Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help
- ISBN-10
- 1101925043
- ISBN-13
- 9781101925041
- Series
- Strangers Drowning
- Category
- Philosophy
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2015
- Author
- Larissa MacFarquhar
Description
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 lifesaving 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.
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Other editions
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- 2016-09-27
- 336 pages
- Paperback
- Penguin
-
- 2015-09-29
- 336 pages
- Ebook
- Penguin
-
- 2015
- 338 pages
- Paperback
- Penguin Press HC
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