Opinion
“When I was a little boy,” said American TV personality Fred Rogers, “and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping’.”
I think of this every time something horrific happens, watching those who race to help, run to danger, dive into flames, speed through streets with medical supplies, labour in shattered hospitals as bombs burn overhead, line up for hours to donate blood, place their bodies over others as bullets fly, or jump into bloodied water to drag out a mate who has been savaged by a bull shark.
The helpers remind us who we are and why we go on. They are the best of us.
A 2014 study of recipients of the Carnegie Hero Medal – usually given to “extreme altruists” who have risked their lives to save or help someone – found that their actions were “overwhelmingly dominated by intuition”. Their actions were not thought through, but reflexive and almost automatic. Someone needs help, you jump in.
When Ash Bowler and Eduardo Botti were out surfing at Manly as musician Andre de Ruyter was being thrown around in the water by a large shark, there was a brief pause before they went to save him. Ash told reporters: “He started shouting ‘It’s biting me! It’s biting me! It’s eating me! It’s eating me! It’s killing me’.”
“This thing was big,” Bowler said. “It put the fear into me. Just seeing the way it shook him around … It had total control of him … In that first moment, my first instinct was to move away because I just assessed like, ‘Woah, I can’t do anything to help with that. It’s just too big’. And then there’s blood, and you get the first look at his leg … it was out of a horror movie. You do sort of go for a moment, ‘What am I risking here?’. But then when the guy says again: ‘Help, help’, it just takes over, and you do what you’ve got to do.”
Botti slid his body into the red-stained water – where the shark was – so he could place de Ruyter on his surfboard and paddle in with Bowler ahead, all screaming out for a tourniquet. The helpers quickly ran in – local surfers, off-duty nurses and doctors, paramedics, then ambulances, choppers. Andre remains in hospital in a critical condition. His lower leg has been amputated.
Another word for people who risk lives to help strangers is “extraordinary altruists”. Abigail Marsh, a psychology professor from Georgetown University who was once helped by a stranger who started her car after it stalled on a multi-lane highway, has spent years studying them. Marsh, who is also a neuroscientist, says her work has given her a staunch belief in goodness. “There’s a very pervasive belief that human nature is fundamentally selfish,” she says, “but I know for a fact that that can’t be true.“
She told Big Think Media recently: “I know that might sound strange to people who have a strong media diet of all the bad things that people do, but if you put human beings in a lab, they will spontaneously help other people, even strangers, to a degree that you don’t see among other species.”
We have in fact, she says, evolved to help bring up other people’s kids, as part of what is called an alloparental species: “If you are an anthropologist who goes around the world looking at humans in all sorts of different societies, in general, human babies are cared for by all of the adults around them, not just their parents, which is really cool because childcare is one of the most evolutionarily ancient forms of altruism. We also know that, across species, the ones that alloparent the most also tend to be the most altruistic.”
Extraordinary altruists are often ordinary people, usually unheralded.
But you’ll see a bunch of them among the Australians of the year awards this weekend. ABC presenter Jeremy Fernandez told me this week how he is regularly blown away by how humble the recipients are, many surprised to be receiving any attention at all. It’s just as Marsh describes: “They don’t tend to think that they’re special. They tend to think of themselves as just the same as anybody around them, despite the fact that they have actually done some pretty unusual things. That seems to be a really core feature of altruism because it makes sense, right? If you think you’re the most special person, why would you help somebody less special? Why would you give up things for them? Whereas if you think that everybody is equally special, helping others makes more sense.”
A 2023 study led by Shawn A. Rhoads, which Marsh was a co-author of, looked into several types of extraordinary altruists, who had performed heroic rescues, kidney or liver donations, marrow or hematopoietic stem cell donations and humanitarian aid work. They found high levels of honesty, humility, a tendency to value the welfare of others, and a lower likelihood of personal distress in emergencies. They are more likely to recognise other people’s fear and pain. Overall, their core characteristic is lack of selfishness.
What’s curious is that Marsh reckons a disproportionate number of actors seem to have done acts of great altruism. Benedict Cumberbatch leapt out of his car when he saw a delivery driver being beaten by four men with a smashed bottle, and pulled them off him. In an attempt to save his nephew from being crushed, Jeremy Renner was pulled under his own snow plough (which weighed more than 6000 kilograms), breaking more than 35 bones and watching the metal slowly grind him into the asphalt with an eyeball that had popped out of his skull. Jamie Foxx pulled a man from a burning truck that crashed outside his house in California.
I love that Marsh points out that altruists are complicated, quirky and flawed but that they also tend to be happy. In all the swirl of wellness advice, we rarely point out an obvious truth: helping other people, even strangers, can actually bring real joy.
Altruism is good for well-being. It’s a source of awe, too, when we witness the helpers.
We have seen so many examples of this kind of behaviour in Australia recently that it’s important we don’t consider altruists oddities to be placed under microscopes, whispering in astonishment: “Selflessness, my goodness, how extraordinary.”
But I do think, in this world where we see so much negativity and gracelessness, lack of trust in others and the continual lie upheld that a good life is about accumulation of wealth, not care and community, these are the people we should applaud and these are the stories we should tell.
Julia Baird is a journalist, an author and a regular columnist.
Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: how grace changes everything.Connect via Twitter, Facebook or email.
