Scan barcode
A review by mschlat
Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help by Larissa MacFarquhar
4.0
It's not in the title, but MacFarquhar's book is all about do-gooders, those people whose lives revolve around helping others. So she has a number of chapters on different do-gooders, nobody particularly famous, but all of them extraordinarily committed to helping. We read about the family that adopted so much they ended up with 22 kids, the man who started a home for lepers with almost no resources, and the individuals who give away almost all of their money (or live on subsistence wages) so that others can have more.
And if you read all this and feel uneasy, well, that's intentional. MacFarquhar wants to explore why we as a culture often feel skeptical about do-gooders and mistrust their motives. So, interspersed among the character pieces are histories of how we view altruism. The two most compelling chapters cover the economic view of altruism (seen at loggerheads with the selfishness thought to drive capitalism, e.g., the need for self interest in [b:The Wealth of Nations|25698|The Wealth of Nations|Adam Smith|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348433328s/25698.jpg|1373762]) and the psychological views of do-gooders (where Freudian thought assumes they are masochists). There's also some intriguing material on the effective altruism movement and the philosopher Peter Singer, whose argument that distance (either geographical or relational) shouldn't matter in altruism forms the focus of the first half of the book.
I found it a compelling but tough read. If you are like me (often motivated by guilt/duty/service --- pick your description), it's tough to read the character pieces without thinking you could do more. But MacFarquhar also deftly points out the downfalls of do-gooders, especially in those cases (like the effective altruism movement) where helping appears to turn into solving an optimization problem rather than connecting to the people you want to help. As a whole, I found the work very helpful in understanding where my altruism boundaries are and what serving others means to me.
And if you read all this and feel uneasy, well, that's intentional. MacFarquhar wants to explore why we as a culture often feel skeptical about do-gooders and mistrust their motives. So, interspersed among the character pieces are histories of how we view altruism. The two most compelling chapters cover the economic view of altruism (seen at loggerheads with the selfishness thought to drive capitalism, e.g., the need for self interest in [b:The Wealth of Nations|25698|The Wealth of Nations|Adam Smith|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348433328s/25698.jpg|1373762]) and the psychological views of do-gooders (where Freudian thought assumes they are masochists). There's also some intriguing material on the effective altruism movement and the philosopher Peter Singer, whose argument that distance (either geographical or relational) shouldn't matter in altruism forms the focus of the first half of the book.
I found it a compelling but tough read. If you are like me (often motivated by guilt/duty/service --- pick your description), it's tough to read the character pieces without thinking you could do more. But MacFarquhar also deftly points out the downfalls of do-gooders, especially in those cases (like the effective altruism movement) where helping appears to turn into solving an optimization problem rather than connecting to the people you want to help. As a whole, I found the work very helpful in understanding where my altruism boundaries are and what serving others means to me.