Tag: golden rule

The Veil of Ignorance Thought Experiment

For whatever reason I like thought experiments, probably because I was homeschooled.  Anyway, I recently came across a thought experiment where you imagine making a new society.  It really gets your thinking motor running.  It’s called The Veil of Ignorance and I first heard about it on The Making Sense Podcast with Sam Harris.  The originator of the idea was an American philosopher named John Rawls.  

The basic idea is you get to make a society from scratch, but you don’t know who you’ll be in that society.  Pretty exciting, huh?  Let’s explore that more since so far this isn’t long enough to be considered an article by itself.  Continue reading “The Veil of Ignorance Thought Experiment”

They’re an Idiot But I Just did an Idiotic Thing

I’m starting a new section called Saturday shorts. I plan on having them come out…drum roll please…every Saturday. These articles will be short thoughts on life. I should probably keep all my articles to this length but they always wind up much longer than I anticipated. They won’t all have conclusions and some of them may not have any point at all. So basically like my regular articles, only shorter. Enjoy.

When we encounter someone treating us worse than we want to be treated, we have a tendency to view them negatively on the whole.  They are just a bad employee, driver, person, etc.  Basically, they’re an idiot.

When we find ourselves not living up to the person we were raised to be, we look for any ear willing to hear our excuses.  We aren’t an idiot, we just did an idiotic thing.

Yes, I snapped at the lady returning shoes, but it was my 47th return that day.  I had been working a double shift and I didn’t even get to take a lunch break.

Sure, I honked excessively at the lady who caused us all to miss the light because she didn’t turn when she had a green arrow.   Give me a break though, I had a really stressful day.

We don’t care why the lady didn’t notice the light had turned green.  Maybe her mind is preoccupied with an ailing loved one or maybe she’s been up all night working.  Maybe she was just taking a minute to enjoy the scenery and got lost in thought.

Give other people the same benefit of the doubt that you give yourself.  It’s not for their well-being, it’s for yours.  They won’t know if you stay mad at them.  It only hurts you.