Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My karate dojo is reading this book as a group to learn about compassion and to expand out training beyond punching and kicking. We plan to tackle a chapter a month, though I have read the whole book in keeping with the author’s suggestion and will go through each step along with the rest of the dojo.
It is a thought-provoking book that has led me to try to look at people and events in my world in a different way. I try to think about approaching situations from a position of compassion rather than aggression or dispassion.
The author of the book, Karen Armstrong, perhaps by design raises more questions than she answers. Compassion is never strictly defined. So, there are points in the book where compassion seems to be identical to politeness or doing a good deed. I don’t think this is exactly compassion. I think that there needs to be an element of commitment of one’s personal power, or resource to be in compassion.
There are aspects to the book that I think are interesting from a philosophical point of view, though I don’t know that they matter to the overall message.
First, she talks about Socratic dialogue being a compassionate tool and says that Socrates was compassionate with those he spoke with. Yet, Socrates was put to death as a result of how he treated others when speaking with them and dismantling their arguments. Anytus in “Meno” unlikely found Socrates compassionate.
Second, I don’t think that Armstrong gives Western civilization enough credit for Compassion. Compassionate organizations such as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and hundreds of others grew from the Western notion of the importance of the individual. I understand Armstrong’s desire to promote cross-cultural understanding, but I think she misses some important examples of compassion in that emphasis.
I have a few other quibbles (for instance, I think she takes an unjustified swipe at E.O. Wilson), but overall I think this is a worthwhile read for anyone who is interested in living a life that includes concern for other people across the planet and for those trying to develop a broader sense of the interconnectedness of people.
The Great Books Ten-Year Reading List 
Thanks for an interesting and informative review! As an anthropology graduate and Religious Studies teacher I’ve read one or two of Karen Armstrong’s other books, but I think I’m going to have to give this one a try too. I’m massively in favour of any cross-cultural/cross-faith approach to this sort of thing. A lot of contemporary world problems stem from the fact that, while we have split the atom etc, our approach to each other is still that of the hunter-gatherer. It’s got to change.