I believe that it is in the selfish interest of all of mankind to choose to live in accordance with the Golden Rule. Basically, we cannot enjoy large accumulations of wealth and power unless we all agree to cooperate with one another and live in accordance with some set of civilized rules. And millennia of human experience has shown us that the only good choice for a supreme rule of human conduct is for each of us to choose to abide by the Golden Rule. The beginnings of the Golden Rule are found in the bond we feel for members of our own family. And all of our Culture, and all of our Civilization, is nothing more nor less than a common bond which we should feel with each person who is part of the sum-total of our fellow mankind.
Mankind is the first animal to develop a real sense of time .
Thus, mankind does not follow some deeply rooted instinct in seeking to build wealth and comfort for the future. We seek to build our wealth over a period of generations . And in fact, when we seek to train our children to behave morally, we are seeking to be such an ancestor of our descendants. In an earlier chapter, I cited the scientific studies which tended to show that all men alive today are each descended from one man who lived roughly 150,000 to 250,000 years ago, while other studies have tended to show that all women alive today are likewise descended from a single woman who lived roughly that same amount of time in our past. To the extent which this is later proven to be explicitly true, then it is obvious that we are all cousins of each other, with the only open question being the degree of the relationship.