Do Unto Others What You Would Poem by gershon hepner

Do unto as you would
have other do to you, Hillel
declared. In order to feel good
about yourself, you have to tell
yourself that you are doing right,
but you can rationalize what’s wrong,
and fool yourself, if you are bright,
and others, although not for long,
and that’s the problem Hillel never
confronted, though extremely smart,
ignoring that when you are clever,
you navigate the morals chart
to make your morals seem most good
when really you’re hypocrite.
You do to others what you should
not do, once you’ve learned to acquit
yourself for deeds that you condemn
in others when they choose to do
to you as you would to them.
You rationalize yourr point of view,
and do unto all others what
you think all others should not do
to you, and Hillel thought was not
appropriate for goy or Jew,
not gentlemanly conduct or
conduct becoming to the rule
he said was golden to the core,
of all commandments the most cool,
but for all thing’s there’s a season,
a time for wrong as well as right.
You only need to find a reason,
to turn what’s black to lilywhite,
and being rational you can make
what’s unsound seem as though it sounds
as sound as Hillel, while you fake
your way on very rational grounds.

John Tierney (“Deep Down, We Can’t Fool Even Ourselves, ” NYT, July 1,2008) , describes how hypocrisy enables us to fool ourselves:
The more interesting question is how presidential candidates, and their supporters, turn into hypocrites. It has been demonstrated repeatedly in experiments that humans are remarkably sensitive to unfairness. We’ve survived as social animals because we are so good at spotting selfishness and punishing antisocial behavior. So how we do violate our own moral code? Does our gut instinct for self-preservation override our moral reasoning? Do we use our powers of rationality to override our moral instinct? “The question here, ” Dr. DeSteno said, “is whether we’re designed at heart to be fair or selfish.” To find out, he and Dr. Valdesolo brought more people into the lab and watched them selfishly assign themselves the easy task. Then, at the start of the subsequent questioning, some of these people were asked to memorize a list of numbers and retain it in their heads as they answered questions about the experiment and their actions. That little bit of extra mental exertion was enough to eliminate hypocrisy. These people judged their own actions just as harshly as others did. Their brains were apparently too busy to rationalize their selfishness, so they fell back on their intuitive feelings about fairness. “Hypocrisy is driven by mental processes over which we have volitional control, ” said Dr. Valdesolo, a psychologist at Amherst College. “Our gut seems to be equally sensitive to our own and others’ transgressions, suggesting that we just need to find ways to better translate our moral feelings into moral actions.” … If you can deceive even yourself into believing that you’re acting for the common good, you’ll have more energy and confidence to further your own interests — and your self-halo can persuade others to help you along. But as useful as hypocrisy can be, it’s apparently not quite as basic as the human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Your mind can justify double standards, it seems, but in your heart you know you're wrong.

7/1/08