Beyond the call of duty: the kindness of strangers is a pleasing mystery

When I applied to medical school, an experienced doctor offered me some advice: ‘Don’t give them reason to think you’re a “wounded healer”. They’re suspicious of that.’ The term is Carl Jung’s, by which he meant that personal difficulty is a powerful spur for joining a caring profession, but the results of such motivations are not always constructive. If you appear too altruistic, questions may surface about whether you might, in some way, be damaged.

So what about those people who don’t just do their job, but dedicate their lives to helping others? The New Yorker staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar examines our ambivalence about goodness in her brilliantly thoughtful new book. Heroes, Pollyannas, saints, sentimentalists, killjoys, people-pleasers, martyrs, call them what you will, Strangers Drowning interweaves the history and philosophy of altruism with real-life stories of ‘do-gooders’ whose urge to serve goes beyond the call of duty. Many of MacFarquhar’s characters planned to become doctors or nurses, but then chose to do something greater.