Humans need to read to feel more empathy with others.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

What a load. Correlation does not equal causation; there's no particular reason to assume that a drop off in "empathy" has anything to do with internet use or any of the other usual boogeymen of modern society.

Yeah... like a lawyer knows anything about empathy.

[Porsche33]

Look at what he quoted, that says it all

[TechnoCat]

Originally Posted by Scott Nielsen

But that is what empathy means. It mustn't be confused by equating it to sympathy.

I completely agree with you. My phrasing was clumsy. What I meant was that in today's overly-PC hyper-sensitive world, "empathy" is used as a synonym for sympathy, which in turn is used as a call for social justice, which in turn is now a synonym for confiscatory socialism.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Yeah... like a lawyer knows anything about empathy.

Lawyers know all about empathy, it would be a real hindrance to be a lawyer without a well developed sense of empathy. Sympathy on the other hand...

[leebase]

If humans are hard wired to read, why do so few people read after/outside of school?

And does reading Mien Kampf, jihadist propaganda, right wing books...promote empathy?

Lee

[TechnoCat]

Originally Posted by leebase

And does reading Mien Kampf, jihadist propaganda, right wing books...promote empathy?

No idea of the first two, but I suspect "right wing" books would be more empathetic than "left wing" books. After all, the former try to get you to sympathize with the person who worked hard for what they have, only to have the government seize it, while the latter try to villify anyone who has accumulated resources regardless of means, including by working or by their parents working.

Incidentally, Mien Kampf was left-wing, not right-wing, also. Hitler demonized bankers, attacked big business, hated the Jews... and was primarily about the "idea" that the masses could be galvanized into action via radical thinking, rather like the Occupy/99% group.

The real irony? I'm neither right-wing nor conservative. I volunteer at prisons, coached special olympics for over a decade, did not vote Republican in 2008 and give lots of money to conservation. But I'm further away from a redistributionist, males-are-evil, anti-business left wing. Now, if you want to discuss the middle...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Catlady

My gut reaction is that it's content that matters more than form; like Mr. Jordan, I can more readily point to movies and TV shows that shifted my worldview, rather than books, though I have always loved to read.

This. Stories (whether reality or fiction) can influence us. And yes our brains "feel" it as we read or watch or listen. This is who we are.

[kennyc]

Wait a minute.....that article is from LAST YEAR!

[DiapDealer]

I really can't relate to any of this. It's like I don't know where the article or any of you are coming from. At all.

[leebase]

I wasn't suggesting that the right or the left was more empathetic.....but that just because someone reads does not mean the material is prone to teach empathy. The article is ludicrous.

Lee

[Kevin8or]

Originally Posted by leebase

If humans are hard wired to read [...]

We're not. We've had writing for, what, 5,000 years? Less than 10,000 anyway. (Even during this brief time, most of humanity has been illiterate.)

[SeaKing]

I have been studying the idea that
"Humans need to read to feel more empathy with others."

I don't know. I have been thinking about this a lot. I am using a life of experiences to measure against. 3 plus wives, many "close" friends. I think that what humans need is someone to talk to, that will always be there, that will tell us what we need to know in a pleasant non-condescending way.

I think the new iPhone technology fits that bill perfectly. I can see that voice Srii? being put on all the phones, on all the tablets, on all the laptops. On the TVs too. Then humans won't need each other. We will all be self contained with ourselves and our own special "voice" on our device.

Now if Srii can bring out some videos like Kendra, Pamela, or Jenny, that will be even nicer. We can watch her while we talk to her. I get a warm feeling when I think of it.

[morriss003]

"knowledge does not equal altruism" Is this from Julian May?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by leebase

If humans are hard wired to read, why do so few people read after/outside of school?

I wondered about your phrase "so few," so I googled for statistics on the percentage of book readers. And what I found is that the statistics are all over the place.

According to one link, 27 percent of Americans "did not read a single book for pleasure in 2007." This of course implies that 63 percent read at least one book for pleasure, with others presumably reading books for business reasons, and others doing a lot of newspaper reading. Looks to me like a nation of readers.

At the other extreme is the claim that 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college (raising the question of why the author thinks they read books when in college).

As for the trend, I can't find anything long term. According to this link, reading of fiction and poetry declined about twenty percent from 1982 to 2002. Before then? After then? Who knows? And was there a compensating change in non-fiction reading?

My personal gut feeling, which I know counts for nothing, is that the big trend is shift from newspaper to book reading. In as much as most newspapers try to be objective in news columns and to present a broad range of views on the editorial pages, and in as much as a lot of non-fiction bestsellers have an ax to grind, this isn't so good.

[pastanley]

Reading does not promote liberalism. Reading promotes intellectualism.