Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong

Author:Karen Armstrong
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Social Science, Philanthropy & Charity, Religion, Spirituality, Self-Help, Twelve-Step Programs
ISBN: 9780307595591
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE SEVENTH STEP

How Little We Know

Quite early in my career, I was struck by a footnote in a book referring to the “science of compassion” that should characterize the work of a religious historian. This was not science in the sense of physics or chemistry, but a method of acquiring “knowledge” (Latin: scientia) by entering in a scholarly, empathetic way into the historical period that is being researched. Some of the religious practices of the past may sound bizarre to modern ears, but the historian has to “empty” herself of her own post-Enlightenment presuppositions, leave her twentieth-century self behind, and enter wholeheartedly into the viewpoint of a world that is very different from her own. A religious historian must not “substitute his own or his readers’ conventions for the original,” the author explained; rather, he should “broaden his perspective so that it can make place for the other.” He must not cease interrogating his material until “he has driven his understanding to the point where he has an immediate human grasp of what a given position meant” and, with this empathetic understanding of the context, “could feel himself doing the same.”1

I was at once impressed by the phrase “make place for the other.” When I tried to put this directive into practice in my studies, I found that it entirely changed my conception of religion. Hitherto I had tended to project my twentieth-century assumptions onto the spiritualities of the past, and not surprisingly, many had seemed absurd. But when I tried to “broaden” my perspective in this disciplined and empathetic way, they gradually began to make sense.2 As this attitude became habitual (I was practicing it at my desk for several hours every day), I began to notice how seldom we “make place for the other” in social interaction. All too often people impose their own experience and beliefs on acquaintances and events, making hurtful, inaccurate, and dismissive snap judgments, not only about individuals but about whole cultures. It often becomes clear, when questioned more closely, that their actual knowledge of the topic under discussion could comfortably be contained on a small postcard. Western society is highly opinionated. Our airwaves are clogged with talk shows, phone-ins, and debates in which people are encouraged to express their views on a wide variety of subjects. This freedom of speech is precious, of course, but do we always know what we are talking about?

The immense achievements of modern science can lead us to believe that we are steadily pushing back the frontiers of ignorance and will soon lay bare the last secrets of the universe. Science is by its very nature progressive: it continually breaks new ground, and once a theory is disproved and surpassed, it is of only antiquarian interest. But the knowledge we acquire through the humanities and the arts does not advance in this way. Here we keep on asking the same questions—What is happiness? What is truth? How do we live with our mortality?—and rarely arrive at a definitive answer, because there are no definitive answers to these perennial problems.

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