Abrielle Johnson
Mrs. Waterman
Honors American Lit.
5/12/2022
“Empathy is the medicine the world needs,”(Judith Orloff). For the longest time one of the biggest questions about humanity is whether or not humans are truly evil. Though human beings have done many wrongful and immoral things throughout history that doesn’t mean they are all truly egoistic on the inside. The belief that humans are naturally altruistic but learn to be egoistic is an unpopular one, but with enough research and evidence there may be signs that humans are not that bad, deep down, after all.
Before jumping into main examples of altruism in the human race, there needs to be an explanation as to why there is very little of it in the first place. The main thing that prevents honorable acts from people is fear. There are many reasons people act rationally and inhumanly, but the number one root to it all is fearfulness. In Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, it talks a lot about how fear controls people and their actions. In this novel, there is a boy and his father trying to survive in a post apocalyptic era. There is a part in the story where their supplies get stolen and the father resorts to stripping the thief down and leaving him with nothing on the road. The boy gets upset and wants to know why his father has acted so harshly towards someone else just trying to survive, “The man squatted and looked at him. I’m scared, he said. Do you understand? I’m scared,”(McCarthy 259). This is proof that apprehension in others can lead them to do terrible things in order to survive. Another example of this is in Nathanial Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter. In this novel there is a minister named Dimmsdale who impregnates a woman who he is not married to. Of course this is a sin at the time of the Puritans so he ends up keeping it a secret that he was the man she had relations with, making her go through the resentment from society alone. He would rather keep his sin a secret than face the consequences the society will have waiting for him. As an act of fear, he refuses to do what is right. One character in the novel who really expresses altruistic traits is the woman he got pregnant.
One of the most common and wholesome examples of empathy is parents caring for their kids. Of course not all parents are perfect, but everyone has at least had one parent figure take care of them in a time of need. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester is the woman Dimmsdale ends up impregnating. Instead of treating the child like the reason for her downfall, Hester still continues to treat her daughter with love. Even though because of this child, Hester is an outcast from society, she still cares for her and wants the best for her. This idea also leads back to The Road, and how the father did everything he could to keep his son not just alive, but from the horrors that might await him if he gets kidnapped or caught by cults. There was one very chilling line in this novel that should be shared, “Shh. No crying. Do you hear me? You know how to do it. You put it in your mouth and point it up. Do it quick and hard. Do you understand,”(McCarthy 113). This was a quote the man was telling his son while they were being hunted by some bad people. The father would rather have his son kill himself than be caught by them and from the context the readers get from these “bad people” in the book, this thought does pretty much seem necessary for the boy to do rather than suffer the consequences. This also connects to a mother in another novel called, Beloved, by Toni Morrison. In this novel, there is a woman named Sethe and she is a slave in the earlier days of America. She gives birth to a child while a slave named, Beloved. And rather than having this child grow up in the horrible life of slavery, she kills her newly born baby, ”Because the truth was simple… she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them coming and recognized schoolteacher’s hat, she heard wings. Little hummingbirds stuck their needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe. And the hummingbird wings beat on,”(Morrison, ch. 17). These are both significant acts of love and altruism in parents. It may seem like a harsh way to treat your children on the outside, but these parents are coming from a place of love and just want what every parent wants, which is the best for their children. It is not only parents doing altruistic acts in this world though.
After covering family, and how they seem to always look out for each other, what about just people looking out for people in general? This is something that rarely happens since everyone is so afraid of each other and the egoistic shell they’ve all built on themselves. Still, even in this society that is so hooked on the egoistic mask, people still stand up for each other and find ways to be caring for each other. Instead of staying on the topic of books, here are some very real life examples of people showing compassion and risking it all for the safety of others. During 9/11, there were a group of firefighters helping people evacuate one of the buildings after the first tower was hit. There was an old woman amongst the group and she was not in a great situation, “When they came upon Harris, she was worn out and moving very slowly the men agreed. ‘We made it to the fourth floor (with her) and she was so tired, she couldn’t support her own weight anymore, and she fell to the ground and she was telling us to leave her,” Jonas said. “We weren’t gonna leave her,’”(Brian Dakks). Instead of just leaving this woman behind, the men did everything they could, risking their very own lives and safety to save this random woman they had no connection to. Another example of heroism is nurses. During the 1980’s-1990’s, there was an aids/HIV pandemic thought of as “the gay cancer”, since so many gay men contracted it. Around the early 90’s a lesbian nurse, Flick, started working for the dying patients. She said that she saw herself in them and did a very honorable thing for them, “‘We would plan the most elaborately fun funerals. They would know what they wanted to wear in the coffin and they would want doves released in the garden. It was always fabulously gay. Some of these things went terribly wrong. I remember trying to dress a dead body in a rubber S&M suit… it was really difficult,’”(Cydney Yeates). It’s not often that back then people would respect and go out of their way for gay people and Flicks, along with many other nurses and doctors did just those things at the time. Lastly, a more recent example is the Covid pandemic. This trying time in life has really put many things in perspective and also brought the worst, but mostly the best in people to help and engage in keeping the community healthy. “Doctors and nurses—as well as members of less heralded professions, such as custodians, grocery-store clerks, and home health aides—have assumed personal risk of infection and death. And the extraordinarily rapid development of vaccines and medicines to treat COVID-19 has reflected an extensive and generous sharing of knowledge by scientists around the world, as well as the volunteerism of study participants,”(Nicholas A. Christakis). With this pandemic forcing everyone to come together and focus on the solution at hand people have definitely changed a lot of egoistic point of views after the incident.
Human beings are born altruistic. It is the egoistic ways that are learned for survival. But take all the survival stuff away for a second. If people had to stop constantly fending for their lives, wouldn’t they be a lot more peaceful for the most part? There are many examples to prove people’s good sides from parents all the way to random people helping one another. It is true there is more evil than good in this world, but with enough hope and kindness to one another there is still a day where humans may see a peaceful future if they are all willing to break the shell.
Works Cited:
It’s A Sin: LGBT+ nurses remember anger and sadness of HIV/Aids crisis | Metro News
Selflessness Alone Can’t Fight the Pandemic – The Atlantic
I like this piece although I was on the opposition side of the debate. I like that you could explain how people could think humans are egoistic but are really altruistic.
This was an interesting read as it enlightened me to a different side of the perspective of altruism vs egoism.
Really well articulated essay!
I think the only place it struggles is in transitions between paragraphs and between points in the same paragraph. Very minor tho.