Disclaimer: I enjoy the work that I do and the people I do it with, and I support the primary mission of the company I work for. The following situation is described not to express a personal complaint I have with my employer, but as a real-life example of ideas that are currently assumed as truth in mainstream American business culture.
Human Resources
Some weeks ago I was sitting in a work meeting, one of several that happen each year to provide the employees a general update of the company's activity. Between presentations on technology initiatives and growth expectations given by various C-suite leaders and department directors was a short message from Human Resources. RESPECT was the biggest word on the screen. The presenter explained that it was important we respect each other in the workplace. Other high-level leadership, we were told, were known to restate this idea as "Don't be a jerk!" We were then told that we may have heard the maxim "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but there was a better version that the company embraced: "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them." At the end, we were walked through best practices to handle conflict with others, either by approaching the offender directly, or by contacting one of several other HR or leadership contacts for intervention. At the end of the presentation, everyone in the room smiled and nodded their head in agreement. Certainly, this message was just a common-sense policy for how we can work together.
Don't Feed the Ducks
Anytime I see a sign telling me not to do something, it reminds me that someone at some time did the very thing the sign commands not to do.1 A sign like DON'T FEED THE DUCKS is proof that someone fed the ducks and afterword, the people in charge decided that it wasn't the best idea. A sign like this isn't put up after the first incident, either. It's proof that so many people fed the ducks that a permanent reminder funded by taxpayer money had to be put in place for everyone to see. If that many people fed the ducks, we can surmise that for many people, feeding the ducks is not obviously a bad idea and may even seem like a good one. In short, a command not to do some action usually arises after many people did that action because it was not obviously bad, and possibly appeared neutral or good.
Similarly, I'm skeptical when I hear claims that simple exhortations like "Respect others" and "Don't be a jerk" are obvious by themselves. If they were, we wouldn't need the reminders in our company-wide meetings. Instead, I assume that such messages indicate that leaders have seen people repeatedly acting out behaviors that were determined to be disrespectful or jerkish, but not obviously so to the perpetrators. Hence, DON'T FEED THE DUCKS signs are brought out to remind everyone what ought to be done.
Hidden Under the Surface
Is this a problem? Can we take a simple message to respect others to heart and move on? I think the answer is...it's complicated. A chain of Reformed Christian thinkers2 in the back of my mind whisper the ever-relevant haunting question "By what standard?" We need to admit that DON'T FEED THE DUCKS leaves some questions unanswered. Are we prohibited from feeding any of them, or are we only allowed to feed them one at a time? Is the problem with the type of food we are might give them, or that we are the ones giving it? Is there some third party who we risk offending or disturbing should food be cast duckward from our hands? Respect? Jerks? What is the standard we are using to define each of these behaviors? Surely a business would have a robust set of definitions we can corporately refer to that clearly defines how we should interact with each other! But there is none3. To peer behind the signs of "Respect" and "Don't be a jerk" is to like standing at the edge of the still, dark pond, looking past the sign and wondering what else could lie under the surface that might explain such stark words.
The Golden Rule
Now, it's understandable that a sign at a park can't be totally comprehensive, complete with scientific citations on the necessity that urban fowl maintain food-chain independence from humans. However, something more could be said. What are some ways that the DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS sign, without too many more words, could include another message that evokes a clearer meaning regarding the ideal relationship with our finely feathered neighbors?
"Humans should eat human food. Ducks should eat duck food."
"Do you like it when ducks barge into your house and throw frogs and small fish at you?"
"Treat the ducks the way you want to be treated."
If that last one sounds familiar, it should. It's a version of the most famous ethical command ever to be uttered: "In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you...".4 This is a powerful statement because we are confronted with the fact that our impulses, whether throwing bread at ducks or acting around coworkers, are not always upright. We instinctively recognize that there are ways we are prone to acting toward others that we ourselves would not want to receive. As a child, it's great fun to run and play with your friends in the church sanctuary after the service is done. As an adult, you realize how terrifyingly close children come to colliding with a pregnant woman or a congregant carrying the full communion cup and taking them out at the knees. The Golden Rule given by Jesus Christ is powerful because it creates an imaginative horizon of mutually shared existence where we can assume enough similarity between ourselves and our neighbors that we can intuit common goods. It is an ethical maxim that assumes a fundamental unity to humanity.
"Do unto others" is not the extent of the command, though, and we don't give enough attention to the second part of the Jesus's statement. After giving the Golden Rule, he says "...for this is the Law and the Prophets."5 That means that we are supposed to import the entirety of what is contained in the Old Testament as the detailed explanation for how "Treat others the way you want to be treated" is possible and should be performed. God's Spirit-generated revelatory word explains to us that all humans have a shared origin and ground of being (ontology) because we are made by God; a unique design as humans made in God's image (anthropology); and a particular end that God is shaping history and humanity toward (teleology). From all these shared characteristics, God gives a law that demarcates how we are meant to interact with him and with each other righteously. Sin is in the backdrop as the historical reality that affects all people personally and corporately. Sin also conditions how God gives us his law, and in some sense what His law contains. Jesus says "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...and by the way, if you have any questions about who you are, who God is, what your problem is, what the solution is, and where it's all going, read your Bible."
The Platinum Idol
Contemporary secular advice is not like Jesus's. It doesn't give a comprehensive, public account of humanity, our problems, responsibilities, and future. Instead, I have sat in two workplace discussions where the Golden Rule was explicitly disavowed in favor of what is called the Platinum Rule: "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them." How does this translate into action?
Feed the ducks whatever they want.
At face value, this could make a kind of sense. "People are different," the argument goes. "What you like isn't what someone else likes. Introverts and extroverts exist. We all have different backgrounds..." The variations multiply. We are offered reader response ethics in which the only thing that matters to an ethical situation as how the receiver of an action feels about it. If we followed this dictum, we would all have a filing cabinet with folders for every person where we could store an ever-growing set of records about what things they would have us do to them. Instead of looking to God's word, which provides a unified vision for humanity as a whole and a specific set of instructions for human relations, the Platinum Rule makes each individual the law-giver. Every individual displaces God to become the definer of their own origin, the self-creator of their nature, and the one telling their own history and plotting their own future. Every relationship becomes one in which we must hope for a "divine word" from the other person to reveal how we ought to treat them, or risk the wrath of their judgement.
Hidden Under the Surface, pt. 2
No workplace can constructively perform its mission if "do whatever others want" is the real pattern of social engagement between employees. How does a workplace adjudicate disagreements? How can anyone be told no? True adherence to this law results in a state of anarchy that no business can support. In order to maintain the appearance of the Platinum Rule but achieve some sort of functional organization, there becomes in practice a rule behind the rule, a functional law that supersedes individual desires and which is imposed and enforced by a business's leadership. The enforcement cannot be too explicit, however, lest it break the illusion of the Platinum Rule ethic. The hidden rule must be soft, culturally enforced, and only explicitly exerted in private when the business perceives a risky interaction has occurred. The employees of the business will collectively agree that they are following the public rule, while tacitly being required to observe the hidden rule disguised as common sense or "what we all know about not being a jerk". In contrast, true ethical action will be done rightly when the wise employee discerns the nature of the rule beneath the rule, compares it to God's way as told in the Scriptures, and then acts towards his coworkers such that love for God and love of neighbor is achieved.
If you're not convinced, go ahead feed the ducks whatever they want to be fed. But if you find yourself in a small, dark room with two Parks and Recreation officers explaining to you that there was a small asterisk on the sign that referenced an obscure sub-paragraph of state law that prohibits feeding them that thing, don't be surprised.
Like many things on the internet, attribution of the originator of this notion is difficult. A search of “how often does something have to happen before a sign gets put up” yields many results about the sign permitting process and timelines in various municipalities. No doubt a fascinating process but not especially relevant to our discussion.
Cornelius Van Til, R.J. Rushdooney, and Douglas Wilson, specifically.
It's an annual requirement at my job to complete an ethics training module. The content of this module can be distilled to four basic points: don't sexually assault or harass people, don't discriminate against people based on gender or race, don't argue about politics, and don't accept kickbacks or bribes from outside parties who want you to influence the business to act in their favor. I think these things are all important ethical imperatives if properly grounded, but they're hardly comprehensive of what a business's ethical education should be, especially because these four items have a distinct smell of "avoiding lawsuits and government fines" about them.
Matthew 7:12, New American Standard Bible
Just as we would say "He explained the book from A to Z," Jesus's use of the phrase "the Law and the Prophets" indicates the first parts of the scripture to the last, and everything in between.