Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Official Report 927KB pdf

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our first item of business is time for reflection, for which our leader is Gordon MacRae, the chief executive of the Humanist Society Scotland.

Presiding Officer and members of the Scottish Parliament, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

I quote:

“Do not unto another that you would not have him do unto you. Thou needest this law alone. It is the foundation of all the rest.”

That was the teaching of Confucius in 500 BC. From the Greek philosophers of the following 400 years, to first nation thinkers in Australia, right up to the Abrahamic religions of more recent years, this—the golden rule—has prevailed.

I find it fascinating that, wherever we go on the planet, that common basic ethic of reciprocity manifests itself in nearly every human society. Communities that have never seen people with a different colour of skin, tribes and clans separated by vast mountains and dark oceans, people of faith and of none—each arrived at the same conclusion that you should treat others how you want to be treated.

The golden rule inspires me as a humanist because it is universal, because it is the product of lived human experiences over many millennia and because it requires me to think about others and their feelings. The golden rule is the clear default position for moral decision making the world over. It is shared by all and owned by no one; it is truly universal.

That is also what inspires me about this place. You all share a universal, mutual objective—no matter the colour of your rosette—to make life better for the people who put you here. You have the opportunity to shape lives, to create change and to recast society for the better. You may pull in different directions, but you each share a vision that we can build a better society.

Of course, that vision is best forged in the heat of debate. Politics should be about difference and the battle of ideas, but you, the politicians, can be about what unites us. You can inspire change by appealing to our common good.

Confucius held up the golden rule as the only law that anyone ever truly needed. Now, things really would get quiet in here if that were the case, but it can be the foundation for how our laws are approached.

There are nearly as many versions of the golden rule as there are societies in the world. I hope that you will find the one that speaks most strongly to you. I find that the humanist perspective does it for me: “One world, one life, one humanity.”