Literacy Breeds Empathy, Reduces Violence

[Benny B]

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker links the Humanitarian Revolution, an historical decline in violence, to widespread literacy. "It's plausible," he explains, "that as people consume fiction, drama, history, and journalism, they start to inhabit the minds of people unlike themselves, which conceivably could expand their empathy and decrease their taste for cruelty."

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWeh1Pam4Bc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWeh1Pam4Bc</a>

[dr.chimps]

This has been debated for a while now -ie. see Uncle Tom's Cabin re: slavery; Dickens' works re: child labour, oppressive poverty. Anecdotally, here at Getbig, it holds up - all the hard-talking corporate Christians are not 'readers.'   

[magikusar]

master of the obvious!

also note with literacy comes greater productivity and less need to stab next guy for his dinner

[P.I.P]

Hmm...

Explains a thing or two about black people.

[Pray_4_War]

Patently false.  I was an English major and I'm hella-violent.