I read this piece of work by Jung a long while back

It was a meditation on the injunction to treat your neighbor as

As you would like to be treated

And what Jung pointed out which I really liked

Was that wasn′t an injunction to be nice to other people

It was an invitation to reciprocity

It was something like this, it's like

You should figure out how you would like to be treated

Like you were taking care of yourself, not how you would like people to respond to you

It′s more important than that

It's like imagine you had a child, that you really cared for

And someone said "Well, people will treat this child exactly like you want them to

But you have to figure out what that is"

And so then you'd have to sit down for like a month and you′d think

Okay well, how do you want your child to be treated?

You don′t want everyone to just be nice to him, you know?

You want people to challenge him

And you want people to discipline him

And you want people to tell him when he's wrong

It′s like you don't just want everyone to be nice

That′s-that's pathetic

It′s pathetic

There's-there's no challenge in that

There′s-there′s no challenge in that

Human beings are self-conscious

And we know about our limitations

And we know about our weaknesses

And so, we can have contempt for human beings in general

Because you know, we're just flawed and breakable and all of that

But we know ourselves better than we know everyone else

And so

You have a very acute sense of how you′re not up to scratch

And so that leads naturally to a sort of self-contentious attitude

People are more likely to give prescription medication to their pets than to take them themselves

Imagine someone that you treat well, that you love

And try to treat yourself that way

You go to detach from yourself there

You got to think, okay well

I'm a person among other people

And I deserve at least as much respect

As a person among other people

I should be trying to help myself across time

And instead of being self-contemptuous and self-destructive

I need to take care of myself

As if I′m potentially valuable

And to lay out my life that way

It's hard for people

They don′t take care of themselves as well as they should

Take care of your room

Take care of your things

It's like, have some respect for yourself as a miraculous being

Because that is actually what you are

There is a lot of potential within you

You're necessary more than you think to the unfolding of things

That′s the thing about being an individual

It′s the thing that western civilization has always recognized

That as an individual you have a light that you have to bring into the world

And that if you don't bring it into the world the world is a dimmer place

And that′s a bad thing because when the world is a dim place it can get very, very, very dark