Have you found that reading fictional literature makes you more empathetic?

I read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and my main takeaway was not to let anymore degenerate Lithuanians immigrate into the USA

>>24506368 (OP)
Empathy is a word that doesn't mean anything. Women made it up so they can convince men they are forever lacking it.

I've never seen a woman "empathize" with someone who already wasn't very much like her.
It's a fancy word game when really they're just projecting their own lack. It's all very Lacanian.

>>24507163
You're right about the contemporary usage of empathy, but there is the more classical concept of compassion that empathy is, or at least is supposed to be, synonymous with.

>>24507163
Empathy has been replaced with sympathy. Sympathy is treating someone nice because they're just you in different shoes. Empathy is treating someone nice because it's how you'd treat someone that's just you in different shoes.
If someone employing sympathy without empathy finds someone they couldn't ever find themselves being in any life, they become ravenously antagonistic, and understandably so. Empathy wouldn't be a virtue if it were as easy as treating people you already consider part of your "tribe" nicely.
Why things became like this is that the easier of the two can arguably perform as both if you expand your "tribe", explaining the obsession with likening different people, groups and cultures to each other.

>>24506856
I had that same opinion till I saw Charles Bronson shirtless. :o

>>24506368 (OP)
I hate empathy