Russ, I'd just like to add a few things. While empathy is an extremely important moral, the golden rules is stupid as "the one moral," it's just incomplete. The obvious argument against it is that you need perspective to follow it, what a masochist wants, for instance, is based on a masochistic perspective. True empathy is very different from following th golden rule, and though masochist is an extreme example most people simply can't understand the position of other people, and doing unto them as you would want done unto yourself doesn't compute.
There's also justice to consider, just because someone doesn't want something doesn't mean they don't deserve it, and vice versa. I'm not talking about the death penalty, I think the death penalty is barbaric and keeps us from progressing as a civilization. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't want criminals to go to rehabilitational facilities (different from criminal colleges, which our prisons are) or drug addicts to go to drug rehab even if that's not what they want and it would suck for them to go.
Now, allow me a leech off other people's ideas, but I feel like the best way for someone to form a moral structure is though self exploration, not through following dogmas or guides. Though the golden rule will "work" for someone to be able to operate successfully as a human being without becoming Hitler or something, there's a lot more to ethics.
And, though empathy is extremely important, I'd like to add two vitues not included in the golden rule, but that I believe to be equally as important to character.
Bravery, it's very important to show courage, as a human, in order to operate as an ethical person. The fact is it requires to bravery to make the choice between what's right and what's easy. It requires bravery to correct injustice, it requires bravery to save lives. What these protest groups with their pointless protesting don't realize is that it's easy to protest, it requires ambition and follow through to make a successful one of those to happen, it requires very little courage at all... and hence it does very little to change anything. Back in Martin Luther King's era it was protests like when four black students ate at a white table and refused to stand up as the waitress called them things and dumped food on them and threw crap at them, along with several other white customers. Without balls nothing like that will get done, and you can't make a difference without balls.
Next, justice. It's fairness, it's not letting bad people get away with bad shit. Law is separate from justice, as law is oftenly injust, and the further we go into the future, the further this government, run by people that most of the planet disagree with, commit injustice... while still abiding the law. Justice is separate from revenge, but often mistaken as it. The difference between justice and revenge is justice requires empathy... looking past what people want to what they need. Justice is a strong calling all on it's own, and it's the one that survives the most illogically... it's the one that is sometimes impossibled to defend in a debate without a circular argument.
So there's my opinion.
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