Bibliophile

First line: It was my first day in Istanbul, a breezy evening in September, many moons ago now.

The ‘How to…’ title of this slim volume suggests it’s a practical guide to staying sane in divided times. But because its author is Elif Shafak, the gifted British-Turkish novelist, what we find inside is far more discursive, complex and lyrical.

Shafak’s main concern is polarisation and how it’s being used to tear apart democracies around the world. Her advice: get out more. We need to move beyond our comfortable echo chambers and engage in more nuanced discussion with people who are different to us. The German title of the book is simply Hört einander zu — ‘listen to one another’.

Seeking out difference is a way of inoculating ourselves against the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy of the Right. Shafak says:

It is not a coincidence that all across the world authoritarian demagogues go to great lengths to incite and inflame polarisation. They know they will benefit from it. They love it when there is more division, friction, mutual exclusion. They love it when the river between ‘us’ and ‘them’ overflows its banks and drives us apart, so that we can no longer see or hear each other above the roaring torrent […] The less that people from different backgrounds can communicate and empathise with each other, the smaller our appreciation of our common humanity, the less egalitarian and inclusive our shared spaces, the more satisfied the demagogue (31-32).

Suggestions on how to stay sane in an age of division are woven into the second half of the book. They include acknowledging our feelings of disillusionment, bewilderment and anxiety in a time of political, economic and environmental crisis, as well as avoiding apathy and converting anger into action. She considers whether,

in an era when everything is in constant flux, in order to be more sane, we need a blend of conscious optimism and creative pessimism. In the words of Gramsci ‘the pessimism of the intellect, the optimism of the will’ (87).

In other words, let’s not blithely assume all will be well. Or just give up. Let’s be ‘involved citizens’ (87) who truly believe we can make a difference. As Rebecca Solnit often says, ‘hope is action’ — and the future is not yet written.

Lastly, Shafak asks us to think about our internet consumption: to spend less time looking at the fragmented information and misinformation flooding our feeds, and more time acquiring the knowledge that investigative journalism and well-researched books offer. Crucially, we also need

wisdom, which connects the mind and the heart, activates emotional intelligence, [and] expands empathy. For that we need stories and storytelling (82).

And storytellers, of course.

Elif Shafak, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division, Profile Books / wellcome collection 2020, 90 pp.