Does storytelling build empathy?

 I am one of those people who believes that more empathy and compassion would be a good thing for society.

And I hear people who share those beliefs say all the time that storytelling builds empathy, that one of the important values of storytelling is the building of empathy. They defend and advocate for more storytelling—usually their own—based on the idea that it is like a medicine of empathy for a sick population of isolated and self-centered people.

Except the rise of seemingly narcissistic behavior and a lack of empathy coincides, correlates, with an explosion of storytelling through multiple television channels and more screen time.

We are surrounded by story, by narrative, and we seem to just be getting worse as people. In fact, a lot of the story we see and hear is how terrible we are as people.

Does storytelling really build empathy?

I think that the mediums which we deliver story on actually destroy our empathetic connections as a community. Because we don’t have to leave the house. Not only do we have our laundry and our dishwasher and all the conveniences of modern life inside but now we can have the most talented distilling of culture while we sit alone by ourselves. 

Obviously, we want to connect with others. We want to understand our place in the world. We want to figure out howto spend the time that we’ve been given. Television, the internet, screens, do not require any effort from us to figure out how to do that with others. Others (made up others, see below) come to us.

It was the way in which we were forced to interact that created empathy—in our churches, on our block—and the way in which we were forced to combat boredom together—Billy’s son is going on a trip? Let’s throw a party to see him off. Jacob’s uncle has come back from Italy? Let’s go visit and hear about it.—. that created the bonds we need to understand others.

Also, these experiences are both three dimensional and limited in their significance. I mean that, one, we’re just going to do a thing. We’re not being told a story that strains to have significance in the world and teach us a lesson. It allows us to be humble and alive to others. And, two, people’s interactions are neccessarily complex and messy and the tangles of action and reaction and interaction wash all over us in ways that only we can process. Television, and screens, no matter how complex and well-made, don’t allow for the real living breathing people that empathy requires.

So, I honestly mean that the empathy of storytelling isn’t empathy. Sure, the greatest artists open us up to new worlds and change our worldviews, but that is actually quite hard to do. Most television, screen-based storytelling, or the story that is hoisted on us through the algorithm and structure of social media, is small. Tiny. It seems big because it fills the screen, but its really almost nothing at all.

Meanwhile, our bodies mistake the experience for actual experience. We think fictional people are friends. They dance around in our mind’s eye. We can see their reacctions and we do feel their emotions as our own. But they are simulcrums, not people. We need to build empathy for actual people so we need to spend time with actual people. 

Now, it may be possible that people have always been terrible and the screens only give us the ability and the tools to have more terrible effect on each other. It may also be possible that the stories are builing more empathy than ever before and just haven’t caught up with the tools yet. But that doesn’t feel true. I talk to people who think. they’re sensitive all the time and their understanding of other people is based on television shows that stink.

It is also possible that I and the people I know are trapped in a story but other people are not. The most watched cable news or listened to right-wing radio is not heard by more than 2 million people at a time. The country has more than 300 million in it. Maybe people with children who live in suburbs and go to church or. syngagogue are still creating empathetic communities and it’s just delusional secularists who spend too much time online who are drowning in their own selfishness.

But what feels like is actually happening is that we are mistaking the people in stories for people, that technology has made that mistake more profound and deep, and that is destroying us.