Michael Schur’s fun book of moral philosophy, How to Be Perfect, ends with a meditation on what is one of the toughest jobs for even the wisest and best of us: how to pass the important lessons of life on to our kids.
This passage captures perfectly what those lessons are: You are people on earth. You are not alone here, and that means you owe the other people on earth certain things. What you owe them, more or less, is to live by rules they wouldn’t reject as unfair (assuming they’re decent, reasonable people).
He has a great little exercise for his kids to remember too. As you go through life and are thinking about doing something, he says, ask if your brother or sister would think it was a good idea. Then keep going, and ask if a friend would think it was a good idea, or a teacher, even a kid you don’t like but think is smart. Explaining Kant’s categorical imperative to a five-year- old, ask, “Would it be okay if everyone did this? What would the world be like if every single person were allowed to do whatever I’m about to do?”
The way to raise decent and kind human beings is to teach them how their actions affect other people, what their obligations to other people are. You don’t have to be a philosopher to pull that off . . . just a good and decent person yourself.