This suggests a curious paradox. If art arises from our fundamental isolation in our own minds—from the way we are denied direct access to the world and all its contents—it also temporarily frees us from that isolation. Art lets us live, for a little while, in other worlds, including in other people’s inner worlds; we can hear their thoughts, feel their emotions, even believe their beliefs. (Odd, how able and happy we are to do this with fiction, when we often have so much difficulty doing so in real life.) Put differently, art is an exercise in empathy. Through it, we give the constraints of
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