OCTOBER 3, 2025 | OPINION | By Sydney McGarr
The political buzzword these days is “polarization.” You’ve heard it, read it and seen it. We live in a country that is unwilling to budge and unwilling to compromise.
The government shutdown this week got me thinking about our country’s crisis of compromise. Where does a refusal to meet someone in the middle come from and how do we fix it?
Countless studies support the hypothesis that the political sides we choose—and often stay unwaveringly committed to—are largely motivated by our own personal stories: the places we grew up and the things we grew up hearing, watching and understanding.
It’s no shocker that our individual narratives shape the way we exist in the world; they are a pillar of our identity and our ability to connect with others. But our collective stories are what make us human. Our unique human power is the ability to empathize and understand stories that are not our own. And we’re losing it.
A 2020 consolidation of Gallup Poll data published by Scientific American found that the United States has an “empathy deficit,” meaning that Americans lack a sense that others around them care about their well-being.
Belief in human connection seems to be slipping away from us as we operate under a president who spews hateful and divisive rhetoric every chance he gets. This is hugely catastrophic for the future of our country.
One simple way we can become more empathetic and open to new ideas? Reading fiction.
In a time when mainstream media can feel remarkably overwhelming, turning to self-help books and other non-fiction about addressing national crises can seem like the adult thing to do. I do believe it’s important to understand the facts of the political moment we find ourselves in and to read professional advice on how to shield yourself from what feels like an oncoming oblivion.
But when was the last time you picked up a novel?
Fiction allows us to escape from an everyday reality that is often overwhelming and depressing. It allows us to imagine worlds beyond our own and develop empathy for characters with experiences different from ours. It asks us to emotionally invest in someone else’s story.
A 2020 study published in the British Journal of General Practice suggests that reading fiction helps us confront and lessen our own prejudiced perceptions of the world. As we are transported into the world of the story, we’re able to effectively be placed into the body of the protagonist and empathize with their world views, difficulties and environments.
As humans, we tend to self-select the group of people around us. We gravitate towards people with similar experiences and world views to us. Literature forces us to get out of our bubble and consider other points of view, and often we find pieces of ourselves in the places we least expect.
Reading fiction forces us to practice creative problem-solving and critical thinking. It promotes an open-mindedness towards new experiences and stepping outside of our comfort zone. And in an empathy deficit, it allows us to reconnect with our human instinct to associate with the collective, which could mean survival for our country.
As I think about the importance of reading in a time like this, I’m reminded of a James Baldwin quote that I return to often: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
So this is my request: put down the self-help book, for now, and pick up Octavia Butler. Or Toni Morrison. Or James Baldwin. Or just a young adult novel about magic. You might be surprised to discover how much you care.