I've written before on my admiration for The Golden Rule.  I consider
it to be the core of my values, the basic premise from which everything
else is derived.  What more, I propose that a belief in anything else
as an addendum or prerequisite is at best superfluous, and at worst a
digression.  That said, I wont deny that it does present it's own
challenges.  In fact, if I were perfectly honest, I would admit that my
interpretation of the rule distills the popular "Do unto other as you
would have them to do unto you" down to a simple "Don't be a hypocrite".

Perhaps this in recognition of the rules major weakness:  an absence of proper feedback which renders strict adherents as patsies to those who would take advantage of them.  Enter the brilliant Carl Sagan and his essay
(Warning:  PDF) on the topic.  I can't improve on the original, which I heartily suggest you peruse, but I will condense it for those to lazy to do so.

Carl has a wonderful theory that The Golden Rule is not the
best creed to follow, at least from the viewpoint of actually
encouraging good behavior in others.  "Do unto others before the do
unto you" is one popular variation, but that leads to a vicious circle
of preemptive retribution (I just made that up).  There is also "Do not
do unto others what you would not have them do unto you", which is
actually closer to what I hold to than any other rule, but it puts one
at a disadvantage with it becomes necessary to dissuade certain
behaviors.  And finally, there is, "Suck up to those above you, and
abuse those below", also called "The Weasel Rule", which is probably
how most people do it.

Carl, however, used the scientific method to come up with a better creed, which he called "The Tit-for-Tat Rule".  The basic idea here is that you "Cooperate with others first, then do unto them as they do unto you."  The ran it through various tests, essentially cooperative games modeled on the venerable "Prisoner's Dilemma", where pay-offs vary based upon whether or not you and the other players betray each other.  A player using the
"Tit-for-Tat" rule would cooperate in the first round then, in every
subsequent round, do exactly what their opponent did in the previous
round.  If their opponent betrayed them, they were betrayed in turn. 
If their opponent cooperated, then they received cooperation.  What
they found was very intriguing:  Regardless of which gambit the
opponent used, and how many times they changed it, a player who
relentlessly adhered to the Tit-for-Tat Rule would always eventually
win.

I'm very enamored with the simplicity of the rule.  Make the first move.  Do the right thing.  But don't be a fool about it.

Now, those are words to live by!