From the Golden Rule to the Golden Future: A Civilization Placing Kindness on the Altar
The Universal Application of the Golden Rule
The Golden Rule is one of the most widely recognized moral principles in human history:
Treat others how you want to be treated.
This guiding thread weaves cohesion among every major spiritual tradition, a timeless principle echoed across cultures, etched into scripture, chanted through the ages.
So prevalent within the fabric of our collective consciousness, yet elusive in action.
We talk the talk,
Though how’s our walk?
When we objectively evaluate, how embodied are we really?
When so much of our relating and interpersonal exchanges now happen through a keyboard and an algorithm, our attitudes and behaviors easily default to binary code. We react.
We publicly shame.
We gang up.
We cancel.
We provoke.
We name-call.
We mock.
We gossip.
Completely natural outlets for a species grasping at varying levels of safety, desperate for some semblance of control during chaotic times. While conflict and competition have helped us to survive, navigating the world from such reactive instincts results in Level 2 Energy. Catabolic with a Warrior flame, as the experiences of our Ancestors still ignite from deep within our veins, sparking the will to live and desire to protect.
Though that Warrior courage once used to venture forth from caves, fight off saber-toothed tigers, and protect the tribe has since been generalized, exploited, bought, and sold to the highest bidder.
Our attention, our impulses, our triggers, our energy. Captured and monetized by data-driven algorithms, keeping us perpetually hooked in cycles of reaction for the system’s profit.
It’s time to reclaim our currency by decentralizing our attention, diverting our gaze away from wherever the colosseum’s cameras are pointing, and when appropriate, overriding our intense primal instincts, which signal to us that anyone who disagrees with our narrative of choice is a direct threat and must be eliminated.
Dehumanization is a Survival Code, But So is Concern for the Tribe’s Welfare.
Now, I’ve just illustrated a groove of Catabolic patterning so deep within every cell of our being it reaches to the core of our very existence. Catabolic conditioning that tells us to dehumanize whomever we perceive as “the other.” Dehumanize to justify whatever means necessary secures our own survival. That code is as much our genetic blueprint as our flesh and bones.
So it probably sounds easier said than done for all of us to radically embody the Golden Rule. And I agree. It’s not easy. It takes work. The good news? We don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. In addition to our fight/flight genetic wiring is the code that reminds us that our survival is directly linked to the well-being of the tribe.
While we default to fight/flight instincts when faced with stressors, in our most natural states, we resonate at the frequency of collaboration. The truth is, we are wired for connection and synthesis. Because we are Nature. And Nature is coherence.
While the dominant interpretation of Darwinian theory has long emphasized competition as the primary driver of evolution, modern evolutionary biology reveals that collaboration is just as essential as and perhaps more prevalent than competition. Maybe what we humans perceive as survival of the fittest in Nature is more accurately creation’s surrender to what Taoists call “the Way.”
Nature is a living breathing model of symbiotic relationships. Ecosystems thrive through mutualism, where species coexist and support one another, from pollinators sustaining plant life, to mycorrhizal networks exchanging information between trees and mycelium, to cows roaming fertile pastures, compacting soil with their hooves, opening up new areas for seeds to germinate and sprout into fruits that attract birds and bunnies who carry and deliver seeds near and far. When we sit back and observe, we see the interconnectedness and reciprocity everywhere.
Darwin himself acknowledged the importance of benevolence and cooperation in human evolution. The false narrative of “survival of the fittest” as a purely competitive struggle ignores the countless examples where survival depends on our diversity of gifts and strengths merging to support the whole.
Human civilizations have flourished only through cooperation. From ancient tribal communities to modern cooperative economies, history shows that those who master both strategic collaboration and self-sovereignty create the most resilient and thriving societies.
Indigenous and shamanic communities not only understood this balance, they embodied it. Within hunter-gatherer societies, survival was a shared endeavor. Individuals specialized in different skills, from foraging to tool-making to tracking, and the tribe thrived through mutual reliance. Reciprocity was not just a social virtue but a means of ensuring long-term abundance.
Among the Maya, autonomous, lineage-based settlements known as Chinimitals endure as living testaments to the power of self-sufficiency rooted in cooperative design. These communities, intricately woven into the social and political fabric of Maya civilization, function through localized governance, shared resources, and interdependent trade alliances. Each Chinimital retains its sovereignty not in isolation, but within a thriving network of mutual exchange. Their enduring resilience has withstood centuries of colonial disruption. Even after the arrival of Spanish Conquistadors along the Yucatán Peninsula in 1517, wielding Level 2 force and violence, the foundational principles of Chinimital governance survived. So deeply embedded within the sacred patterns of their inheritance and held safe within the storytelling of the wisdom keepers, that such codes continue to shape Indigenous self-governance practices in Guatemala today.
Yet, the Maya are not the only indigenous civilization who have been modeling a collaborative, regenerative economy. The Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee, meaning People of the Longhouse, also structured their society around cooperative governance, communal land stewardship, and reciprocity-driven exchange.
The longhouse itself is collaboration in action. A living structure designed not only to shelter but to unify. Built from saplings, bark, and other natural materials, the longhouse can stretch over a hundred feet and house multiple families from the same clan, each with their own hearth or fireplace, while sharing walls and responsibilities. It is a place of counsel, ceremony, and consensus, reflecting the Haudenosaunee worldview of interconnectedness and mutual care. This architectural form is also a blueprint for their expanded civilization: cooperative governance, communal land stewardship, and reciprocity-driven exchange are all extensions of the longhouse’s core values.
Land was never something to be owned. It is to be honored, stewarded, and shared. For the Haudenosaunee, the Earth is kin. Rather than divide it into private parcels, they tend it for the well-being of the whole, ensuring future generations may thrive.
Even their agricultural practices speak this language of reciprocity. The Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) rise together from the soil in a sacred choreography. Each plant supports the others in a cycle of nourishment and protection. Corn provides a natural trellis for the beans to climb, offering stability and structure. Beans enrich the soil with nitrogen, nourishing all three crops and sustaining long-term fertility. While squash spreads across the ground, shading the soil, retaining moisture, and preventing weeds from overrunning the gardens. Their roots intertwine, like heart coherence within a community. A living example of what it means to grow in harmony.
This integral method of cultivation is more than just efficient farming. It’s a living metaphor for how we as a collective might blend our strengths, lean on one another, and support each other’s growth for the benefit of all.
Beyond agriculture, the Haudenosaunee economy operated as a gift-based system, where wealth was not measured by accumulation, but by generosity and circulation. The ability to give, rather than hoard, was seen as a sign of prosperity. Resources flowed freely through networks of reciprocity, reinforcing social bonds and ensuring no one was left in deprivation.
At the heart of this system, the Clan Mothers hold significant influence in economic and political decision-making. As keepers of the land and protectors of the people, they ensure that food, medicine, and essential goods are shared equitably among families and villages. Their leadership reflects the Haudenosaunee’s deep respect for matriarchal wisdom and communal well-being, values that stand in stark contrast to the individualistic economies introduced when colonialization infiltrated these sacred lands.
The Haudenosaunee model of stewardship, reciprocity, and shared prosperity challenges us to rethink modern economic structures. What would it look like to build a system where land is honored, resources are shared, and generosity is the highest form of wealth?
From the Mohawk of upstate New York to the Apache of the Southwest, from the Native Hawaiian stewards of Mauna Kea to the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest, these communities are not to be spoken of as if past tense. They are living cultures, walking with generosity, protecting sacred knowledge, and inviting us to remember how to live in aligned relationship: with the land, with one another, and with the gifts we each carry. By remaining curious, humbling our indoctrinated minds, and placing creation on the altar, we begin to awaken to the awareness of all life as sacred. From here, we develop trust in our connection with the land and therefore, trust in ourselves.
We do see reflections of these ancient practices in modern cooperative economies, from open-source software development, where decentralized collaboration fuels innovation, to social enterprises that merge business with communal well-being. The blockchain movement represents a digital evolution of self-sovereignty within collective ecosystems, challenging centralized power structures in ways that mirror age-old cooperative principles. Awakening our civilization to the nature of currency and our inherent value as creative beings with free will. Perhaps we will come together in advocacy for open-door science as well, holding town halls to discern our own conclusions about what is being performed in labs. Closed-door science is not Natural. All of Nature’s own experiments are done out in the open. With all of creation looking on.
The most resilient societies and individuals master the dance between self-sovereignty and collaboration. Between individuality and synthesis. They recognize that thriving comes not from one or the other, but from the balance of both. And through this dance, we develop trust in our own autonomy. Because through acknowledging our unique gifts and ability to use them in service of co-creation for the benefit of all, we develop a relationship with our internal guidance systems and our wisdom of discernment. Through such a sharpened sword of discernment, we trust our ability to digest information when it’s shared through the lens of transparent, and we exercise (discernment synonym) when evaluating what works for our civilization. We no longer feel dependent on the partnership between government and media to spoon-feed us selective truths designed to divide and turn neighbors against neighbors, family against family. Especially when in this space of awakened agency, we begin to understand that Truth is not owned by any one voice. Rather, it emerges from the symphony of many. Each voice carries a reflection an edge, a shard of the crystal. Not the whole picture, yet something essential, contributing to the full radiant spectrum of the holographic universe. Even the most contrasting or seemingly misguided perspectives hold fragments, which when magnetized into oneness instead of repelled into oblivion composes the Infinite. And only through the meeting of these fragments, through weaving each and every strand of nuance into synthesis, not silencing or dehumanizing, can we begin to glimpse the larger pattern. We are building a Mosaic of Truth, one that honors diversity without distortion and unity without conformity.
We declare ourselves strong and capable of pulling back the curtain and shining a light on all operations and decisions being made on our behalf. And we develop the courage and wisdom to represent ourselves and our communities, through calm rational discourse. As Kevin Esvelt urges in his TEDxCambridge talk, “Openly Engineering Our Ecosystems,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoRqivhO6NM)) we stand at a threshold where it is easier to engineer biology than culture, and that imbalance must be addressed. He proposes a visionary shift: transitioning from closed-door science to community-guided technological development. Rather than allowing a handful of scientists or institutions to unilaterally make decisions with global consequences, Esvelt advocates for local town halls: gatherings where citizens and scientists together evaluate the risks, benefits, and ethical implications of emerging technologies like gene drive. His approach honors the spirit of informed consent, not just in medicine but in ecological engineering. It’s a model of participatory science that mirrors the regenerative patterns of nature itself: transparent, interdependent, and accountable. If we are to co-create a Golden Future, it will require not only powerful tools, but also the cultural scaffolding to wield them with wisdom, humility, and respect.
So where do we go from here?
I invite us to explore two aspects of our evolution that may help illuminate a path forward:
1. We may reconcile with the possibility that all life is sacred and begin treating all of creation as such.
2. We may discover, in a more direct and embodied way, how we would like to be treated.
Let’s begin with the first: the sacredness of life.
One afternoon, while browsing the self-development shelves at Trident Booksellers & Café on Newbury Street in Boston, a book seemed to leap off the shelf and into my field of awareness: The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons Changes Our Understanding of Human Nature by Christian Keysers.
At that time in my life, I had just uncovered an electrifying feeling of resonance around the word “Empath,” as I’d begun an exploration into the mysteries of why I perceived the world so differently than those around me. I’d hoped this book could guide me as I sought language, and perhaps validation, for my lived experience. And in some ways, it did. While I was grateful for the evidence and clarity around Mirror Neurons, the biological basis of Empathy, offering a glimpse into how we’re wired for connection, I was simultaneously haunted by the experiments scientists felt necessary to prove what Nature has always demonstrated so freely.
Let’s take for example, The Rhesus Monkey Experiment.
In a what was considered a groundbreaking 1964 study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers Jules Masserman, Stanley Wechkin, and William Terris conducted an experiment with rhesus monkeys that illuminated the deep, innate nature of altruism.
The setup was simple:
Monkeys were trained to pull a chain to receive food. But then, the conditions changed: pulling the chain would deliver an electric shock to another monkey in sight.
Faced with this moral dilemma, many of the monkeys refused to pull the chain altogether, choosing to go hungry rather than cause suffering to their peers. One particularly empathetic monkey went without food for 12 days rather than inflict harm on another.
The study also revealed that monkeys who had previously experienced shocks themselves were even more likely to sacrifice their food to prevent harm, suggesting that empathy is heightened by shared experience. Familiarity also influenced responses, as monkeys were less likely to inflict suffering on their cage mates.
This mirrors a seemingly obvious truth about the conditions that lead to empathy in our own civilizations: The more we understand suffering (our own or another’s), the more inclined we are toward compassion.
And yet, as groundbreaking as this may have been in the 1960s, those of us today who have loosened our attachments to intellectually-driven conclusions and feel more aligned with simply observing Nature might ask: Why was it necessary to cause suffering in order to prove Empathy exists? Personally, as I read this study, a voice deep within cried, “Who the f*ck do these ‘Scientists’ think they are?? Don’t they realize Nature is the teacher? Science is the student? They are getting it twisted!”
Not to diminish how exciting it is to hold evidence that neurological and behavioral studies show that our brains are designed to recognize, respond to, and share the emotions of others. Mirror neurons, the specialized brain cells associated with empathy, fire not only when we experience something, but also when we witness someone else experiencing it. As much as my soul feels a departure from the means by which such evidence was collected, my intellectual mind has received and carried such information into my own practice.
In my work with Empaths, I entertain the possibility that some of us were born with extra doses of mirror neurons, and life mirrored back patterns that molded us into “wounded healers.” Wired with heightened sensitivity, we are born into a paradigm that through pressure, coercion, duress, and force teaches us to suppress what Nature embraces. The full spectrum of sensation, emotion, and transformation. While Nature surrenders to cycles of birth, death, and renewal without resistance, our cultural conditioning teach us to fear and control them. We’ve become a civilization more comfortable fearing death than feeling the multidimensionality of life. Nature fears nothing. Yet feels everything. Because Nature does not judge painful inevitabilities as bad.
This same impulse to control rather than commune extends beyond personal experience and into the realm of science itself. As our ironic world would have it, in studying empathy, science has often fallen into the same hierarchical structures that perpetuate disconnection from Nature and the desecration of the sacred. The very discipline that seeks to understand life’s interconnectedness has, at times, reduced living beings to objects of analysis. Who remembers dissecting, testing, and controlling rather than listening, observing, and relating.
This paradox is illuminated in the work of Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary biologist whose research on plant intelligence defies conventional scientific frameworks. In her book Thus Spoke the Plant, she recounts her own awakening. A moment when the boundaries between observer and observed dissolved. While studying fish, she began to realize that her subjects were not merely data points in an experiment but conscious beings with their own agency, their own stories, their own ways of communicating.
Her scientific training had conditioned her to maintain indifference, to separate herself from her subjects, to extract knowledge rather than receive wisdom. Yet, the deeper she immersed herself in her research, the more she felt a quiet but undeniable truth rising within her: the world is alive, aware, and responding to our presence.
This realization unraveled the very foundation of mechanistic science: the idea that intelligence belongs exclusively to humans, that data is the only valid form of knowledge, that relationship is irrelevant in the pursuit of understanding. Gagliano’s work with plants, which later led to trailblazing studies on plant learning and memory, emerged from her willingness to step beyond scientific orthodoxy and into relational knowing. Perceiving the world through connection, reciprocity, and lived experience rather than detached observation or abstract analysis. Her experience showed her that wisdom is not something we extract or possess, but something we participate in through relationship.
Such a shift invites us to ask:
· What if science upheld the notion that Nature is the Teacher, and Science the Student?
· What if, instead of reducing life to variables, we expanded our capacity to listen, to witness, to be in conversation with the more-than-human world?
· What if we acknowledged that intelligence is not confined to human cognition, but woven through the fabric of Creation itself?
To recognize this is to recognize that Nature has never been separate from us. The plants, the animals, the elements have been offering their exquisite sentience all along. The question is not whether they are intelligent, but whether we are willing to listen.
And when we do listen, we remember: all life is sacred.
Now that we've returned to this remembrance, let’s weave the fractal thread back to the central artery. Earlier, I shared that we’d be focusing on two aspects of our evolution to help illuminate a path forward: treating all of Creation as sacred, and through that, cultivating a felt sense of how we would like to be treated.
But here’s the tension: our paradigm is designed to create hierarchies. In the West, for instance, we place celebrities at the top and, whether consciously or unconsciously, position our neighbors, our families, and often ourselves toward the bottom. These hierarchies breed separation. That separation quietly scripts how we treat one another and perhaps most importantly, how we treat ourselves.
When we pause to examine this, we see that such a hierarchy serves no one. It doesn’t serve celebrities to live on impossible pedestals. And it certainly doesn’t serve those of us dwelling in anonymity to view ourselves as “less than” for not achieving fame. Why would we aspire to climb such ladders when, as I’ve described throughout this piece, Nature moves not in ladders but in spirals? Nature is synthesis in motion.
Still, we are conditioned to fawn over those at the top, whether it’s a boss, a religious leader, the popular kid at school, a movie star, or a pop icon. And yet, the people closest to our hearts, the ones we love most, are often the ones we take for granted, disrespect, or lash out upon. Ourselves, most of all.
I wonder if this is because we rarely see models in the media we worship showing us how to treat ourselves well. Sitcoms, dramas, rom-coms, politics, and news all flood our feedback loops with conflict, manipulation, and humor at the expense of someone’s dignity. All the while, they distract us from exploring what’s quietly operating in the subconscious.
The Golden Rule tells us: Treat others how you’d like to be treated.
But what happens when science tells us the Sacred is something to poke and prod? When politics tell us to blame the “other”? When culture tells us to trade privacy for dopamine? When media encourages dehumanization and entertainment glorifies trauma-bonding?
What becomes of our self-perception?
Who is asking us how we would like to be treated?
Or how we are treating ourselves?
Learning how to treat myself with respect and care felt foreign at first, especially during a time when my entire life revolved around earning approval from my boss, who represented the top of my internal perceptual hierarchy.
One day, as the light of awareness spread across my subconscious terrain, I saw a revelation waiting to be acknowledged: I had been placing my self-worth in the hands of others. And as long as I didn’t feel worthy, I would never treat myself with the kind of care that could, in turn, command respect from others.
So I started treating myself how I wanted to be treated.
If I wanted others to speak to me with gentle curiosity and acceptance, I began to offer that same energy to myself, especially in meditation. I began practicing permission. Permission to slow down. To speak up. To advocate for myself in situations where in the past, I used to wish someone else would advocate for me. To listen to my body and honor my temple’s requests. To prioritize calm relaxation, telling myself, “I am enough.” “I am worthy of this existence.” “I am worthy of being heard and having my voice treated with consideration.” Slowly, I transformed the voice of my inner Gremlin from a gaslighting tormentor into a champion, cheerleader, and friend.
Through becoming intimately familiar with my Gremlin’s messages, my empathy for others expanded. I began to understand how deeply shame and guilt circulate within nearly everyone’s feedback loops. And I realized I would never want to feed those Gremlins, mine or anyone else’s. Especially when extending kindness and encouragement has the potential to build a firm foundation of safety. Creativity flourishes when humans feel safe enough to show vulnerability. We can’t show vulnerability when we’re on the defense. Anticipating attack. Any why wouldn’t we anticipate attack when as I described, our feedback loops are inundated with conflict?
So let’s heal that conflict internally, by coming home to the question:
How do I wish to be treated?
When we answer honestly, we discover the same seeds most hearts hold: patience, dignity, kindness, and acceptance. When we tend those seeds within ourselves, watering them daily with the way we speak to ourselves, the way we honor our needs, the way we forgive our stumbles, the roots grow strong.
From there, kindness is no longer something we try to remember. It grows of its own accord, winding outward in ever-expanding circles. Acceptance becomes the air we breathe, and respect the soil beneath our feet.
Nature moves in spirals, and so do we. When we embody the care we wish to receive, it becomes part of our very structure, woven into our bones, carried in our voice, shining from our eyes. And in that embodiment, the Golden Rule becomes the Golden Future. Not as an ideal we chase, but as a living field we inhabit, together.
