Voting is a good excuse to learn history. Learning history is a good way to develop empathy

It seems to me that if one were to take one’s responsibility in a democratic society to vote, one way of doing this would be to know very well the reasons behind your choice.

In my mind, if we would take seriously the very act of ‘taking voting seriously’, we would go to much greater lengths to make the most out of this act of civic participation. But it is not only participation. Voting is just the culmination of a much longer process of asking question after question about the reason for your sympathies towards one candidate over the other.

In the spirit of the Socratic method, I don’t have much doubt that most people would come to a standstill pretty soon. This is because once you ask a few ‘why’s to your explanations, you end up needing to explain what you really know about the ideologies that support each candidate, the origin of those ideologies, the contexts in which they originated, the current subtext in all that they are saying (‘is that a dogwhistle?’ ‘is that an allusion to an unproven case of corruption?’, ‘is this journalist owned by a biased media mogul?’). The truth is that our lack of expertise becomes clear with a few questions, unless we belong to a minority who has done their homework.

To get a fuller picture it is useful to dive deep into the history of the territory. With that I mean the history of everything that happened in this territory that we call now our country. What were the acts and facts behind the words? What was the spirit that drove the words? What aspirations did they have and what aspirations do we have now? The tale becomes much richer, full of details that contradict any simplifying judgmental statement. And more importantly, it opens up a whole range of new possibilities where the past serves to learn, to be both honoured and to questioned, and the present is an opportunity to make history that is properly of our time and not a series of unfounded renactements of past grudges and resentments.

So even if we make a mistake in who we vote, that’s not the end of it. The control that we have as individuals over those results is minimal, but all the knowledge that we acquired about the place that we call home will remain. And not only that, but given that stories can build empathy by transporting us into someone else’s frame of mind. Stories place us into their life context. If well made, they allow us to see what drove them to behave in certain ways, to feel certain things. We can learn and vicariously experience where they lived, who they loved, what they didn’t like.

We learn about facts, we historicise ideas and develop empathetic understanding of people from other generations. With a fine-grained knowledge and an empathetic connection to our history, we might be more certain about our choice in the dark room, but what counts the most is that we went through that journey.

There’s nothing like the perceived enormous stakes of democratic elections to propel one to commit with passion to a mission. This kind of mission can hardly be a waste of anyone’s time. Voting is a good excuse to learn history. Learning history is a good way to develop empathy.

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