Does Reading Make Someone Less Likely to Be Evil?

 

"I know that having a good vocabulary doesn't guarantee that I'm a good person," the boy said. "But it does mean I've read a great deal. And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil." ...

There are, of course, plenty of evil people who have read a great many books, and plenty of very kind people who seem to have found some other method of spending their time. But the Baudelaires knew that there was a kind of truth to the boy's statement, and they had to admit that they preferred to take their chances with a stranger who knew what the word "xenial" meant, ... (Slippery Slope, p. 95-96).

I confess that would I be more willing to trust someone who knew what xenial meant or, for that matter, had read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This is because they have something in common with me. As such, it is plausible to imagine that they would be able to better empathize with me, which would make it harder for them to betray me. Of course, this line of thinking can easily be manipulated by con artists, who know that they can trick people into trusting them by convincing them that they have the same taste in art or religion or belong to the same ethnic group.  

Does reading actually help make someone less likely to be evil? If you are a humanities person, whose life and profession center around books, there is much at stake in being able to claim that this is so. Consider the question, are plumbers less likely to be evil? The issue is irrelevant as society requires plumbers in order to function regardless of their moral quality. If studying to become a plumber had the same effect on one's moral development as spending a year on Korriban communing with the force spirits of ancient Sith Lords then so be it. It is not so obvious that society needs history and literature teachers if we cannot assume that they will contribute to the moral development of students. As such, those of us in these professions need to either be able to make a convincing case that we promote morality or confess that what we do is merely a hobby for people of leisure, much the same as gardening or video games.   

This renders book readers vulnerable to moral hazard. People's actual morality is likely to be inversely proportional to their belief in their morality. The more you think that you are a good person, the more likely you are going to be willing to justify doing bad things to your opponents. If they oppose you, they must be bad people who deserve what is coming to them. Why should a few bad people be allowed to stand in the way of all the wonderful things a good person such as yourself can do for the world? How truly dangerous must a person be whose sense of self is wrapped around books and needs to believe that these books have made them better people? 

The moral hazard goes even further. If people who read are morally superior then it makes sense that they should rule over the plumbers as philosopher kings. This goes to the heart of liberal arts. Historically, liberal meant "free." The liberal arts were those things that could be studied by the wealthy leisure class, who did not have to worry about developing a useful trade. To engage with the liberal arts itself was a justification to rule. The aristocrat, freed from the constraints of earning a living and allowed to study things simply to develop their souls, deserved to rule. Since they did not need to worry about money and personal gain, they could act for the "common good," which they learned through the liberal arts. This aristocratic ethos was later embraced by Roussoueauians and eventually Marxists. Neither of these ideologies are really about empowering the people or the working class. They are defenses for rule by intellectuals.    

There is a plausible case to be made that reading helps people expand their circle of empathy. Reading fiction and history allows one to enter the heads of people who are different from ourselves and recognize their humanity. If you can be emotionally moved by space aliens, perhaps you can be moved by the plight of refugees or even your next-door neighbor. This ability to empathize, though, would still require that the reader not believe that their reading is making them more empathetic. Otherwise, we fall back down the moral hazard hole, leaving us merely with someone who knows how to employ the rhetoric of empathy to claim the moral high ground and the right to rule. 

Has reading made me a better person? I enjoy reading as a means of coming to a better understanding of the world around me. My self-education through books has continued even after I failed to earn my doctorate when I could no longer assume that books would lead me to a position of respect and authority. Perhaps, my reading can be defended on the grounds that it has saved me from the sin of worldly ambition. Regardless, I will return to my joyously Sisyphean quest to get through my ever-expanding reading list.    

A Delicious Serving of Jim Dale: A Review of Pushing Daisies.

My family got into Harry Potter by listening to Jim Dale’s audio recording of the books. The books are of course incredible, but Jim Dale adds a dimension all of his own. There is something downright intoxicating about his voice and the voices he does for the characters are otherworldly. He set a Guinness World Record for the most different voices in an audiobook. I recently found the British recording of Order of the Phoenix at a used book store. I happen to be a fan of Stephen Fry, who did this recording, but he is nothing compared to Jim Dale. To all those who do not get what all the fuss has been about this past decade, you owe it to yourself to listen to the Dale recording.
This week, while folding laundry, I flipped to the ABC website (you can watch most shows these days at your convenience, with almost no commercials, legally at the network websites.) and watched this new show Pushing Daisies. Jim Dale narrates this show and he is at the top of his game. The show could almost be an audiobook with visuals and actors to fill in the gaps in Jim Dale’s monologuing.
Even without Jim Dale, this is one incredible show. It is about a pie maker, named Ned, who can bring the dead back to life simply by touching them. There are two catches to this. If he does not put them back to being dead within a minute someone else will drop dead in their place. Furthermore, if he touches a resurrected person a second time they become permanently dead. In good superhero fashion Ned, in addition to running a pie shop known as the Pie Hole, fights crime on the side. He resurrects murder victims to ask them who their killer was before putting them back to being dead. The central plot of the show centers on Ned and his childhood sweetheart, Chuck. In the first episode of the show, Ned has not seen Chuck since they were about ten that is until he finds her in a funeral home after she was strangled on a cruise ship. Ned balks at putting Chuck back for which the funeral home owner pays the price. Now Ned has the love of his life back in his world, the only problem is that he cannot touch her. As an Orthodox Jew, I love this plot line, a romance in which the two leads cannot sleep together or even hold hands.
It would be very easy to be oblivious to how good this show’s acting is. Comedy in general is very hard. As my father once told me: Comedy is much harder to do than drama. There is no such thing as mediocre comedy. In comedy, you are either funny or you are not; there is no salvaging a lackluster performance. In drama, if things do not work perfectly you can settle for being okay. Now this show is a particularly difficult type of comedy to do. One, you are dealing with a premise that is absolutely absurd with no believability to it. Yet somehow you have to be able to create characters that are believable. It would be so easy to simply allow the show to be ridiculous and ride that into mediocrity. Two, the show is built around comic straights. If good comedy in general is tough to do then being a good comic straight requires genius. A comic straight does not say or do funny things yet somehow has to be funny. The characters in this show are very normal people reacting to absurdity in a very matter-of-fact fashion. Anyone who thinks this is easy has never tried acting.
There are two performances I would particularly like to note. The actor playing Ned, Lee Pace, brings a very straight boyish charm to the role but with a dark undercurrent. There is a very old-fashioned quality to him that allows him to believably inhabit the show’s 50s set design and costuming. Pity, if he were a decade younger he would make such a good Edward Cullen. Kristin Chenoweth, who played Glinda in Wicked, delivers an excellent supporting performance as Olive Snook, a waitress at the Pie Hole with a crush on Ned. Chenoweth is an incredible singer who seems to have a knack for playing dumb blondes who get jilted by the men of their dreams. The show has already given her one musical number; I suspect more will be on the way.
I can easily imagine how this show was born. Someone sat down and thought to himself: let's make a show for all those millions of adults Harry Potter fans out there, something smart, sweet, and absolutely twisted. A show that is not afraid to embrace its own absurdity. Through the first three episodes, we have been subjected to a pair of cheese-crazy depressed aunts who used to be synchronized swimmers, a detective with a pair of hand-knitted gun holsters, which he made himself, people getting suffocated to death with a plastic bag, a killer eco-friendly car, a murderous crash test dummy, and a duel with a Chinese southern aristocrat. Come to think of it, this show at heart most closely resembles Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
This, without question, has got to be the best new show out there.
If you have not seen this show, eat your heart out.