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    Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help
    Unavailable
    Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help
    Unavailable
    Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help
    Audiobook9 hours

    Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help

    Written by Larissa MacFarquhar

    Narrated by Larissa MacFarquhar

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas.

    A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they weigh the needs of unknown children in distress against the needs of the children they already have?

    Another couple founds a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls, knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn't? How would their parents' risk have been judged?

    A woman believes that if she spends money on herself, rather than donate it to buy life-saving medicine, then she's responsible for the deaths that result. She lives on a fraction of her income, but wonders: when is compromise self-indulgence and when is it essential?

    We honor such generosity and high ideals; but when we call people do-gooders there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively history of the literature, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture.

    Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning challenges us to think about what we value most, and why.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 29, 2015
    ISBN9780698411173
    Unavailable
    Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help

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    Reviews for Strangers Drowning

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      This is one of those rare life-changing books. It's about "do-gooders" who go to extremes to alleviate suffering in the world. It's a riveting and emotional read. Five stars seems inadequate for this one!
    • 4/5
      This is a pretty fascinating collection of profiles, although it began to feel a little same-y toward the end. I wish MacFarquhar had done more to tie it all together, though.
    • 4/5
      The subtitle kinda says it all, but the book itself holds some fascinating case studies of those people we sometimes call saints or heroes or idealists or do-gooders (each title describing something a little different). We admire these folks and also hold them in deep suspicion; praise them and seek to punish them; sometimes seek them out and other times avoid them at all costs. Has a fascinating little passage toward the end about how most novelists paint very unflattering portraits of these types. You would "do good" to obtain a copy and read it...will keep you thinking about these issues long after the book is closed.
    • 5/5
      Intensely interesting and profoundly moving. This will probably change your life.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant. Depicts obsessive altruism in true stories from various cultures and times. Almost every page triggers re-orienting and re-evaluating all one previously held as "common knowledge". Further reviewing later, after second reading.
    • 4/5
      This nonfiction look at do-gooders in society is certainly filled with food for thought, and is especially poignant now when so many Syrian refugees are trying desperately to gain basic human rights while fleeing their violent country. And at a time when I, after reading the book and on a trivial level, am feeling guilty about buying a better refrigerator than I needed when my old one died.The author discusses philosophy and the way society has looked at altruism, and especially at extreme “do-gooders,” those who help strangers at the expense of their own families. But alongside the theoretical, the author includes the stories of people who have trod this path. While all the stories were interesting, and some quite compelling, the first one or two felt too “she did this and then she did that” to me, more a recitation of facts than a story. However, I didn't get that feeling from some of the later stories.I did feel that the story about the family who carried adoption to an extreme was a little too long, a little too detailed.The author presents moral dilemmas, and sometimes there are no good answers, no right and wrong answers. I felt the author had strong opinions, but she didn't really go into her point of view.And, to an extent, that was a problem for me. It was hard for me to tell when the author switched from explaining another's viewpoint to speaking for herself. I had an advance ebook copy, not a finished copy, and perhaps the formatting in the published edition makes that less confusing.Altruism is, depending on society's bent at the time, accepted with open arms, open hearts, and open wallets. At other times, it is viewed as a mental illness. And truly, some of the people in this book wanted so much to do the right thing that their work does seem more like martyrdom, if not mental illness, than wanting to help.And then there is the huge question of whether help is really helping, in the grand scheme of things, or making things worse. Sometimes, the argument can be made with quite a bit of validation that altruism can make things worse.As someone who spent more than 20 years doing volunteer charitable work, but on a much, much smaller, much less self-sacrificing level than the people in this book, I found the book fascination and great food for thought. The writing was perhaps not quite the level I would have. There was a section addressing works of fiction that didn't quite seem to fit into the book for me. Nevertheless, this book is very good reading for anyone who ever wonders if they are doing enough, if they should be doing more. Or less commonly, if they should be doing less.I was given an advance reader's copy of this book in ebook format for review.
    • 4/5
      Strangers Drowning by Larissa MacFarquhar begins with the hypothetical question: “If you had to choose between saving two complete strangers of your mom from drowning, would you pick the strangers?” This concept grabs you right from the beginning. The book is a compilation of stories from people who were more than compelled to help others. Some instances so extreme, so drastic they damaged their own families. This book enlightened me in the area of idealism but also granted me the gift of knowing where to draw the line.Strangers Drowning brought to mind the conflict of the two natures featured in the bible (Romans 7: 14-20). Many of these people started with good intentions, but they lost their way and ended up going so far beyond realism, they found they couldn't stop. They abandoned wives in labor, families and even a hospital to save the life of an unborn child- All in the name of helping others! Although God was sometimes mentioned, the book was not biblically based and was not preachy. There was also no true moral to the story. It was what it was, a great telling of people with an acute sense of obligation. I appreciated the author’s writing style. MacFarquhar allowed you to come to your own conclusions and search yourself as to what you would do in each situation. I would definitely read more from this author.
    • 4/5
      Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar, author and narratorThe book addresses the do-gooders of the world, those who place the needs of others ahead of their own, those that want to bring compassion to everyone in need, those that want to save others regardless of the risk to themselves, those that do it instinctively and those that do it by choice. In short, there are several categories of do-gooders and she explains how all types of do-gooders are perceived and why. Some are ridiculed, some are pariahs, and some are occasionally honored and revered. The way they are viewed has changed over time. At one time they were abhorred as abnormal, unstable, needy, unbalanced, but today their behavior is more accepted and appreciated. Schadenfreude often played a role in judging them. Also, no one wanted Jiminy Cricket on their shoulders all the time, judging their ability to be “as good”, as they were. How much “do-gooding” was enough? The author describes all types, but concentrates on those with the ability to totally self-sacrifice even at the expense of family and friends which is at the extreme end of do-gooders. They are those that perceive their journey as noble, caring for those in greater need, greater in number, in greater pain. Throughout the book she asks a variation of this question: “Who would you save, your mother or two strangers?” In this way she segregates into separate groups, the types of do-gooders that exist. It is well researched with references, and well known scholars and professionals are quoted to back up conclusions, but none seemed hard and fast. I thought it was really well written, clear and easy to follow, but I still felt that it was a bit too scholarly in some ways and too much of an opinion piece in another. The sciences that study behavior do not necessarily have hard and fast rules or conclusions. I struggled to find a reason for the research and still am not sure what the author’s purpose was in writing this book. I feel almost as if she started out with a negative approach against people who were “extreme do-gooders”. She points out that doing good for someone else necessitated a choice of doing less for yourself, or in some cases if you helped strangers it was at the expense of your own loved ones, or perhaps the do-gooder only helped to serve their own need to help, rather than helping for the sake of the service itself. Still, what does it matter? If the person helping is getting satisfaction and the person receiving is positively affected, does the reason for doing the good works really matter?The book is based on real people, in several countries, from several different backgrounds who perform a variety of different acts of self sacrifice in the interest of helping others. In some cases, the names have been changed, but most accomplished great things, even when the results were not long lasting. Some of the efforts may seem less concerning or worthy to the reader and some of the sacrifices may seem too far fetched to be in the realm of normal behavior. Such acts like donating organs to strangers rather than relatives, taking in or adopting dozens of children and families, fighting for animal rights, the rights of chickens, starting an adoption agency, becoming a monk, living a subsistence existence, and starting a leper colony are addressed. She addresses the subject of women who love too much and codependency. Whose need are they serving, the dependent’s or the codependent’s? She even addresses the needs of some social workers who feel they must give up their own lives to help others and feel guilty if they do not. She calls them the moral delusions of aid workers. They are satisfying their own need, their own guilt, their own inability to bring balance into their life’s choices and believe they have to give up their own lives to help others because they are less deserving. Surely this might be true in some cases, but I wondered, does that lessen their self sacrifice or their accomplishments? Can you really place a negative value on someone who is doing good regardless of their reasons? Apparently some do; they view the do-gooder almost as their alter ego, the alter ego that they cannot measure up to, the alter ego judging them as failures for not being as good a do-gooder. She also addressed donors of organs to strangers. She said that sometimes the relationship between donor and recipient got complicated. She raised the question of why would someone would give up their organ to a stranger while they were alive? She said that organ donors in that category have to be psychoanalyzed before they are given permission to do so. She said that over time, the donators and organ donations have ceased being viewed as gifts from unstable donors and are viewed as more normal behaviors and contributions. She raises the issue of moral equivalents for do-gooders. Which is the greater cause, which is the better cause? Are chickens as important as humans? Are family needs greater than the needs of strangers? These are some of the questions she poses? Are aid workers self serving? Is helping a pernicious disease? Is it a choice or a need?The do-gooders in the book are of the extreme kind who put everyone and everything before their own needs. Each individual she reviewed was damaged in some way or came from damaged, dysfunctional families dealing with mental illness, alcoholism, fanaticism, and drugs. They were idealists for their own specific causes, chickens, orphans, women, lepers.As you read, I think you must accept her premise that extreme do-gooders are not happy unless they are helping others, helping those that suffer and go unnoticed. They are not simply performing acts of kindness. Their happiness and reward comes from the joy they bring to others, not from themselves or their own lives. Many eventually become aware of their own needs and modify their self-destructive behavior. They believed they were bad and had to become better. Their guilt consumed them. The idea of pseudo-altruism was introduced as opposed to sincere efforts to help as in universal altruism. It was suggested that altruism is a form of selfishness to insure one’s own survival. Some in the field of psychology equated altruism with feelings of guilt or masochism and even sadomasochism. They described the altruists as compulsive. Did they lose their sense of balance in favor of complete sacrifice working for the benefit of strangers, others, whose need they believed was greater? Were they required to give up everything in order to be good? They grappled with those kinds of questions. How much giving was enough, how much sacrifice was necessary to make life better for everyone and everything? Was it even possible? I never quite understood how these people actually supported themselves or their causes, and actually, I felt that the subject and the subjects were over analyzed. When did kindness, in any form, become something that was considered dysfunctional? I would like to pose that question to Mother Theresa, the sainted queen of “doing good”.