Question of Empathy

Question: Does reading good fiction encourage empathy or do empathetic people read good fiction?

For our President's view read below of this conundrum read below:

From The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-new-fiction-of-solitude/471474/
Listen as he [Obama] turned the conversation to Robinson’s occupation [as novelist]:

Are you somebody who worries about people not reading novels anymore? And do you think that has an impact on the culture? When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.

Posted by Paul Hunter paulhunter45177@gmail.com