One of the problems with love thy neighbor as thyself is in imagining how to act onn it, we act on it from the position of where we are today. So, if we are very anxious about crime, loving our neighbor would be viewed as allowing him to have the same stash of guns we would want. We love others in the way we would wish to be loved, given our situation, our limited imagination of how others would want to be loved. It simply doesn’t allow for diverse ways one would imagine we need love.
Worse, though, is that it locks us into a worldview based on who we are. A more creative endeavor would be to imagine a scenario where we are not yet born and have no idea who we are in society. We could end up being anyone, from a homeless dude to a pedophile to the president. With no information on who we are and what we need, how might we interpret love your neighbor as yourself? What sort of society would best serve that goal? Without a reimagining of how things might be constructed from the ground up, love your neighbor as yourself is no different than saying, buy people gifts that you would like. Doing unto others what you would like done to you is a recipe for misunderstanding. We might not tolerate the pedophiles behavior, even if we turned out to be him, and would want to keep him in check. But is it really helpful to say love him as yourself? It’s just superficial and phony
