LUCKY SEVERSON: This is Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. The guest lecturer is Harold Mintz. He's here to talk about a subject that is easy to define but not always easy to explain -- why we sometimes do good things without expecting good things in return. It's called altruism.
HAROLD MINTZ (Lecturing to Students at Walt Whitman High School): Five years ago last month, I gave my kidney to somebody. That in itself is not that unusual. That actually happens all the time, which is a good thing. What makes this story a little bit more unusual is that I gave my kidney to someone I didn't know.
SEVERSON: His wife, Susan ...
SUSAN MINTZ (Wife of Harold Mintz): Well, we decided we would take it a step at time. And when he said he'd have to, you know, go through a battery of tests, I went, "Okay, we are in. There's no way he's going to pass the psychological test."SEVERSON: University of California political science professor Kristen Renwick Monroe started out as a political economist, but she discovered that altruism undermines the assumption that people only act out of self-interest.
Dr. KRISTEN RENWICK MONROE (Professor, Political Science, University of California, Irvine): One of the problems I have with a lot of the research in this area, particularly because there are policy consequences, is that they enshrine a kind of sanctity to self-interest. And then they say this is, you know -- greed is good; this is what we should be doing; it makes the world go 'round. And altruism is interesting because it doesn't fit that pattern.
SEVERSON: Professor Monroe has researched acts of kindness and compassion and written two books on altruism. She believes people act altruistically because of how they view themselves, how they value others, and their religious teachings. Doing good for others is a core principle of all the world's major religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. Loving your neighbor as yourself is an act of altruism. Harold Mintz says he doesn't think religion was the reason he donated his kidney. He thinks it had to do with how helpless he felt when his dad died.
Mr. MINTZ (Lecturing to Students at Walt Whitman High School): Fifteen years ago, I came home from school one day, and my dad said to me over the dinner table, "I went to the doctor today. He says I'm sick." He had cancer. From the day he came home and told us he was sick to the day he passed was five weeks. I guess the whole frustration of having nothing that I could do to help save my father, and yet there's so many people that are dying when you know exactly what to do to save them.
SEVERSON: When Harold Mintz said he was giving a kidney to a person he didn't know, some thought it was more a selfish act than an act of altruism.
(To Mr. Mintz): When your friends and acquaintances found out what you were doing, did some of them think you were either crazy, a, or b, irresponsible?
Mr. MINTZ: All the above. I had friends who think it's wonderful. I've had friends who were angry at me for making the decision to do that, who said, "You shouldn't do that. How can you do that to your family?"SEVERSON: But the family, including their daughter Hayley, gave him their blessing.
HAYLEY MINTZ: My dad has only one kidney. My mom has two.
SEVERSON: Sometimes altruism is not the act of one individual, but of many. Consider the farming village of Le Chambon in southern France during World War II. Over a four-year period, 5,000 Protestant Christians sheltered about the same number of Jews from the Nazis and almost certain death. Hilde and Jean Hillebrand could never forget, nor completely understand, the selfless generosity of the people of Le Chambon.
HILDE HILLEBRAND (From Documentary, WEAPONS OF THE SPIRIT) (Speaking in French): They really did something. They risked their lives.
JEAN HILLEBRAND (From Documentary, WEAPONS OF THE SPIRIT) (Speaking in French): They hid us in their farms. They knew the police were near.
Ms. HILLEBRAND: They said we were cousins, relatives.
Mr. HILLEBRAND: They put themselves in danger, taking every risk.
SEVERSON: This was altruism on a grand scale, and Professor Monroe says it happened in part because the people of Le Chambon identified with the persecuted Jews.
Dr. MONROE: The Chambons were Protestant Huguenots. They had been persecuted. They had a memory of that. And one of the theories that people talk about is that you understand what it's like to be in another person's place. You have a kind of empathic involvement with another human being that makes you feel what it is like to be them.SEVERSON: Le Chambon's spiritual leader was Pastor André Trocmé, a pacifist whose resistance stemmed from biblical teachings. In this documentary, WEAPONS OF THE SPIRIT, Pastor Trocme's daughter reads from a sermon he gave to the congregation.
PASTOR TROCMÉ'S DAUGHTER (Reading from Sermon): The duty of Christians is to resist whenever our adversaries will demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the gospel. We will do so without fear, but also without pride and without hate.
Ms. COWART: I remember my brain racing, trying to calculate, "How do I protect myself?" And then realizing there's nothing -- there's nothing you can do. It's a moment that's almost impossible to put into words, but it was a feeling of, "Take me."
Ms. COWART: The way we were -- people were running in to sacrifice themselves for others. It was like a huge revelation of how precious we are to each other, even total strangers. To me that is where God was in this.
Mr. MINTZ: What's not fair to say is I didn't benefit. I benefit immensely from it. My head feels much better. My heart feels much better because what I did worked.
