about how hard it is to navigate personal relationships, as all people have different experiences, and look at life through their own lens, whether they be rose colored or dark. Many people are genuine, others put up fronts and say one thing in front of you, and another behind your back. I known someone for years, who has not wanted me to really be involved with their life, They’ll act one way and I later learn that the conversation had been interpreted differently, because they had a different view point. How do you know how you should treat someone if you don’t have an honest relationship? I would tend to look through my own experiences and try to reach out the best way I know how. (The Golden Rule) Sometimes it backfires, and hopefully you learn and can treat others better, but it takes experience, and patience and love(with the learner too!). Some days I have more love and understanding to give than others, if you meet me on an off moment, who knows what you may think of me? What if you have just met someone and don’t know anything about them and so you ask a seemingly innocent question, but it offends one person and not another? Becoming a sensitive person is a journey in and of itself and takes time.

When you compound this with introducing the gospel into it, often people are asked to do things to help them grow that can make them uncomfortable and awkward. There are many times I’ve sat through lessons, and had I not studied the topic for myself from the actual gospel materials and general conference talks to know what the prophets have actually said, I would have been very confused. When it comes to sharing the gospel with others, I think some of the general authorities themselves have had really good talks on how to treat others of different faiths, like being sensitive and not calling people non-members anymore for starters. But sometimes you get sub par teachers, and things come out a lot different. You just have to love them anyway, and live your religion. Sometimes people who are listening to a talk/lesson totally ignore good advice and commandments and can’t even here it because the place in life they’re in.

When you look at the context of the golden rule in the scriptures there is a lot more instruction on how to act, which hopefully will give myself and other struggling saints pause on how to REALLY act. Adding the Platinum rule is like getting more instruction.

I haven’t been familiar with this vocabulary, but I think this idea comes up in my marriage a lot. I think I’ve said before — I believe really strongly in speaking directly and not passively or passively-aggressively, etc. My husband’s family does not speak directly, and I am always sure that he would really appreciate it when I show him the better way to be and point out every instance when his communication could be more direct. I love it when people point out that I’m not being direct. Turns out he hates it. So I need to turn off the Golden Rule and upgrade to Platinum.

It’s a trivial example to something more profound that you’re getting at.

“He replies, “Oh, I am sorry. I was afraid you might not like orange juice, and I didn’t want to offend you by offering you something you didn’t desire.”

Now, that sounds absurd, but it is not too different from the way we hesitate to offer up something far sweeter than orange juice. I have often worried how I would answer some friend about my hesitancy when I meet him beyond the veil.”

This example uses the Golden Rule but at the same time makes us forget the variety of difference and otherness around us. In order to be analogous, orange juice would have to be the only true juice, and there wouldn’t be other drinks to choose from.

However, I’m also thinking of how often I heard seminary teachers or other leaders urge us to not listen to those who reject our missionary work b/c we knew something they didn’t and we should therefore do the kindest thing, which is to ignore their boundaries and wishes and try in every way we can to get them to see things the way we do. If not, my teachers said, they’d condemn us in the next life for not forcing our truth on them (or sharing our truth with them). That’s a more extreme example, but it happens in milder forms all the time, particularly in the treatment of those who don’t fit all the standards (the adult unendowed, the less active, etc.). I think what I’m arguing against is the paternalism Sterling mentioned, the idea that b/c I have “the truth” then I know what’s best for everyone else, and I’m treating them how they should want to be treated, should they have the truth like I do.

By using the Golden rule, you could hypothetically ask people how they want to be helped. In the story you used, your companion could have asked the woman you visit teach, “How can we best help you, by challenging you to push yourself a little further, by helping you with housework, babysitting, or in some other way?”

I guess that’s how I’d want to be treated, to have someone ask how best they could help me, while giving some examples that they are willing to provide.

Nobody wants to be treated in a way that isn’t respectful of who they are as a person, and ignores their trials. I guess I kind of reject (in a very nice way of course the notion that your VT companion was using the Golden Rule, or at least she wasn’t using it very well.

(Here’s where I admit that I don’t use it all the time or very well either. But, I don’t know that we need to create a new rule to fix these problems, perhaps just think harder about it)

I think the golden rule should encourage an examination of difference rather than erasure of it.

” Emanuel Levinas, . . . .vigorously defend the otherness of the other.”

And serve, and respect,and be open to the arrival of the otherness of the other, and

Corktree asks a good question — how to know what the other people need, want. Like you said, Alisa, I think it’s all about asking. Asking people what they want and need. That probably makes it sound too easy — I know that it’s really hard to ask that question in real life — but I certainly imagine a lot of good resulting from people making more of an effort to do so.