I wanted to follow up on the post from two days ago. One issue with partiality—an unfair bias for or against someone—is that it clearly goes against the ethical standard of treating others the way we would want to be treated.
If each of us were to treat others based on how we would want them to treat us, there would be no place for partiality. Partiality is often driven by fear or greed, things that most of us do not want affecting people’s response toward us. Rather, most (if not all) of us would want to be treated honestly and graciously. Even if someone disagrees with us, we want to know that we’ve been heard and understood, and not judged based on external factors that we have no control over.
And it’s these kind of responses that the golden rule pushes us to. If we really try to treat others the way we want to be treated, we would not be making decisions out of fear, greed, or selfishness, but would aim to act graciously, while at the same time seeking justice and truth. When this happens, partiality starts to wither—it no longer has a place to put down roots.