Reading, to me, is the best method to learn empathy. We all read differently, in our own headspace, but then need to distill that view through the godhead of a fictional character. Movies and TV can't touch that slow drip of mindcopy a book provides. TV we witness, books we live alongside. Often I'm stuck in the personality of a book for weeks at a time, and it's impossible for the experience not to leave a footprint.
Happiness I've found easiest to achieve with that empathy. Understand those around you and know your place in the world and what is and is not possible to change. Being malleable in a group while still retaining a sense of self provides a way to travel and adapt in whatever situation you find. Only books provided me with enough experience to "know" myself and how I'd react in certain scenarios.
I don't think it matters much what you read. Whatever challenges you and gets you to see the world slightly askew.
Books all some from a much wider range of authors than things like TV. Many authors write about what they know and there are authors from all historical times, and all cultures (current or historical) - as well as imagined ones, of course. I think a strength of books is that they are more likely to require you to adjust to the point of view of the author or the characters, rather adjusting the characters to be easy for you to identify with. That builds more empathy.
This came up recently on HN, in terms of "kinds of memory" - there are different forms of memory, and we have pretty good evidence that some of them persist regardless of conscious recall. Rest assured that even if you have poor recall of them they continue to shape who you are and how you behave.
Oh yes. Books like Primo Levi “If This Is a Man” are good to read. Also some can you into deep depression… it’s important to be careful to let the door to your mind opened to anything.
I get zero empathy from fiction. Never think "Oh, this guy I met must feel like Atticus Finch" or "So sad, it's like The Grapes of Wrath." I get empathy from reading real people on Reddit saying "you know what's tough about being a waiter/chemist/influencer?" because they explain how real people think.
Empathy may not be the right term for this, but I've noticed recently times of emotional resonance with some characters/stories. One recent example that I particularly noticed this with was actually a Harry Potter fan fiction. It was fairly well written, but you know, not exactly fine literature. But I noticed how activated my emotions were getting reading those stories, the anger coming up about how the character was being treated, the sense of righteousness in her response to the circumstances and people around her.
I'm not sure if that helped me understand other people better, but I think it may have helped me understand myself a little better. Get a little more in touch with my emotions about parts of my own life. A little catharsis.
And this is not the point, but I think that getting in touch with my own feelings more probably does lead to more empathy for me. I've definitely noticed that when I feel more compassion for myself, I often also notice an increased sense of compassion for others who I perceive similarly.
I assume anything I read on reddit at this point is AI written click bait, so giant grains of salt on any personal anecdote probably gives me the opposite reaction.
A mother cat teaches her kittens to hunt by demonstrating it on a dead mouse. Fiction works the same way: by showing it on a dummy. In real life things are small and overlapped. Fiction makes them big and separate. Once you've seen it big and separate, you can recognize it small and overlapped.
I spent so many hours reading books as a child and feel that my world is larger and richer for it. But even so I'd like to go back and whisper in my little ear, put down the book for a while and go outside and read the world with every sense and then write on it with every tool you can find or make. I love books but have hidden in them as much as built on them. All good things can be abused.
Perhaps I was just lucky but I did both. In my primary school years I spent the long summer days of the long summer holiday tramping the fields, building dams in streams, catching newts, frogs, tiny fish in my hands, getting muddy to the eyeballs, in the evenings I read everything I could lay my hands on. At breakfast I read the back of the cereal packet if nothing else was available.
Reading is widely, massively promoted in schools, for all the right intentions (it really is a very important and enriching foundational skill), but to such an overwhelming extent that we sometimes forget that reading is a form of consumption, not a truly unalloyed good. The art of consumption - whether media, food, sex, resources, or otherwise - is in consuming the right amount of the right stuff.
I have seen that some activities tire you out, while others do not.
Reading, slowly but steadily, tires me. I might then need to doze off for a few minutes to resume.
Certain other activities, on the other hand, keeps me awake, like mindless browsing, programming (especially at the beginning of a project), OS installation, and even (please do not laugh at this) filing taxes.
Why is it so? (This question in my mind has been long unanswered, so any inputs or suggestions are welcome).
I agree with your initial assertion and would note that things you mentioned seem more "active" than reading. You're more engaged with the activity than just flipping pages.
I've read a lot of stuff in life (like you, I'm sure), but it's still rare that I'd make it through more than a few pages of something without nodding off.
Even with books that I couldn't put down, I'd only make it through a chapter or two before calling it for the day; I need more engagement in my life, so don't feel alone if that's the same for you.
Mindless browsing is one of the lowest work activities, but the influx of information is highly rewarding for the brain. That's why it's so addicting. Programming and OS installation are more work, but there is direct progress. Filing taxes is just work, but at again it's a very direct way to feel productive. All of these activities are immediately rewarding.
Reading on the other hand requires a lot of concentration, without much immediate reward. And I think the ratio here is highly subjective for most people.
Thank you! I have seen that I read the last chapters with increased focus and at times rush (while trying not to skim) through. Finishing the book must be perceived as a reward by the brain, unlike completion of a page or a chapter or even a section.
Doesn't it depend on the book? Some captivating "hard to put down" detective could work. I agree on thought provoking books that they can be tiring (but worth it of course).
Won’t even pretend to have read the article, but I’ll recommend the last book to really make me existentially happy and which helped me out of a bout of depression: The Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem. If you liked Gödel, Escher, Bach then I suspect you’ll enjoy it. It’s whimsical but quite deep.
Interesting, I loved the cyberiad, but it made me sad and angsty while still being fun. I believe this is true for a lot of SF, the same thing can be read as disheartening or encouraging.
> "In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks."
Wow.
I have thought about this, too. It has helped me understand and empathize with people loving and embracing Gods.
It is common to love Harry Potter even if he doesn’t exist. If some people starts loving a God based on scriptures, even if that God doesn’t exist in the physical plane, the love isn’t non-existent. It might be pure, too. I am Indian, and we have rich mythologies somewhat like the Greeks and the Nords. And, I felt that if people begins to love physically non-existent being, that love might help in tough times, give people peace, etc.
I think there is a difference though. For most people love of God assumes the existence of God. Its far more important than any feelings about a fictional character can be.
I understand your point, of course, I just want to clarify that there are important differences too.
Love of books themselves gives people help and peace too - it is a sort of healthy escape. You can immerse yourself in a book. I suppose books are like religious comfort in that sense.
I agree. But I commented because there is a significant overlap between the two.
For Indian mythology, many, many people believe that their Gods are historical characters, too.
And I have seen plenty of non-zealous, non-fundamentalist, hatredless, kind people who believe in this way, and the peace they derive from it to see it as fully bad.
I know the other side of the coin, too. But you should know that such people exist.
I read some basic "Bible for Kids" kinda stuff before it, but the first time I felt something for Jesus Christ was through the novel Ben Hur.
When fiction and living religion is mixed in a good way, with zero ill-intent, the differences fade to a significant degree.
> For most people love of God assumes the existence of God. Its far more important than any feelings about a fictional character can be.
And that's actually a problem. For them, that love for a fictional character that for them is real is, in many cases, more important that the love for real people. For whatever reason.
I have read a lot, throughout my life, although little has stuck :).
I have felt that, among other things, reading is also a means to escape, from anxiety, from the need to plan and structure your time and from the expectation to engage with others (particularly if you are an introvert). It is a lot like heavy drinking in that aspect (Oops)...
As a non-religious person, I have found a lot of “meaning” in reading literary fiction. I don’t know if it has made me happier, but it has definitely scratched an existential itch.
This is really about whether reading highbrow fiction specifically can make you happier.
I find it odd. Fiction was created as and remains fundamentally a form of entertainment. It’s like asking if watching Netflix can make you happier. Yes sure but not usually deeply.
This is just another symptom of how we’ve made literature precious, and appreciating it almost religious, certainly a form of snobbery. The New Yorker will write an article like this on “bibliotherapy” but never take seriously the idea you can get the same affect from binge watching the Sopranos.
Hot and cold mediums. TV is hotter than novels, colder mediums require more effortful cognition. A novel is more of a blank slate that you project your own experience on, thereby making it more meaningful for you. A TV show has already been pre-processed by casting agents and actors and set designers, so it's less personal to you and hence less meaningful.
IDK. I've certainly "binged" on reading an engrossing novel straight through. I don't get the same engagement watching TV. I've binged on TV for maybe 4 hours at a time then I just get to feeling like a completely lazy slob. I've spent 12+ hours on a book more than once.
Television is hypnotic. I vaguely remember someone claiming that watching television was more effective at slowing breathing and metabolic rates than meditation and yoga but without making one feel refreshed. I can't remember where or when I saw this.
But perhaps some part of the population is getting out from under that now that fewer people watch broadcast television favouring on demand services instead.
I don't watch broadcast television any more at home but I do when visiting family and I now find it immensely irritating except for the few splendid things like Suchet's Poirot (better than the books in my opinion).
And occasionally a gem like Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility turns up as it did on a British TV channel last week. Perhaps it was the story and my own immediate circumstances together but it had me in gales of laughter at one moment and gushing with tears at another. I just turned the television off afterwards.
Perhaps the negative feeling you get when binging television is related to memory and comprehension. There was a study called "The impact of binge watching on memory and perceived comprehension"[1] that found that you remember less of what you binge, and more of what you watch with intervals. V. interesting.
I feel like reading requires more active engagement of my brain than passively watching a TV show. Perhaps it's as simple as a mechanism similar to exercise, where spending a day walking is good for our bodies but sitting is not, spending a day with your brain in a totally passive consumption mode might be the equivalent for mental and cognitive wellness.
Where does audiobooks lie. I find it even easier to engage than TV since I don't have to pay attention to visuals and I'm on pace of the narrator. Or faster. 2-3x playback speed and turns content that requires engagement into timepass. Sometimes I feel guilty for being unserious, but as non reader I consume "more" books this way.
It’s natural to encounter a sublime sentence or passage in a book and re-read and deeply appreciate it for a while before moving on. It’s less natural to do that with a TV show. They’re good at different things, though not without overlap.
When I’m stuck on a problem, I find that re-reading some relevant documentation slowly is relaxing, and often I’m happy to get something I didn’t get the first time, and might need soon!
It's a guilty pleasure, I don't like that Sanderson belongs to the Mormon church (they believe weird things and I think have too much political power in Utah) and I just couldn't get into the rest of the franchise. (I partly liked Final Empire because of Vin)
What about those books made you happy, specifically? Could you distill it down to a set of points or aspects or ingredients? (Which, if another book series possessed, would make you happy as well.)
A little weak, though. I'd rather have something more impressive, like the message embedded in the decimals of Pi as found in the Contact novel. (That also doubles as an argument to present to believers: "if the real world had something so concrete and verifiable in the real world that could only have been inserted by the creator of the universe, that would be an actual reason to believe that such a creator exists. In the mean time... please don't".)
If you're reading the same old normative low-entropy "old-school soap opera" things (even if it's not a novel), you'll be fine.
If you step out of the bubble, it becomes painful to the point of destroying/changing your life.
Eg. real history of India that is outside the totally controlled colonial outposts of London/NY, and how closely the European moves till date matches what they were doing in classical non-Xtian Rome (many projects to this day are named after the genocidal Xtian "saints" from back then.).
No offense intended -— my appreciation for the text is sincere. Below is some of the context.
Ecclesiastes 1
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
Reflections of a Royal Philosopher
1 The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.
7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow.
8 All things are wearisome, more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing or the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in the ages before us.
11 The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.
The Futility of Seeking Wisdom
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
13 I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to humans to be busy with.
14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.”
17 And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.
Happiness I've found easiest to achieve with that empathy. Understand those around you and know your place in the world and what is and is not possible to change. Being malleable in a group while still retaining a sense of self provides a way to travel and adapt in whatever situation you find. Only books provided me with enough experience to "know" myself and how I'd react in certain scenarios.
I don't think it matters much what you read. Whatever challenges you and gets you to see the world slightly askew.