A sense of otherness
You are to you as I am to me. The things I see and do are as real to me as the things you see and do are to you. My pain is as painful as yours. My joy is as joyful as yours.
In morals, it is by means of the method of shu that we can hope to be able to practice benevolence, and shu consists in using ourselves as an analogy to find out about the likes and dislikes of other human beings.1
. . . treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors. And whenever it strikes you how much power you have over your slave, let it also strike you that your own master has just as much power over you.2
. . .if a thing is in your interest it is also in my own interest. Otherwise, if any matter that affects you is no concern of mine, I am not a friend. Friendship creates a community of interest between us in everything. We have neither successes nor setbacks as individuals; our lives have a common end. No one can lead a happy life if he thinks only of himself and turns everything to his own purposes. You should live for the other person if you wish to live for yourself.3
Living acutely
One person lives as acutely as the next person. As much as you can feel pain, so can the next person. As much as you feel anything, so can they. The realness that life demonstrates in your movie vision is the same realness other people sense for their movies. If you damage someone else, it hurts them as much as it would hurt you if some person else damaged you.
This is the foundation for the Confucian Golden Rule: "Do not do unto others those things which you would not wish to have done to you."
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1 Confucius. The Analects. Translation and introduction by D. C. Lau. Harmondsworth,. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1979.
2 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 93.
3 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 96.
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