One person cannot ever see the whole world and understand the values of each world culture on their own. Besides the financial costs involved, there are simply not enough years in a person’s life to fully experience the entire world. For the average person, reading about a culture is the closest they will ever come. When someone reads a work of world literature, that person gains a fundamental understanding of that culture. How the author views different situations, the kinds of cultural practices the author deems important, etc. can all contribute to an understanding of the society in which the author lives. A political or business leader may have no personal knowledge of, for example, the culture of the people who live in the Nigerian oil producing regions. But reading about their culture can give leaders an insight into how that culture acts, and can help them make decisions that not only lead to efficient oil-extraction, but also to equitable employment and a positive local economic influence.
Reading world literature can also help people to learn from the past. As a wise man once said, history repeats itself. And while the Spanish conquest of the Incas and the Russian Revolution each only happened once, the types of situations that led to them and the problems that they caused will continue to have counterparts in the modern world until the end of Life in the Universe. By learning from the mistakes and successes of the Spanish, the Russians, the Persians, and the Maya, one can hope that people will begin to see connections between events in the present and those in the past and work to steer conflicts to a positive resolution.
In addition, literature can be a powerful force in history in and of itself. For better or worse, books like Mein Kampf, Common Sense, and The Communist Manifesto have and continue to promote actions and ideologies in the world today. By committing their thoughts to paper, the authors were ensuring that their ideas would spread, and that their legacy would live on. Writer’s must remember these different legacies, and strive to document events or spin tales in a way that may show a reader from a different culture the kinds of issues that the characters, real or imaginary, have to deal with, in hopes that they will take positive lessons to heart, and learn from negative lessons.  Writers must also hope that readers will learn how to apply those lessons to their own lives, in both personal matters, and in matters that are global in scale.