Reading builds empathy

I fear for a society that doesn’t read.

Lately I keep coming across people who maintain, with a certain pride, that they never read. Okay there’s some self-interest here. I don’t like to see writing as anachronistic or arcane.

But we don’t want to become a society unable to concentrate on anything longer than a blog. We don’t want to be an ignorant society.

Readers learn without realising. Off the top of my head, just this year and entirely through fiction, I’ve learnt about consciousness, about Tudor society and the role of Thomas Cromwell, the gritty underside of Edinburgh, about mathematicians and the behaviour of chimpanzees, about sexual ambiguity and genetics.

What I fear most is that, when we no longer read, we lose the ability to enter different worlds, to place ourselves in other people’s shoes. Nothing makes us identify with other people quite like accompanying them on a life journey.

I fear that a society that doesn’t read is a society that lacks empathy. And that we can’t afford to be.

We can’t force people to read, but we can encourage it, particularly in childhood, when the habit is often set. So libraries are not a waste of money. And books in schools are essential.

But I think it’s almost more important to change our attitude to books and reading. This relates back to last week’s blog, in which I argued for reading without concerning ourselves over genre, or whether something was “popular” or “literary”. I’d rather see people reading than getting hung up on what they ought to read.

A while back, I gave a talk in a shopping mall. When questioned, the audience claimed they wouldn’t read for entertainment, but only for self-improvement.

Nothing wrong with that. But to be a reading society, it needs to be sustainable. How often do you sneak off early from a party because you can’t wait to get back into How to make a Success of My Life?

We might buy it. In fact, judging by the huge business that self-help has become, we probably do. But are we dying to get back to it? Do we even read it to the end?

Books need to call to us when we’re not there. We must reclaim reading as fun, not a chore.

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