... the final chapter delineates the so-called ‘Golden Rule’ as a dignified mode of human relating that is based on acts of deep empathy. It describes how this ancient philosophy - that we treat others as we wish to be treated and that we do not treat them as we do not wish to be treated - emerged all over the world as a result of the rampant structural violence unleashed by the rise of agrarian societies.

There is a logic behind human conduct, although it does not reveal itself through conventional reasoning skills.

This brings me to the psychoanalytic perspective and its major advantage over other approaches, namely, its ready acceptance that humans are motivated, for the most part, by factors far beyond their conscious awareness.

The so-called Golden Rule is as old as civilisation itself. In its positive form, it calls for right action, that is, treating others as one would hope to be treated oneself. In its negative form, it calls for right inaction, or, not doing to others what one would not have done for oneself. Both iterations call for imaginative acts of deep empathy and, for this, one could do worse than look to the great world teachers for instruction.

Then there is the pantheism characteristic of Native American religion, with its belief in an immanent god that cannot be separated from reality as we know it. The point, however, is this: the universality of the Golden Rule did not come about because all was right in the world of humans.

The appetite for psychological knowledge is growing all the time and, while there are complex sociological explanations for this, my imminent concern is to think through the connections that bind modern psychological thinking to the humanist legacy that is Golden Rule thinking.