Ted Talk # 7 ( Choice)

I watched a video by Karen Armstrong. She is a religion historian and talked about the importance of implementing the golden rule "treat people how you would want to be treated." She said that without compassion for other people, our world will not be ok for the future generation. Personally I am very religious but not in the normal way. I have faith but I think that religions often bash eachother and don't follow the golden rule. Because you catholic your better then a Buddhist or because your Jewish your better then a christian. Religion made up the golden rule, but doesn't always follow it. I think that her view of the world and how we need to be compassionate for eachother not only once a day but everyday and all day. If we all went around not doing harm to people but good, would we have war? I think acceptance is a big part of this. We all want others to accept us for who we are but sometimes we are judgmental of others and don't accept them for who they are. She said that religious teaching must always lead to action. I completely agree with this. If people learn the golden rule, they have to use it. In school, church and sports, what we learn as a youth we have to go out and challenge what we have learned. She talked about how compassion requires an acute sense of intelligence not just feeling mushy inside. Those who have the ability to truly help people and not hurt them, these require intelligence and maturity that is far above just feeling love for everyone in the world.  She said we don't have to fall in love with eachother, we just have to be friends and all look at the same problems and the same goals and work as hard as we can until we are on the other side of the problem seeing the amazing result of our collaboration. I really enjoyed this ted talk, however i don't think she made a lot of points that would stick in my mind and her voice was very monotoned and annoying. She used her hands a lot and paced back and forth but it was obvious she was passionate about compassion and spreading the golden rule.