Poem: "Golden and Fair"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem is from the April 5, 2016 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by Anthony Barrette.


"Golden and Fair"


The Golden Rule advises,
"Do unto others as you would
have others do unto you."

The corollary of this rule,
"But do it to them first,"
is commonly intepreted
in an aggressive way,
yet there is more to it
than meets the eye.

The Tough But Fair rule is,
"First cooperate, then
do to the other party
what they have done
to you previously."

In this manner, one
can gain influence
over the direction that
an interaction takes.

The first to move,
controls the board.

* * *

Notes:

The Golden Rule is commonly phrased in the Christian mode, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." However, it appears in similar forms across many religions. The Baha'is have helpfully compiled examples into a nice poster.

Read about the Tough But Fair Rule. The mathematical proof makes a compelling case for this behavior.

Comments

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I learned about it in various places. One was a Xanth novel. Another was a big dense book on peacemaking in human culture, with attention to how it could develop even in inimical contexts such as warfare.

Re: Yes...

[(Anonymous)]

It's connected to the the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, really, which is a better model because it assumes repeated interactions with the same people. However, it's worth noting that occasionally giving someone the opportunity to cooperate even when their previous behavior has been hurtful to you - "forgiveness" - provides an opportunity to get out of a downwards spiral of mutual competition, punishment, and blame; this strategy, tit-for-tat with (occasional) forgiveness, sometimes surpasses the success of being tough but fair in the iterated prisoner's dilemma game, and sometimes, not, depending on the environment of other strategies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
--alatefeline

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> It's connected to the the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, really, which is a better model because it assumes repeated interactions with the same people. <<

Yes, exactly.

>> However, it's worth noting that occasionally giving someone the opportunity to cooperate even when their previous behavior has been hurtful to you - "forgiveness" - provides an opportunity to get out of a downwards spiral of mutual competition, punishment, and blame; this strategy, tit-for-tat with (occasional) forgiveness, sometimes surpasses the success of being tough but fair in the iterated prisoner's dilemma game, and sometimes, not, depending on the environment of other strategies. <<

I think that was mentioned in the book I read about how cooperation can evolve in hostile situations such as a war zone.

It is highly relevant to Terramagne, by the way, because of the supervillains. Letting them run rampant is obviously not good for anyone, but draconian countermeasures just raise the damage quotient. So the trend is starting to emphasize prevention, damage control, and finding ways to loop criminals back into society. That requires an understanding of appropriate forgiveness. It seems to work best on the younger ones and/or opportunists who only took the black for lack of better options. Once they've integrated that into their identity, it's difficult or impossible to change. But sometimes you can still change the style of supervillainy they practice from something quite rough to something more genteel, and peacemaking skills offer an ideal way of doing that too.