> People treat themselves badly all the time don't they.

Are we thinking of the same Golden Rule? In the more archaic form: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It says nothing about how an individual treats himself or herself. It therefore is sensible for both narcissistic and self-loathing individuals. Perhaps the rule is a little odd for masochists, but that's hardly disqualifying as a fraction of the population.

> It is the sort of heuristic that works well in a smaller society but does not scale.

The scalability is perfect in the version that I know: For everyone with which you personally interact, the overhead is like the amount of time spent with your personal circle. This is fundamentally limited to 24 hours/day of treating people in any way no matter how outgoing the individual. For everyone else, endeavor for universally applicable policies under which you would want to live.

Perhaps the breakdown that you are pointing out is that it is difficult to craft Golden-Rule-compliant policies suitable for massive nations posessing many, many unique individuals each with unique needs. I agree there, and I have my own take on how to address it. Largely, my take is how I wish others would address that particular challenge for me (ducks). Now, my policy preferences could be awful in another's eyes. But, no one must agree with my preferences as far as the rule is concerned.

> The drive to set rules to govern behaviour might be because people are control freaks.

This Golden Rule only acts from within the adherent. It is not enforced directly by any government or culture of which I know. Rather, it is about governing one's self accordingly.

I'm a bit tired RhysU - so I might take back some of this later.

We are - you can read the Golden Rule as an ideal to aspire to as you are doing. There is nothing wrong with that - as I mentioned I'm with the general thrust of the idea - but I still contain doubts about it. It can be warped.

The person is intended to ponder the consequences of their behaviour onto other people - to place themselves in another's shoes. This is an appeal to self interest and use of self control by means of empathy. This is sense - if you have agency - this is understood to be an ideal.

Suppose though - the person thinks ill of themselves. They are in a bad place and hate themselves. You mentioned masochistic behaviour as jarring - but it doesn't have to have this specific ritualized sexual nature. You have heard of suicide by cop. Some of these shooting videos are kabuki. If people are tearing their hair out - they may be in a state of self harm and to be harmed by others in response to their provocations may be an informal request to society from something primal deep inside their minds.

This is common with low agency people and locations with low agency people. I would go so far as to say some people and some groups of people are constantly sending out signals to the society that they want to be attacked. That is their ideal. That is their ideal. I don't have an origin explanation but it's there.

This is a weird place in the human psychology but it is not rare. Even this morning I read an adult dating advert where a woman wanted to be sexually assaulted and then implied she'd provide her daughter for the same - age unknown - but a troubling impulse - and not the first time I've heard of this. I once saw a man advertising he had HIV and wouldn't use protection but it got weird when other people subscribed to his meetups for... reasons. On the internet it is difficult to discern what is real here but I think most of us have seen enough pornography that it is obvious there is a demand for harm - sure this is legal pornography but this is something different and darker to the idealization of sexuality the feminists use as a foil - but it is an idealization.

> Largely, my take is how I wish others would address that particular challenge for me (ducks).

This is where I come to also. You might mean in jest - but I mean it seriously. It's not my job to solve another communities problems. It might be my job to get out of the way - but that's it.

I think there exist instances the endeavor for universally applicable policies under which you would want to live is a failed project.

It looks to me as if some parts of Chicago are informally monomachy - that is young men dueling over mates, power, money. I say informally in the sense the government could step in with soldiers and kill a lot of them - who I'm sure would go out of their way to get themselves killed - to restore a universal order. It is easier to let them kill themselves chaotically - I'm certain the police came to the conclusion if two assholes subtract each other from the system - who cares, nobody to blame but themselves.

Official recognition of an underpolicing policy with this intended affect will never happen because the Liberal (R+D) faction has a strong desire to not send in soldiers - admitting policy failure and also has a strong desire to punish those who don't conform to universal norms - so informal monomachy it becomes.

The honest answer might be formal monomachy - which was used to regulate some medieval societies and I feel it likely it would be instantly embraced by the culture to solve the problem within itself even as it would be declared immortality by Democrats and Republicans.

In China they are using Social Credit. As they see it - if you break the rules, they begin subtracting off your privileges. Western Liberals are correct this could be abused - no doubt - but are much more reluctant to admit that offering equality under law to all is using as cover by violent criminals.

In my country we used to have outlaws or those beyond the pale. The idea is there were people who broke the law but were still on board with the society. Then there were another category who broke the law but also rejected the society - and for these the protections of the law were removed. If they rejected the premise of the society - it was not economical to continue for the government to pretend they were citizens.

I don't want to claim I know the answers either - but I think this is the conversation we should be having. I seem to be in a minority of agreeing that the BLM sentiments are real but also that it's a problem they're going to have to fix themselves and by that I mean something much more than the nonsense of getting rid of the police or having black police officers. This is repeating the same process and ridiculous soul searching for why it doesn't work. This means you go deeper - and ask yourself if the laws should be the same.

This would be upsetting but it would present a clear choice. Opt into the Liberal Western society with its norms and rules - or don't and make a different choice - then live with this choice. It might have a better equilibrium or it could blow up - it's really not the responsibility of other Americans to convince blacks what road to take - it has to be their own or there is no agency. Agency means giving your citizens the ability to become ex-citizens - maybe.

America is a big space - you can cede some territory for separatists to break off into. I'm sure that sounds crazy to 90% of United States citizens but it's starting to sound less crazy than putting up with the threat of insurrections and everybody gaslighting each other.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response. I hear and appreciate both your points and also the obviously long and uncomfortable, reflective path it has taken for you to write them down so clearly. I will reread this for a long time to come. Please be well and reach out if you would like to talk further on any of these topics.