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It's part of reciprocal ethics ("ethics of reciprocity) that's a cornerstone of functional societies that value equality, empathy, compassion, human dignity and at least some degree of mutual courtesy and respect. Reciprocity is a major cornerstone of equality.
Examples:
What goes around, comes around.
Love thy neighbor.
Treat others as you'd like them to treat you.
Reciprocity decreases as social and political climates encourage cognitive and social disconnects. As the practice of reciprocity decreases, denigration and dehumanization can increase exponentially. In America, the decrease in reciprocity is very noticeable in how people treat causes, the homeless, neighbors and people that belong to different political camps or social circles. At least one book does a fine job exploring the need for more reciprocity in U.S. American culture is Robert D. Putnam's "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community".
Zi Gong asked, "Is there one word that may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not reciprocity such a word?" – Confucius
In Neopaganism too, notice a the emphasis on reciprocal ethics. Here the late ADF Arch Druid Isaac Bonewits (the man who coined many of the terms Pagandom now uses) extends showing courtesy and respect to the natural world (pets, plants, ecosystems, the rest of Mother Nature).
As understandings of different forms of love increase, it makes the Golden Rule more possible in practice. Those forms of love are agape (recognizing the divine in each person and the Universe), philios (recognizing the humanity in each other) and praxis (any action that expresses any type of love, compassion and the recognition of human worth, dignity).
Love is allowing barriers to (perhaps universal consciousness) fall away; it is at our core.
You could say we have four overlapping forms of love expressed in a bewildering and wide array.
Agape -- Agape offers the highest form of spiritual love; it recognizes the divine in each person and the Multiverse. One might say that it's part of (the fire of) universal consciousness/spirituality, comes from spirit and speaks to spirit, is not materialistic but is not divorced from matter that makes up the Multiverse. I'd like to think it's a great part of what fires up Indira's Net. Agape can excite philios.
Philios -- Philios is love that recognizes the humanity in each other, the love of 'Universal Brotherhood/Sisterhood,' the driving force behind hospitality, the love between family/group/community members, the fire behind many creative-collaborative efforts, the demonstrative cornerstone of egalitarianism. Philios flows from heart and spirit and speaks to heart and spirit. It can have various physical undertones, sexual and/or other, depending on the nature of the relationship and passions that drive it. For example, I'm an artist so I'd love to have passionate, creative relationships with other artists that would result in...art and social comment or change. The philios I have toward my husband, children and one of my exes is different in each case but it's the same in that it all has to do with recognizing the humanity in each other. Philios can excite eros.
Eros -- Eros is an intellectual form of love and may or may not overlap with the erotic (can overlap quite a bit since the human brain is the human's largest sex organ, as it were). Imagination can excite Eros.
Praxis -- Praxis is any action taken in any amount of love, not necessarily sexual but can be, can include moments of silence, prayer/magic, feeding the homeless, raising funds for causes and so on. Here we have our verb. Praxis is love practiced. It's orthopraxic (having to do with correct/well practices) rather than dogmatic, rigid, unmoved. Agape, philios and eros can all stir us to take action (praxis).
It seems to me that too many think of love in binary ways (for example, 'either it's romantic or cut them off') that don't fit all the ways we can love each other, our pets, planet Earth and beyond.
Financialization -- Most papers, articles, websites and books focus on the economic aspects of financialization but the truth is that it first spreads from the arts, agriculture, and other sectors and then translates into economic failures. Boiled down to its essence, financialization is all about putting power networking and making a buck first to such an extreme that it eventually both sabotages economic systems and ends up impacting every sector of society in a falling dominoes effect. Bad things happen when people lose sight of too much while so intently focusing on power and making money. They think themselves quite clever and create formulas to play markets, use or seed churches, control ideologies and wrench political systems to the point that leverage becomes the important thing rather than soundness and actual worth or demonstrable character. The spirit of it is myopic, greedy and power hungry. It's very needy and unbalanced. (Hint: That is not the type of power that nurtures equality. It will batter civil rights on strategically chosen fronts.)
We have a problem that goes far beyond which party is presently better for the U.S. (right now that would be the Democratic Party, because it's presently more bent on egalitarianism and dousing the "culture" war, but that hasn't always been the case).
We're dealing with corporatism. Our politicians are bought. Lobbyists often write huge portions of bills.
We're more importantly dealing with phenomena entrenched in financialization. We're taught to worship leverage and division, as opposed to reciprocity, to repeatedly fall into polarized debates and camps (commies vs. God-fearing, Conservatives vs. liberals, black vs. white, capitalists vs. socialists, this monotheism vs. that monotheism...). Everything gets too entirely based on the (often overly and oddly subsidized) business model, even our public schools. Financialization is all about putting placing leverage above all else -- "winning" become everything even if everyone looses.
It's first a cultural problem with some political elements (budget cuts just before and even more during Reagan's time in office) and begins in the arts, agriculture, and other sectors and eventually translates into economic failures in complex, convoluted ways. It spreads in and out of our two major parties and through different presidencies and becomes a political and economic engine of sorts, like a runaway steam engine. In the U.S. it's been oncoming for decades. It's not some sudden phenomenon that only began with some market bubbles bursting, such as the dot com thing. No.
It's not just our politicians that are loosing touch. It also started with us. The top 1 percent capitalized on it, of course.
Watch out. I'm a pompous, moody, uppity artist in her 50s who thinks she owns her own time, who thinks she can leave an informed comment on this blog or various forums and then go about her day without defending her every word and thought ad nauseum against what turns out to be absolutely idiotic "debate" about 99.98% of the time on most online forums. I hate time thieves like that.
We had the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall and barriers of race and religion in Nazi Germany and various other ethnic cleansing wars. Now people are putting up walls by way of uber polarized "debates" that aren'teffective, civil, or sufficiently on target and informative; they more depend on disinformation or prejudices. Most of it is about attacking your a supposed opposite in some sort of dualism that uses a lot of stinkin' thinkin' and badlogic and often involves little more than regurgitating what the pundits tell people to think and know. There's usually an absence of crucial context and background principles needed to inform and frame the topics.
In the face of such predominate and domineering trends in "debate," I claim the audacity to be the master of my days. That's right; I might not respond. Then again, I might. I enjoy my life. I like nice egalitarians, people interested in civil rights and various "pompous" opinionated creatives (and usually they're liberals...but not always). I prefer people who haven't lost their sense of connection with humanity or ubuntu.
I worded my comment in the above link the way I did after being routinely attacked in an uber polarized Conservatives vs. Libtards way. This is me, on the political compass:
This is where the Dali Lama is on the political compass.
True
