The Compassion Switch

When compassion is missing in our relationships with others, we are capable of horrific acts toward one another. The Compassion Switch shows how attempts at interpersonal control switch off our compassion. This leads otherwise "good" people to do horrific things. But at the same time the book shows us that we human beings can be much better than we think. The book traces control, on a community-wide basis, to the functioning of gossip as a way of keeping each other in line. This leads to horrific acts by the community itself toward "outsiders." This method of community control bleeds over into self-gossip by community members which expresses itself self-destructively as depression and willingness to hurt oneself. The book reveals how certain areas of modern psychology have been complicit in furthering the ideal of control and an ethics of self-blame. Persons who belong to and live in control groups, from small cliques to obedience-centered versions of their religions, feed on the notion of complete and absolute determinism, a view that is still present in the psychology of radical behaviorism. The book shows us how to walk away from a control oriented life and live more voluntarily and still maintain what it terms "good-enough freedom" along with "good-enough control."