As a child I was taught to "love others as yourself" but doesn't the whole concept of "other" immediately create a mental boundary between yourself and the "other". Maybe it should be "love ourselves as ourself".
In his 1981 book called No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth, Ken Wilber did much to explore how we can progress beyond the artificially constructed boundaries that we are taught through our education and culture to conceive.
Perhaps what we need is a transition from Us & Them thinking to Us & Ourselves thinking. We need to extend this concept of "ourself" to include our whole environment and everything in it. When trees are no longer something that grow "outside", somewhere in the country which is "outside" the city etc would we take more care with them. When our "enemies" are part of "ourself" do we extend compassion to them, reflect on our behaviours and try to root-out the injustices in society? While we continue to treat things, people, plants and animals as separate to ourselves will we unconsciously undermine our good intent towards "others"
just musing...
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