A page from The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley
I guess it’s not exactly surprising, but it seems to explain a lot of things I’m witnessing in my later adulthood. I’ve always felt deeply impressed by selfless heroes, but I never really pondered the profile of heroism.
I think there’s also a sort of autodidactic type of learning empathy, even if your parents don’t teach it to you.
I think it’s — at least for a part of the population — a very natural thing and would have to be actively discouraged as a kid to make it go away.
Although idk I did read a ton so maybe the books raised me idk
Reading books are known to increase empathy, as the very act itself forces you to see the world from someone else’s perspective, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes every time you open a new book.
Reading fiction teaches empathy, even if you don’t have it naturally or your parents are shit humans. There’s something about the way a novel puts you in the back seat of someone’s mind, the cliche “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.”
Which is why it’s concerning that:
Many adults don’t read a book after high school. Many high schools don’t even assign books anymore - just passages, because that’s what on the ACT.
Our shitty education system makes kids associate reading a book with homework, and many adults don’t outgrow that association
Many kids in the US weren’t even taught phonics.
Teachers were forced to use an expensive curriculum program that didn’t work - and similar shit had been proven not to work in the 70’s. For lots of children, reading is too difficult to be enjoyable because they don’t know phonics.
fwiw, I didn’t read 0-17 for fun because reading was homework and fuck doing what you tell me.
I started reading in my 20s. Hopefully others too.
It’s called trauma.