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A review by bunrab
Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help by Larissa MacFarquhar
4.0
By now, most of us have read articles, if not entire books, about how people make decisions and choices. Often, the research behind these books includes testing people on such questions as "If there's a train coming toward you, and it's going to kill 2 people on the tracks, but you can divert it to kill only one person, what do you do?" Or, as in the title of this book, "If your spouse is drowning, and you can save her, OR you can save several strangers, what do you do, save one person because she's your spouse, or save the most number of people?" The results of such research are mostly academic, as most people never face such decisions in real life, so no one knows how they'd really react.
This book isn't about that research. Instead, it's profiles of an assortment of people who didn't just respond that of course they'd save the most number of people, rather than just one member of their own family; these people actually went out and did it, according to their lights. People who drag their families, children and all, into dangerous locales to help sick/poor/primitive strangers. People who spend all their money on helping others, to the detriment of their own family. The author describes, in the people's own word, what makes each of them tick, how they think of their own decisions.
The author also injects some information about how other people react to these extreme altruists: they are almost universally disliked. Most people are suspicious of altruism, many people are quite upset by anyone who neglects their own family, even for the greater good, and most people find these altruists extremely difficult to get along with, let alone live with. Even trained scientists and medical people regard these altruists as suspect; until quite recently, someone who wanted to be a kidney donor to a complete stranger was regarded as pathologically mentally disturbed, as the psychiatrists and doctors could not imagine that someone would be willing to do that for a stranger without some mental disturbance.
Food for thought.
This book isn't about that research. Instead, it's profiles of an assortment of people who didn't just respond that of course they'd save the most number of people, rather than just one member of their own family; these people actually went out and did it, according to their lights. People who drag their families, children and all, into dangerous locales to help sick/poor/primitive strangers. People who spend all their money on helping others, to the detriment of their own family. The author describes, in the people's own word, what makes each of them tick, how they think of their own decisions.
The author also injects some information about how other people react to these extreme altruists: they are almost universally disliked. Most people are suspicious of altruism, many people are quite upset by anyone who neglects their own family, even for the greater good, and most people find these altruists extremely difficult to get along with, let alone live with. Even trained scientists and medical people regard these altruists as suspect; until quite recently, someone who wanted to be a kidney donor to a complete stranger was regarded as pathologically mentally disturbed, as the psychiatrists and doctors could not imagine that someone would be willing to do that for a stranger without some mental disturbance.
Food for thought.