The Charter for Compassion

I could quibble. "Charter for Compassion" is a phrase that doesn't quite sing, and I think they've got the wrong word: empathy rather than compassion is what they really seem to be going for. But I like what they're going for, so to hell with the quibbling.

Well okay, a little quibbling. The OED defines compassion as "sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others," while it defines empathy as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." Certainly they're similar, but judging by Karen Armstrong's description of the Charter's purpose, empathy, which has a broader reach than sympathy, seems the more apt:

Compassion doesn’t mean feeling sorry for people. It doesn’t mean pity. It means putting yourself in the position of the other, learning about the other, learning what’s motivating the other, learning about their grievances...

(Ayn Rand, by the way, would probably think this is all a crock. But Ayn Rand can--well, I've been down that road already.)

In 2005 I wrote a long entry here that noted my lifelong belief that our enemies are not our enemies. There seems to be something in the way I'm made, or the way I was raised, or both, that makes me distrust propaganda and dogma--and it's probably the same thing that made me an actor, that makes me a writer. After all, the first job of an actor, of a writer, is to try his/her damnedest to get inside someone else's skin, to understand someone Other and then relay that understanding to an audience.

Here's a story that Laurence Olivier used to tell. He was playing Sergius in Shaw's Arms and the Man, and he hated the character. So one night he's walking somewhere with the director Ken Tynan, and said what he thought of Sergius. "A rotten little shit," or some such language. Tynan immediately said back to him, "Well if you don't like the man you'll never be able to play him well, will you?" Which stopped Olivier cold--and made him a better actor.

So as soon as I heard Ms. Armstrong on Bill Moyers's show, talking about compassion, and the golden rule, and the audacious idea of crafting a document extolling these virtues on a global scale, trying to reinsert into the human conversation something that should have been there all along, I immediately responded. My heart sang, and I even found myself, for just a moment, thinking that maybe I could get along with Ayn Rand after all if I would just make the effort.

The golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I mean come on. What else is there?