OPINION: Reading more can help us all identify fake news

Thanks to the magic of streaming music platforms, I’ve curated songs over the course of a calendar year for the last decade. My preferred platform is Spotify, which feeds me endless playlists based on an algorithm that analyzes hours and hours of my listening preferences. One song that has wormed its way into several of my playlists this year is Matthew Houk’s (Phosphorescent) The World is Ending.

The song itself is catchy, with an arrangement buoyed by light piano and playful lyrics. Still, the nimble tempo can’t entirely escape the heaviness of the line repeated at the conclusion of each chorus: I know the world is ending. In fact, the song's outro communicates Houk’s despondence in the face of reality: Until they send some scientist to come and prove me wrong, I know the world is ending.

Sounds like Matthew’s been spending some time on social media lately.

I don’t want to rehash what the last three weeks have entailed in real life, much less the responses to it on social media. All of that would end up reading like a specific Billy Joel song but with more absurdity than the original could have ever imagined.

But how do we balance being informed citizens in a society that churns out “breaking news” every hour? How can we not be swept up by the tidal waves of misinformation being fed to us purposely and incessantly? More importantly, how do we—as contributing citizens to society—broaden our capacities to see beyond our personal political or religious beliefs to find empathy for other humans? The answer isn’t easy, but maybe the beginning of the road that leads to that answer can be found in two words.

Read. Fiction.

Since the beginning of recorded history, humans have used stories to explain the most convoluted aspects of their lives. Each culture had its own stories of creation, life, death, and everything that happened in between. As civilizations advanced, science began to answer the questions that stories attempted to explain. Even with those questions answered, stories still had the power to transcend the mundane, illuminate the dark corners of ambiguity, and offer avenues to worlds that readers could only dream of visiting.

I could list dozens of reasons why consistent reading of fiction could be a healthy exercise, but I want to focus on the two most important: distraction and empathy.

First, a well-written story can transport a reader to a place that feels as far away from reality as possible. In 2024, that alone should be enough to convince you to pick up a book. Beyond the escapism of literature, however, reading for distraction can also allow us to lengthen our attention spans by focusing on paragraphs, chapters, and story arcs without chasing the dopamine bumps of social media alerts or the appalling nature of shocking narratives that constantly ambush us on our newsfeeds.

As the reader dives deeper and deeper into a story, dark corners of humanity are illuminated - a personal connection is made with a fictional character experiencing a conflict that is all too real to the reader. Something in life that the reader may feel too ashamed to admit or is too confusing to understand is instantly a commonality with someone else. And, even if that “someone else” is a fictional character, the emotions attached to that character’s trials and tribulations are genuine. Fictional narratives have the power to create characters, settings, and events that allow the reader to be emotionally transported, which can lead to the reader achieving what we all seem to be lacking right now: empathy.

Empathy is an often-used word that’s also incredibly vague in practice. Is empathy innate or learned? Is it an emotion or a state of being? It depends on who you ask. What we can all agree on, however, is that empathy seems to be lacking in nearly every facet of public discourse surrounding politics, religion, and anything else that can elicit a reaction.

Studies have shown a tangential connection between reading and empathy for several decades. Multiple avenues of research have shown a correlation between young children who read frequently and more significant amounts of empathy shown in manufactured situations created for the studies. If these studies tell us anything, reading might be the best place to start when it comes to bridging the cultural divide.

Greater empathy alone won’t fix a culture continuously poisoned with emotional rhetoric and intentional fabrications, but empathy can allow us to pause, reflect, and try to understand the root of those thoughts before haphazardly responding. A softer approach can lead to a more productive conversation, which, in turn, can lead to the actual truth – something both sides of an argument should want.

Last week, I committed to taking annotated notes and writing down quotes each time I read a book. I bought a standard composition notebook and black ink pens and woke up each morning to glean a few insights from fiction.

The first book of my repurposed quiet time is Pure Colour, a work of fiction described as a “contemporary bible.” Page after page, I found quotes or glimpses of answers to questions that I had only felt but not been able to verbalize. And, therein, lies a faint gleam of the beauty of fiction—a slight nod to the vast truths awaiting on pages.

On one of my first readings, I came across this quote that sums up the importance of reading fiction (my favorite form of art): “What do humans go to art for, but to locate within themselves that inward-turning eye, which breathes significance into all of existence-for what is art but the act of infusing matter with the breath of God?”

Rather than looking outward at everything that offends us, let’s try looking inward and see where that takes us.

Gabe Hart is a local educator who has written columns for various news outlets locally and statewide.