There’s an interview with Karen Armstrong in this weeks NY Times Magazine.

It’s quite an interesting interview; despite the fact that the interviewer comes across as a total prig, Karen Armstrong holds her own:

Could you feel compassion for someone who wrote a negative review of one of your books?

I spent so many years as an abject failure that if I get a good review, I am surprised. I didn’t get anywhere near success until I was 50 years old.

Perhaps you should have given more thought to the biblical belief in an eye-for-an-eye-style revenge?

An eye for an eye is about limiting vengeance. You can only take an eye out for an eye; you may not kill someone for knocking out your eye. It means restraining tribal violence, and it is in the Koran.

That’s fascinating, but I still find your emphasis on compassion simplistic. We know from Freud that all true achievement derives from selfishness. Who cares if Michelangelo was nice to his next-door neighbors?

Religions are not dealing with geniuses. They are dealing with ordinary people.