Here is something really special. I saw expressions of joyous humanity, empathy and understanding the other night. Where did I see it? On the TV, of course, while I watched a drumming weatherman drumming for Children in Need and two wonderful dancers on "Strictly" who danced for several seconds to the music of silence in order to underline the point that the lady was deaf. The audience loved it as much as I did - we the observers moved by expressions of humanity, we the observers invited to share a moment of empathy for the deaf, for children in need. Or - to put it another way - we were invited to enjoy empathy, kindness and human feeling at the command of the TV producers. We enjoyed being consumers - that is, we saw, enjoyed and discarded before moving on (feeling good about ourselves) to something else.
My purpose in this blog is to suggest that here is a wonderful backdrop for a novel. A fictional society which has learned to enjoy human kindness and compassion on the TV or in films but who cannot express these things themselves for fear of being seen as weak, over-exposed or gullible in "real" life. In such a society, films and plays become products that are used for viewers to experience the aforementioned feelings in a secure environment in which nobody will take advantage of their "weaknesses". Sci-fi writers might have a field day here as their story could also act as a warning to readers that life without expressed compassion, empathy and kindness might be a cruel world indeed. After all, imagine living in a world where no one is capable of understanding anybody else’s feelings. In such a world, someone could grasp how you feel only if he or she had had exactly the same experiences as you. Without experiencing exactly what you experienced they would have no idea what you were talking about.
Other problems arise in a loveless world. It would be impossible to trust anyone else as trust is built on leaps of faith and human compassion. We would have no way to judge the safety of others unless they exactly conformed to our expectations. Each of us would be self-appointed judge and jury of our own little world. And that world would be a lonely world as people would undoubtedly fail to live up to expectations and be deemed untrustworthy.
Perhaps the ultimate loss in a world without empathy would be the loss of our own identities. We would exist but not really. Any emotion we had inside ourselves would have little use. It could never be understood or taken seriously by others and nor would it connect us to others. Consequently we would lose our abilities to feel and this loss might turn us into a breed of human beings known to a section of the cinema world as "the living dead".
So - where does reading and writing come into all this? Well - I began writing 30 years ago and, one day, I realised that I had become more empathetic. It had clearly been a slow process but it was not difficult to understand why it had happened. After all, writers spend a huge amount of time jumping in and out of their characters' heads. One day, and I can't say exactly when, I found this skill had transferred itself to the real world and I found that I was much more able to understand others and where they were coming from.
I suppose I should not have been surprised about this. After all, there is some evidence that reading fiction is a valuable socializing influence. For example, researchers at The New School in New York City have found evidence that literary fiction improves a reader’s capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling.
I would love to hear about the experiences of other writers here, so - please feel free to use the comments box!
Comments