The Real Golden Rule

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Why is it that we, humans, seek to follow the “golden rule”? We are told to “treat others the way you want to be treated”, but is this really the way to get ahead in life? The simple foundation of the golden rule is a key concept in most major religions around the world. In an ideal society, everyone would love, speak nothing but the truth, and look out for his or her neighbor. Cheating, stealing, and killing would be non-existent threats. However, as we look with a keen eye at the actual communities around us, we discover the hard truth, one that merely has an appearance of gold. In reality, we follow another rule: “gain power, even if it entails mistreating others”. It is a hard truth to learn that men are not always honest, but it is even more difficult to discover that those who lead our societies are not the spitting image of perfection. We wish to instigate leaders that possess virtuous qualities yet; we live in a world where men do not always follow such honorable rules. Niccolo Machiavelli, a former unorthodox diplomat from Florence, introduced the necessity for amoral leaders in his pamphlet: The Prince. William Shakespeare, on the other hand, portrayed accurate examples of leaders struggling with the art of politics in his play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Rulers such as Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus, Mark Antony, and Caius Cassius underwent the challenges of leading with many different approaches including: love, fear, shrewdness, generosity, miserliness. Although the human conscience may struggle against the ideas put forth in The Prince, the actions of the commonly known leaders in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar reveal the ultimate necessity for Machiavellian rule in society.

Being a leader requires the ...

... middle of paper ...

...r futures. We can choose to come into power, we can choose how rule, we can choose who to follow. Every human has two paths they can take in their lives: the road of righteousness and the road to glory. We must decide where our own path lies, for it is very rare that the two roads of power and of compassion will intertwine together. Which one will you choose?

Works Cited

Constitutional Rights Foundation. “Bill of Rights in Action”. 10 Mar. 2011. Class Handout.

Concordia International School, Shanghai, China.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. “Niccolo Machiavelli: Selections from The Prince”. 10 Mar. 2011. Class

Handout. Concordia International School, Shanghai, China.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine.

New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1992. Print.

Fears, J. R., perf. “Lect. 24 Machaivelli, The Prince”. MP3.

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