At first glance, the relationship between reading and writing may seem straightforward. Reading involves consuming the written words of another, while writing entails creating one's own written content. At the surface level, reader-writer are just like the consumer-producer of data in IT design pattern.
However, Marcel Proust, the renowned fiction writer who, despite not being a philosopher, possessed profound insights into philosophy, the human condition, time, and perception, wrote in the above quote that readers recognize themselves within the works of skilled authors.
Incidentally, this is the same Proust about whom Nassim Taleb remarked:
According to Proust, the reader-writer connection functions as follows: a skilled writer mirrors the world around them without ego, expressing this reflection through art, such as writing. To achieve this, a writer requires both the ability to transform themselves into astute observers and the capacity of unselfing.
Throughout his works, particularly in his renowned novel "In Search of Lost Time," Proust provides numerous examples of extracting the essences of human experiences from seemingly mundane personal moments.
The conditions of being a reflecting mirror and unselfing are also the conditions of deep understanding, not just cognitive understanding, but understanding from the heart and mind that includes intuition, emotions and empathy. Often, one cannot fully empathize with or comprehend the experiences of others, such as the loss of a loved one, without having undergone similar experiences oneself.
Empathy serves as the cornerstone for intersubjective understanding, bridging personal experiences to foster collective understanding.
This is the reason why writers needs empathy, see my earlier post.
The writer employs empathy and unselfing to reflect the human condition, expressing these insights through their writing. The reader, in turn, engages with the writing and resonates with the human condition depicted within it, recognizing their own experiences and emotions.
Of course, the reader can also become a writer in turn. By reflecting on their own experiences and emotions, and by drawing inspiration from the works of others, readers can express their own unique perspectives through writing.
This cycle of empathy, writing, reading, and writing again creates a continuous loop, where the observer (the reader) and the observed (the human condition) are inextricably intertwined.
This process creates a "strange loop," as described by Douglas Hofstadter, or a "second-order loop" in cybernetics, where the observer (the reader) is also part of and participates in the observed (the human condition).
The beauty of this loop lies in its potential to unlock a deeper level of social understanding. By sharing experiences, emotions, and empathy, we transcend the limitations of individual perspective and forge a more profound connection with one another.