WEBVTT

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There's a man out there, somewhere,

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who looks a little bit
like the actor Idris Elba,

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or at least he did 20 years ago.

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I don't know anything else about him,

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except that he once saved my life

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by putting his own life in danger.

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This man ran across four lanes of freeway
traffic in the middle of the night

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to bring me back to safety

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after a car accident
that could have killed me.

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And the whole thing
left me really shaken up, obviously,

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but it also left me with this
kind of burning, gnawing need

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to understand why he did it,

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what forces within him
caused him to make the choice

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that I owe my life to,

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to risk his own life
to save the life of a stranger?

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In other words, what are the causes of his
or anybody else's capacity for altruism?

NOTE Paragraph

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But first let me tell you what happened.

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That night, I was 19 years old

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and driving back to my home
in Tacoma, Washington,

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down the Interstate 5 freeway,

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when a little dog
darted out in front of my car.

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And I did exactly
what you're not supposed to do,

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which is swerve to avoid it.

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And I discovered why
you're not supposed to do that.

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I hit the dog anyways,

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and that sent the car into a fishtail,

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and then a spin across the freeway,

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until finally it wound up
in the fast lane of the freeway

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faced backwards into oncoming traffic

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and then the engine died.

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And I was sure in that moment
that I was about to die too,

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but I didn't

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because of the actions
of that one brave man

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who must have made the decision

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within a fraction of a second
of seeing my stranded car

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to pull over and run
across four lanes of freeway traffic

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in the dark

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to save my life.

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And then after he got my car working again

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and got me back to safety
and made sure I was going to be all right,

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he drove off again.

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He never even told me his name,

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and I'm pretty sure
I forgot to say thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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So before I go any further,

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I really want to take a moment

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to stop and say thank you
to that stranger.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

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I tell you all of this

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because the events of that night changed
the course of my life to some degree.

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I became a psychology researcher,

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and I've devoted my work to understanding
the human capacity to care for others.

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Where does it come from,
and how does it develop,

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and what are the extreme forms
that it can take?

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These questions are really important
to understanding basic aspects

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of human social nature.

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A lot of people,
and this includes everybody

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from philosophers
and economists to ordinary people

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believe that human nature
is fundamentally selfish,

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that we're only ever really motivated
by our own welfare.

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But if that's true, why do some people,
like the stranger who rescued me,

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do selfless things,
like helping other people

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at enormous risk and cost to themselves?

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Answering this question

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requires exploring the roots
of extraordinary acts of altruism,

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and what might make people
who engage in such acts

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different than other people.

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But until recently, very little work
on this topic had been done.

NOTE Paragraph

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The actions of the man who rescued me

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meet the most stringent
definition of altruism,

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which is a voluntary, costly behavior

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motivated by the desire
to help another individual.

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So it's a selfless act
intended to benefit only the other.

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What could possibly
explain an action like that?

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One answer is compassion, obviously,

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which is a key driver of altruism.

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But then the question becomes,

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why do some people
seem to have more of it than others?

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And the answer may be that the brains
of highly altruistic people

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are different in fundamental ways.

NOTE Paragraph

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But to figure out how,

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I actually started from the opposite end,

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with psychopaths.

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A common approach to understanding
basic aspects of human nature,

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like the desire to help other people,

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is to study people
in whom that desire is missing,

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and psychopaths are exactly such a group.

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Psychopathy is a developmental disorder

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with strongly genetic origins,

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and it results in a personality
that's cold and uncaring

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and a tendency to engage in antisocial
and sometimes very violent behavior.

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Once my colleagues and I
at the National Institute of Mental Health

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conducted some of the first ever
brain imaging research

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of psychopathic adolescents,

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and our findings, and the findings
of other researchers now,

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have shown that people
who are psychopathic

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pretty reliably exhibit
three characteristics.

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First, although they're not generally
insensitive to other people's emotions,

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they are insensitive to signs
that other people are in distress.

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And in particular,

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they have difficulty recognizing
fearful facial expressions like this one.

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And fearful expressions convey
urgent need and emotional distress,

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and they usually elicit
compassion and a desire to help

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in people who see them,

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so it makes sense that people
who tend to lack compassion

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also tend to be insensitive to these cues.

NOTE Paragraph

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The part of the brain

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that's the most important
for recognizing fearful expressions

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is called the amygdala.

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There are very rare cases of people
who lack amygdalas completely,

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and they're profoundly impaired
in recognizing fearful expressions.

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And whereas healthy adults and children

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usually show big spikes
in amygdala activity

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when they look at fearful expressions,

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psychopaths' amygdalas
are underreactive to these expressions.

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Sometimes they don't react at all,

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which may be why they have
trouble detecting these cues.

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Finally, psychopaths' amygdalas
are smaller than average

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by about 18 or 20 percent.

NOTE Paragraph

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So all of these findings
are reliable and robust,

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and they're very interesting.

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But remember that my main interest

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is not understanding
why people don't care about others.

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It's understanding why they do.

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So the real question is,

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could extraordinary altruism,

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which is the opposite of psychopathy

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in terms of compassion
and the desire to help other people,

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emerge from a brain that is also
the opposite of psychopathy?

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A sort of antipsychopathic brain,

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better able to recognize
other people's fear,

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an amygdala that's more reactive
to this expression

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and maybe larger than average as well?

NOTE Paragraph

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As my research has now shown,

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all three things are true.

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And we discovered this

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by testing a population
of truly extraordinary altruists.

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These are people who have given
one of their own kidneys

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to a complete stranger.

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So these are people who have volunteered
to undergo major surgery

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so that one of their own
healthy kidneys can be removed

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and transplanted into a very ill stranger

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that they've never met and may never meet.

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"Why would anybody do this?"
is a very common question.

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And the answer may be

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that the brains of these
extraordinary altruists

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have certain special characteristics.

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They are better at recognizing
other people's fear.

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They're literally better at detecting
when somebody else is in distress.

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This may be in part because their amygdala
is more reactive to these expressions.

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And remember, this is the same part
of the brain that we found

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was underreactive
in people who are psychopathic.

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And finally, their amygdalas
are larger than average as well,

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by about eight percent.

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So together, what these data suggest

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is the existence of something
like a caring continuum in the world

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that's anchored at the one end
by people who are highly psychopathic,

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and at the other by people
who are very compassionate

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and driven to acts of extreme altruism.

NOTE Paragraph

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But I should add that what makes
extraordinary altruists so different

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is not just that they're
more compassionate than average.

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They are,

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but what's even more unusual about them

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is that they're compassionate
and altruistic

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not just towards people
who are in their own innermost circle

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of friends and family. Right?

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Because to have compassion for people
that you love and identify with

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is not extraordinary.

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Truly extraordinary altruists' compassion
extends way beyond that circle,

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even beyond their wider
circle of acquaintances

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to people who are outside
their social circle altogether,

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total strangers,

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just like the man who rescued me.

NOTE Paragraph

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And I've had the opportunity now
to ask a lot of altruistic kidney donors

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how it is that they manage to generate
such a wide circle of compassion

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that they were willing to give
a complete stranger their kidney.

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And I found it's a really difficult
question for them to answer.

NOTE Paragraph

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I say, "How is it that
you're willing to do this thing

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when so many other people don't?

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You're one of fewer than 2,000 Americans

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who has ever given a kidney to a stranger.

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What is it that makes you so special?"

NOTE Paragraph

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And what do they say?

NOTE Paragraph

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They say, "Nothing.

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There's nothing special about me.

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I'm just the same as everybody else."

NOTE Paragraph

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And I think that's actually
a really telling answer,

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because it suggests that the circles
of these altruists don't look like this,

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they look more like this.

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They have no center.

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These altruists literally
don't think of themselves

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as being at the center of anything,

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as being better or more inherently
important than anybody else.

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When I asked one altruist
why donating her kidney made sense to her,

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she said, "Because it's not about me."

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Another said,

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"I'm not different. I'm not unique.

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Your study here is going to find out
that I'm just the same as you."

NOTE Paragraph

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I think the best description
for this amazing lack of self-centeredness

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is humility,

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which is that quality
that in the words of St. Augustine

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makes men as angels.

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And why is that?

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It's because if there's
no center of your circle,

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there can be no inner rings
or outer rings,

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nobody who is more or less worthy
of your care and compassion

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than anybody else.

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And I think that this is what really
distinguishes extraordinary altruists

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from the average person.

NOTE Paragraph

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But I also think that this is a view
of the world that's attainable by many

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and maybe even most people.

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And I think this
because at the societal level,

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expansions of altruism and compassion
are already happening everywhere.

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The psychologist Steven Pinker
and others have shown

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that all around the world people
are becoming less and less accepting

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of suffering in ever-widening
circles of others,

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which has led to declines
of all kinds of cruelty and violence,

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from animal abuse to domestic violence
to capital punishment.

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And it's led to increases
in all kinds of altruism.

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A hundred years ago, people
would have thought it was ludicrous

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how normal and ordinary it is

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for people to donate
their blood and bone marrow

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to complete strangers today.

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Is it possible that
a hundred years from now

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people will think
that donating a kidney to a stranger

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is just as normal and ordinary

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as we think donating blood
and bone marrow is today?

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Maybe.

NOTE Paragraph

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So what's at the root
of all these amazing changes?

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In part it seems to be

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increases in wealth
and standards of living.

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As societies become
wealthier and better off,

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people seem to turn
their focus of attention outward,

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and as a result, all kinds of altruism
towards strangers increases,

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from volunteering to charitable donations
and even altruistic kidney donations.

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But all of these changes also yield

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a strange and paradoxical result,

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which is that even as the world is
becoming a better and more humane place,

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which it is,

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there's a very common perception
that it's becoming worse

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and more cruel, which it's not.

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And I don't know exactly why this is,

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but I think it may be
that we now just know so much more

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about the suffering
of strangers in distant places,

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and so we now care a lot more

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about the suffering
of those distant strangers.

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But what's clear is the kinds
of changes we're seeing show

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that the roots of altruism and compassion

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are just as much a part of human nature
as cruelty and violence,

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maybe even more so,

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and while some people do seem
to be inherently more sensitive

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to the suffering of distant others,

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I really believe that the ability
to remove oneself

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from the center of the circle

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and expand the circle of compassion
outward to include even strangers

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is within reach for almost everyone.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)