The Lithium Rule: Do Unto The Others Yet To Be Born...

"Do Unto The Others Yet To Be Born As You Wish Your Ancesters Would Have Done For You"

I have finally gotten my motto. This is a philosophy I landed upon as a teenager - to see the world from the vantage point of future children I'll never meet.

Let's label this the "Lithium Rule"... Since if it isn't searchable, it hasn't been labelled as of yet. It helps that I misspelled "Ancestors", of course.

"Do unto the others yet to be born as you wish your ancestors would have done unto you"

Surely I'm not the first one to come up with this?  But Google suggests I may be the first to publish it online (which I'm quite aware isn't all 8 billion of us with that privilege... and also this is in English). I searched it both ways, done for you or done unto you... first dibs. It is...

The Lithium Rule.

Do not do to future generations that which you wouldn't want previous generations to do to ours.

Future yet to be born children are innocent, and we are impacting the world, and consuming its resources, in ways that will affect them - perhaps gravely. That was my focus, it's my religion if you will, and it's why I'm conservative about mining and liberal about recycling.

My firstborn twins... 1996. I was thinking about them in 1978, when I became a recycler.

The"Golden Rule", to do unto others as you would have others do unto you, I was raised to believe was the most important rule to follow in my lifetime (along with "be true to thine own self, thanks to Great Grandma Minnie Freeland).

My parents were the first of their families - multi generations - to get college degrees (Ph.D dad, Journalism BA History, MA mom, German). They were able to give the Golden Rule its first international perspective, telling me that it's not unique to Christianity, that it is in most cultures, but that in most cultures it's in a negative - do NOT do unto others something you would NOT want them to do unto you. They told me it actually works better than the Christian English version.

"Do not do unto the others yet to be born something you would not wish your ancestors would have done unto you"

That "broader view" of the "most important directive" perhaps set the ball rolling for me to identify "others" not as my contemporaries, not of my neighbors, not of my peers, but of people I cannot claim to really know personally. The "Lithium Rule" specifies others to be children of the future, yet to be born, for whom my personal reputation will be meaningless dust.

There's a double nurture perspective as well.

"Do unto the others yet to be born as you wish your they would do unto your children"

There's a lot of other ground that could be covered here. If the Golden Rule is temporally fixed upon the living, not recognizing our deeds have effects on future generations, there's room for other derivatives.

The Indium Rule might be "Do Unto Other Species As You Would Have Other Species Do Unto You."

When Ancestors is spelled correctly, by the way, the top Google result is a letter from Abigail Adams, wife of "founding father" John Adams.