The Golden Rule: do unto others as others would do unto you. finding and acting out of compassion. Something to live by in this day and age, when even religion has been hijacked. Scholar Karen Armstrong started a pretty interesting project after giving a talk at TED, dubbed the Charter of Compassion. The site for the charter is cutting-edge use of social media where you can not only review the charter, but see the transparent process in which it was put together. It wasn’t dictated to the masses by select religious clerics, it emerged as part of an online discussion where thousands of people all over the world submitted their commentaries. It recognized that religion is an inclusive force thus requiring a global conversation to help create something that is lasting and universal in the same breath. Making it more interesting is not only the use of social media to spread a charter of such universal appeal and importance, but using social media to allow people to document and share acts of compassion.
The problem with compassion is that its synthetic and removed from context. In reality compassion is almost always superseded by culture, ideology and even religion. So while Karen’s fluffy vision is sweet and all at the end of the day its just that …fluffy.
Let’s start applying this tomorrow on the roads!
she is very smart… we studied her several times. She used to be a nun if I am not mistaken. She has outstanding views about pre-islamic Arabia, basically claiming Islam came at a time where people where experiencing an emotional and spiritual vacuum (I refer here to the eve of Islam, not the entire era of pre-islamic arabia).