The Golden Rule and Screaming About Squirrels

In the local park I occasionally come across a woman walking her dogs. Her method is to take them to a park, let them loose, and then scream "Squirrel!" at them so that the dogs can chase it up a tree. The screaming has an intense, shrieking, desperate nature, as though it is somehow vital that these dogs chase this particular squirrel. I bring this up because of my interest in how this woman thinks. A great interest of mine for twenty years has been how people think, it lead to my degree in psychology, my career in social work and presently explains my fascination with religion. But over the last few years my focus has changed. Having met an extremely diverse group of people in terms of how people think (it's a very interesting experience to explain to someone that they are delusional) I find myself doing a pretty good job of working out how people think. This means that I think I do a pretty good job of being able to predict future actions of people and outline how the individual got to that action. But what I have become interested in is what it feels like to think in particular ways.
I think humans have a certain level of empathy, a certain amount of capability in putting themselves in the position of someone else. This is the essense of the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have done unto you. Put yourself in the position of another, walk a mile in their shoes, and then treat them as you would want to be treated. But there's a problem with that. The other person is a different person in that situation. Empathy has an essential problem, that people are different. A better Golden Rule would be to do unto others as you think they would wish to be treated to the same level of effort as you would wish to be done unto you. Like most things in life the more accurate a statement, the onger it is, the more qualified it becomes, the more complex it becomes.
Try it for a moment. Think of someone you are not like, but you feel you understand how they tick. Now, think of them in a particular situation and try to imagine what they are thinking. Then try to imagine how they feel when they are thinking that. It's extremely difficult. The example I use is George W. Bush. I think he's essentially a decent person, he wants other people to be happy. I also think he's relatively smart. But I also think he's a lazy thinker, he doesn't think deeply about things, he doesn't ruminate on the pros and cons of a situation, he doesn't waffle. Liberty is good, so lets give people liberty. He doesn't ask what the people might actually want, or even consider that what they might want something different from him. I think George W. Bush is one of the least discriminating public figures I have ever seen, he thinks an impoverished muslim in Iraq has essentially the same views on life as himself. I's an interesting thought experiment, trying to feel what it is like to be a person who thinks differently than myself, and the way they think differently is by not thinking that people think differently.