Bongo

In his immortal masterpiece The Master and Margarita, the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov describes the aftermath of a ball given by Satan, who is visiting Stalinist Moscow. The heroine of the tale, Margarita, who becomes a witch as a result of her and her lover’s misfortune, is requested by the Prince of Darkness to be his Queen during this ball. She consents, hoping to help her beloved Master, incarcerated in a psychiatric clinic. However, during the ball Margarita the Queen inadvertently gives hope to a young woman who has killed her child using a scarf. Her eternal punishment had been to be given this scarf every night, as a reminder of her sin. Margarita, consumed by compassion for her suffering, asks her host to stop tormenting the young woman, instead of asking him to save her Master. She knows very well that she can ask for one favour only. Still, she asks for the young woman’s release. The dialogue between Satan and one of his servants, Behemoth, which follows Margarita’s altruistic decision to forgo her own reward, is enlightening.

“Since the possibility of you being bribed by this fool is totally excluded as incompatible with your Royal status, the only thing left is to use rugs,” said Messir Voland slowly, looking at Margarita with interest.

“Precisely!” exclaimed Behemoth irritably. “We’ll have to get old rugs and stuff them into cracks under the door, to make sure that it does not squeeze in!”

“What in the name of darkness are you talking about?” asked Margarita.

“I am talking about compassion,” explained Maestro Voland.

This delightful novel, which Bulgakov did not live to see published, describes altruism with the elegance and masterful understatement of the truly talented.

In his book The Wisdom of the Ego, George E. Vaillant has said: “Altruism, the mature ego-defence mechanism common in human discourse, is one of the most fascinating of the four—humour, repression, altruism and sublimation.”

Humour is an attempt to laugh off the unpleasant, the ugly and potentially destructive, not taking it seriously, not allowing it (whatever it is) to dominate one’s life. Example: in the television series M.A.S.H., a group of madcap doctors run amok with gags and practical jokes in the midst of the Korean War.

Repression is a process of wrapping an unpleasant or destabilising memory, knowledge or information into a cloak of forgetfulness and putting it away in the farthest recesses of one’s mind, quietly hoping that time will erase it completely. Example: rape memory.

Sublimation is a process whereby a pressing need or activity is replaced by another need or activity. Example: the replacement of sex by a sporting or business achievement.

Now we come to altruism, the king of ego-defence mechanisms. The classical view of altruism is an act or a process culminating in another person’s benefit, without tangible reward for the altruistic person. Seemingly, there is not much further to say —a genuinely good person decides or is expected by society to do a good deed and does it. Without a reward. Altruistically. But what makes a person do something for another without reward or benefit? Goodness of heart? Expectation of reward in a better world? The unspoken, counter-transferential earning of gratitude from another person as an affirmation of one’s human worth?

Machiavelli, the supreme realist, warned a hypothetical ruler against expecting gratitude from his subjects; Joseph Stalin, master puppeteer of individual humans and nations, dismissed altruism as a bourgeois weakness and regarded gratitude as a dog’s virtue; Ayn Rand, tirelessly extolling the virtues of independent thinking, selfishness and self-reliance, regarded altruistic impulses as a society’s imposition on unwilling individuals, and counselled intellectual resistance.

What makes altruism so divisive and controversial? Why in many instances is altruism regarded as stupidity, a weakness and a call for manipulation, while in as many instances altruism is celebrated as the most precious, most humane (and human) capacity to make our world a better place?

The notion of altruism as an activity without reward is a misunderstanding. There is a reward. This reward is a positive feeling about oneself. The following vignette demonstrates the rewards of altruism. 

Some years ago I was working as a psychiatric registrar in the Melbourne Assessment Prison, on the outskirts of the CBD. A new, shiny building, elegant see-through doors, magnetic door locks, smiling guards, well-equipped gym, scientifically formulated food, separate showers and, not surprisingly, a multitude of depressed, angry and scared young and not so young men, milling aimlessly around in the overpopulated exercise yard. I was busy treating all sorts of psychiatric emergencies, including self-harm and suicide attempts.

One day my ears were ringing from the clanging of every prison door. It was the aftermath of an amazing love story. A prison guard had helped her prisoner lover to escape by blowing up a prison wall with a stick of dynamite. Needless to say, the story ended disastrously for both of them.

The prison atmosphere that day was more tense than usual. Guards did not smile, everybody was searched (frisked, in the prison argot), prisoners’ movements were restricted, and I did not have the usual number of patients. It gave me an opportunity to spend more time with those who were able to make it to my tiny office.

A doctor is one of the few people prisoners trust inside the prison walls, so working in the prison did not usually worry me. But that day, as soon as Bongo came in, I felt as if I did not have enough air to breathe; he was so huge that his body seemed to displace the air from the room. He was wearing the usual prison uniform—green two-piece combo with T-shirt underneath. His face, framed by long matted hair, was unemotional, as though he was wearing a mask. At first he stood without moving, staring forward, as though reading the poster on the wall, which extolled the virtues of safe sex and clean needles. He slowly looked around, noticed me cowering in the corner, and smiled sadly. He sat, and the chair creaked under his weight. He stared into my eyes with a strange mixture of fear, sadness, challenge and aggression.

“Quit shittin’ yourself, doc,” he said. “I’m here to talk.”

I resumed breathing. After a pregnant pause, he said, “I’m scared, doc.”

I looked at him with interest and, at last, without fear. It was an unheard-of opening for a tough prisoner.

“I am afraid my boy will turn out the way I did,” said Bongo, and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. He had been holding out for so long that when the tears came, he was unable to stop them. His immense body shook, heart-rending sobs exploded like a deep-sea fish rapidly taken to the surface; he struck the concrete wall with fists the size of a child’s head, making it shake. This bear of a man was howling, just like a helpless child, deserted by everyone, afraid of the dark and menacing world.

I sat quietly, not wanting to interfere with the catharsis unfolding in front of my eyes.

The story Bongo told was typical for a fatherless boy. He told me about the rapid sequence of men in his mother’s life, about the physical and sexual abuse in the succession of foster homes he had found himself in as a boy. He told me about bullying others at school, angry that they had loving parents and he had no one who cared whether he lived or died. He told me about his drug and alcohol abuse, the feeling of not being wanted by anyone, and the petty crime he was involved in as a boy.

Most of all, he told me about the overflowing anger and violence. When the violence came, Bongo would not feel the pain, nor would he later remember what happened. He had lost count of the times he had been in prison, and it had not particularly worried him. Until recently.

Several weeks before his last arrest, his former girlfriend had told him he had a four-year-old son. He went to see the boy and the sight of his own child shook him to the core. Bongo tried to shrug off the unfamiliar feelings of tenderness and protectiveness. That day he went on a drunken binge, his usual way to cope with the complexities of life. Despite drinking himself almost to a delirium, Bongo, for the first time in his thirty-five-year long and empty life realised that there was a human being he, Bongo, had given life to. Thinking of himself as someone’s father scared the living daylights out of him.

His arrest came almost as a relief. He was happy to be back in the familiar prison environment, where he did not have to think, knew the system well and was feared by the others.

He was constantly furious at what he perceived as his weakness, because he did not want to think about the little smiling boy, his hugs, and his tiny voice, gently calling him “Daddy”. All his life’s experience had taught him that weakness is dangerous, that others would inevitably take advantage of it. He did not want the responsibility for another human life, thinking, “Why should I? Nobody looked after me when I was a kid.” It did not help. Another thought slowly made its way gradually, like a bubble floating up through molasses, until it surfaced in his mind: “I turned out bad because nobody looked after me.” The thought was a revelation. Until this moment, for his whole life he had avoided thinking about love.

Bongo instinctively knew that it was the truth and it devastated him, opening old resentments, emotional pain and anger. He was frank and insightful enough to ask himself, “OK. Your parents screwed up. They did not look after you the way they should have. What did you do to change it, when you realised that your life was buggered, except keep screwing up your own and other people’s lives?”

When I heard what he had to say, I was speechless. For a man like Bongo, accepting responsibility for his own life was an immensely difficult task.

After an excruciating inner struggle, he concluded that no matter what, he would not let his own childhood happen to his little boy. It was not easy. He was not used to thinking, and each thought was an event to be celebrated or feared. The same went for his feelings—he had never considered anyone else, only himself. The change in thought and feelings was new, different, and scary.

He sat in my tiny office, telling me that he was afraid that people like him are born bad. Bongo thought his boy would have no chance of a better life, because being bad was his destiny. When I reassured him that this was not so, he became happy and talkative.

With tremendous effort, visibly tensing up when the new thought paradigm became especially challenging, he continued: 

I reckon, Doc, if my kid will turn out bad it won’t be me fault, ’cause I’ll do all I can for him. I’ll play with him, I’ll teach him things. Oh no, doc, not the stuff you’re thinking, but the good stuff, like fishing, bike riding, fixing things. I’m good at fixing things. You’ll see. I’ve got to teach meself to be a good dad. Like, I’ll help out those wankers who can’t fight back in Bluestone College, that’s the start. After thinking ’bout me boy I can’t watch them suckers being kicked around, doin’ nothin’. I’ll stick up for ’em. 

He was referring to physically weak prisoners, who were in danger of being physically or sexually attacked in prison. “Bluestone College” was a name given to Melbourne’s Pentridge prison by the Aboriginal prisoners.

I sat spellbound, watching the beginning of humanity and altruism in a man whose childhood had been so damaging that he had evolved into a hardened criminal. The innocent love of his first-born had given this dangerously violent man a chance to experience fatherhood, to give and receive love. I saw a man, frightening to look at, doing time in prison for the violent crimes he had committed, who had experienced the revelation of being loved by a child simply because he was his father. 

It took me some weeks of hard thinking to come to the conclusion that Bongo and the little boy deserved to be together; weighing the crimes the man had committed against the chance, perhaps the only chance Bongo would ever have, that fatherhood would stop him from being a criminal. The little boy needed the father, if he was to grow in peace. I wrote a letter to the Parole Board, pleading for a chance for both.

Was I taken in by a hardened criminal, well-versed in exploiting other people’s altruistic gullibility? The doubts remained for a long time. Bongo was released on parole, under strict conditions. Last time I saw him, a few years later, I called him by his real name, we shook hands and smiled at each other. His son was with him. I watched the little boy, with his school bag almost bigger than him, riding his Dad’s shoulders, screaming with delight.

At last, Bongo was at peace with himself and with the world. The anger was no more. The child’s love extinguished the fire which was threatening to destroy the man and his world. Unconsciously, unknowingly, the man used altruism to make him feel better about himself by protecting defenceless prisoners from prison yard predators. By doing that, by using altruism, he convinced himself that he was worthy of his son’s love.