“Do to others, as you’d desire others doing to you”, my down and dirty paraphrase of the ‘golden rule’. Jesus said it… ergo for many there’s no greater authority. “All we need is love, love, love…” is another variation of the idea. So wrote Paul Mccartney and John Lennon.

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

And The Youngbloods sang with impassioned sincerity in 1967.

Who becomes weary of remake after remake of the golden rule?

We are addicted to the nostrum. Never mind the idea has never worked. We’ve never found traction to progress together, to cease the simmering conflict, that too often flames to a devastating conflagration… Yes that has happened and will happen again.

The principle just does not work! (I’ve said it) Advice impossible to follow is worthless. Keep saying it, over and over till the sundown of humanity. No satisfaction. Chill! Learn to be still, allow silence to replace the voices in my head…

What must I do given the measure of our circumstance?

Once upon a time
a bird alighted in the outskirts of the capital of Lu.
being pleased with the bird,
the Marquis of Lu prepared a banquet
and played the Nine Shao Music
to entertain it.

But the bird became troubled and bewildered
and did not eat or drink.
This is called nourishing a bird
as you would nourish yourself.

If we wish to nourish a bird
as a bird should be nourished,
we should let it perch in a deep forest,
or float on a river or lake, feed on eels,
and be free in the fields.

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 19, A Complete Understanding of Life