I like fiction and don't always trust people, but am confident that if an old man was stabbed in a room where no one reads fiction at all, a FTSE100 company, say, or a university, people would still get up and help ffs
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I'd sympathise with them: we'd happily have topped the English teacher who had us read Wuthering Heights then found it was last year's A-level syllabus.
Ffs. Dread to think what the rest if that article says, although witnessing such an horrific attack would've been deeply traumatising, maybe enough to permanently melt one's wits.
I like reading. I also like people who may or may not read. I have read about the bystander effect. It clearly didn’t happen in this case. No one knows why xxx
Lucky it was literary fiction and not, say, a fantasy conference, where everyone would presumably have to first roll a d8 for empathy and a d12 for skill
Nah, empathy is a free-action in this system. It's just that, since the stabbing was an immediate interrupt and a sneak attack, everyone else had to spend an hour rolling initiative first.
Only those who don't even own televisions ever call the emergency services. The popularity of 999 Lifesavers was based on trying to work out what the hell those vehicles with blue lights were and why they were there.
Maaaaate, that’s such a bad take. “Only fiction readers have developed empathy”. Toddlers have empathy. Millions of illiterate adults on this planet have empathy. And then some of the best educated readers on this planet have none.
Also, I HATE Salman Rushdie’s fiction (except for Haroun And The Sea Of Stories). I would hope I would still have been among the wave of people rushing to protect him from his attacker.
Yeah but would they then have tried to subdue the vampire? (Perhaps, discovering they were the only one capable of it, if not immediately then after a lot of additional plot throwing them together). Or fantasised about the vampire subdueing them?
I would absolutely never have known that stabbing someone is wrong or a crime if I didn’t read detective novels. What possible clue is there to that in real life? How would I even know what ‘clue’ is? It’s elementary, when you think about it (which, obviously, you can only do after reading novels).
"I considered confronting the assailant, and then remembered I really hadn't enjoyed Rushdie's last two books. A bit self-indulgent in the prose, I thought. So I sat back down and rummaged in my bag to find the day's cryptic crossword."
Doctors, famously, are expected to prioritise humanities A levels over science, to ensure they have sufficient empathy to bother to treat their patients.
Anyone, even non readers, can have empathy for someone in pain or danger, it takes the magic of fiction to make me have empathy with Macbeth or Hannibal Lecter
I read novels because I read how someone once read so many novels that they became perfect, possibly the Best Person, better than everyone else, all by reading novels
Adding “fighting crime” to a long list of things fiction does not in fact do, along with such classics as “cure bigotry” and “make you a better person”
sort of brilliant to see this retweeted by Alex Massie, a writer whose entire life's project is to create a community of readers who would be significantly *less* likely to intervene in an attempted murder
Counterpoint: After United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated by Luigi “The Adjuster” Mangione, the meeting Thompson had been scheduled to attend went ahead anyway.
I thought the "reader effect" was loudly arguing with your colleagues of the stabbing represented the death of the American Dream, a postmodernist symbol of the Death of the Author thesis, or just a metaphor for weird sex stuff.
This in-group confirmation bias that only people like the author have any virtue is common. In military circles there was absolutely a thread that only military people were truly ever brave or noble. The application to such an odd grouping as "fiction readers" is bizarre though
1/3 In many ways, once our material requirements are met & we have security as to that, what most of us want is the opportunity to join a group where we get to enjoy a positive in-group confirmation bias about our own nature (proven by getting membership in the group). You’re brave. You’re clever.
You’re a good chap. You’re keeping the lights on. The Euro Atlantic world from 1945-90 was very good at providing this for the vast majority of the population. Post 1991 they’ve been terrible at it because such groups were “in the way” of policy goals for economic elites. 2/3
What remains is an environment with incredible status anxiety. Brexit & Reform are facets of such status anxiety, movements full of men who lost status once they lost their paycheques & job titles by moving into retirement - & now feel some unspoken ethnic/“native” status is under attack too. 3/3
I mean “when it became less available”. There were a multitude of organisations available to almost every strata of society before 1990 this enabled did. Things like unions even enabled this. These have mostly died off (tho in this case yes I expect “people in publishing” behaved like this forever).
I used to commute on a train where I shared a carriage with an elegant woman who read the Guardian, LRB, modern fiction, & a grumpy man who read the Daily Mail. Once an African mother + disabled kids got on, very harassed. It was Mail bloke who found them space while LRB lady spread her paper wider.
Bob Dylan got in trouble for saying he had empathy for Lee Harvey Oswald in a speech at a Civil Liberties committee dinner 3 weeks after the JFK assassination 👀
Friend of mine only ever reads non-fiction and he's the loveliest, sweetest guy who's ever been imprisoned for life for defrauding and murdering sweet little old ladies.
Wow, someone really wanted to remind people that he was the guy who was there and was about to interview Salman Rushdie.
A quick Googling indicates this is not the first time he's shopped this exact piece around. In fact it's not easy to tell what else he's done for the last few years.
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"Is this bad?"
Sigh
Most days I’d quite like to ban the word ‘empathy’
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/opinion/salman-rushdie-free-speech-writers.html
https://bsky.app/profile/salfordmh.bsky.social/post/3li7wwr4pte2y
Yeah, seems a stretch
Oh.
This bad boy can imagine SO many communities.
"I'm smart. I'm almost certain I'm smart. I'm pretty sure I'm smart. Am I smart?"
Really makes you think.
It was very reminiscent of asking people about puberty blockers and kids.
There was a huge lack of empathy and support so I’m not surprised.
So much for readers! Stop reading, authors don't want to die!
A quick Googling indicates this is not the first time he's shopped this exact piece around. In fact it's not easy to tell what else he's done for the last few years.