This meme doesn’t just mean Christianity. You can add Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikkhism, Judaism, or Islam to the mix. At the core of each is a fundamental teaching so universal that it is called the ‘Golden Rule’ or the ‘Law of Reciprocity.’

Before I get too spiritual, how about a temporal note. On the economic front, we added 253,000 jobs last month. The overall unemployment rate fell to 3.4% while for Black’s it was an historic low of 4.7% while Hispanics had a rate of 4.4%. The rate for adult women was 3.1 %

Such historic numbers don’t happen by accident. The slow and steady Biden has passed the Infrastructure Act, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act among other initiatives designed to invest in workers. This is counter to the traditional Republican approach of giving the wealthy more money and hoping for the best. The outcome of that tactic is totally predictable. The rich get obscenely rich and the rest of us mere mortals struggle.

This is a form of reciprocity in a way. People vote for representatives they believe, or hope, will respond by considering their interests or at least don’t ignore them. Now, anyone who has done policy realizes that not all interests can be satisfied simultaneously. There are always winners and losers. However, good governance seeks a balance on this scale. When a narrow group, like the Uber wealthy under Republicans, are always preferred, that faith in governance is broken. The moral and fiscal rule of reciprocity is shattered.

On a more spiritual level, the ‘golden rule,’ or ‘law of reciprocity’ is so simple. All major religions enjoin us to treat others as we would like to be treated. Christ’s message (as passed down since we don’t know what he really said) was even stronger on these matters. He told us in many ways to reach out explicitly to those unlike ourselves. We must love those who look, behave, and believe differently than us. This is the one and only true commandment.

I don’t know what was in the minds of those who set down the early spiritual precepts, roughly in the 8th and 9th centuries for Islam, the 2nd and 3rd centuries for Christianity, and much earlier for Judaism. But their thoughts and sentiments are remarkably similar. It is as if they all had the same insight … we are all in this together and we damn well better get along.

Too bad many of the followers of each tradition lost their ways. They became obsessed with enforcing conformity and failed to listen or seek the prime mandate of their belief system. That mandate is remarkably simple, yet the most difficult of all to follow:

Love yourself and love others as you would yourself!

This departs from Republican orthodoxy. Love only yourself and to hell with everyone else! Think about this tomorrow.

NOTE: I’m doing this in my phone. Hopefully, it us readable.