A nation without a social contract
My view of society is that we (humans) band together so that we are stronger through being able to help one another: we combine our strengths to minimize our individual weaknesses. Thus I am all for social safety nets for the poor, high-quality state-supported education for all (so that the next generation has more tools to bring to the job), and so on. This mindset leads to helping others and accepting help from others.
Modern China has a different outlook, possibly stemming from decades of turmoil, strife, and betrayals: help only those connected to you, avoid everyone else. I think this results in a weaker nation, but the US is moving in that direction from the Right, in which help is seen predicated on the ability to pay for such help from your own pocket. (That is, the Right wants to eliminate most government programs and services—particularly those that serve individual consumers and citizens and particularly those that help the poor, elderly, and other marginalized constituents.)
Here’s where that direction leads: a report by Lijia Zhang in The Guardian, via James Fallows:
Shame on us Chinese! Last Thursday a two-year-old girl was run over twice, about 100 metres from her home in a hardware market district of Foshan, a prosperous city in southern China. As she lay on the ground, writhing in pain, before being hit by the second vehicle, 18 people, on their bicycles, in cars or on foot, passed by but chose to ignore her. Among them a young woman with her own child.
Finally, a 58-year-old female rubbish collector came to the girl’s rescue, but it was too late. By the time she was brought to the hospital, the girl Yueyue, (whose name translates as Little Joy), was brain dead. She was declared dead early on Friday morning. She was a good girl, full of life, her mother said a few days ago in an interview. She said she had just brought Yueyue back from her kindergarten. She popped out to collect the dry clothes and returned to find Yueyue gone – probably trying to look for her elder brother.
It might have been a different story if one of the 18 people had lent Yueyue a hand. None even bothered to call for emergency services. Later, when interviewed by a journalist, one of the passersby, a middle-aged man riding a scooter, said with an uncomfortable smile on his face: “That wasn’t my child. Why should I bother?”
Before giving himself up to the police, the driver of the second vehicle, a van, told the media why he had run away. “If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan (£2,000). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands of yuan.” What’s wrong with these people? How could they be so cold-hearted? The horrific scene was caught by a surveillance camera and has been watched by millions of viewers since it was posted on Youku, China’s equivalent of YouTube.
This is only the latest incident where tragedy has struck as a result of the callous inactivity of onlookers. Last month an 88-year-old man fell over face down at the entrance of a vegetable market near his home. For almost 90 minutes, he was ignored by people in the busy market. After his daughter found him and called an ambulance, the old man died “because of a respiratory tract clogged by a nosebleed”. If anyone had turned him over, he might have survived.
Both cases, the death of Yueyue in particular, have provoked much public outrage and a nationwide discussion about morality in today’s China. From Shanghai, someone with the cybername 60sunsetred wrote: “The Chinese people have arrived at their most morality-free moment!” There was plenty of condemnation of the cold-heartedness of the passersby. But, astonishingly, a large percentage of posters said they understood why the onlookers did not lend a helping hand. Some admitted they would do the same – for fear of getting into trouble and fear of facing another “Nanjing judge”.
Let me explain the story of the muddle-headed Nanjing judge. In 2006, in the capital of Jiangsu province, a young man named Peng Yu helped an old woman who had fallen on the street and took her to a hospital and waited to see if the old woman was all right. Later, however, the woman and her family accused Peng of causing her fall. A judge decided in favour of the woman, based on the assumption that “Peng must be at fault. Otherwise why would he want to help?”, saying that Peng acted against “common sense”. The outcry from the public in support of Peng forced the court to adjust its verdict and resulted in Peng paying 10% of the costs instead of the total. Since that incident Peng has become a national cautionary tale: the Good Samaritan being framed by the beneficiary of their compassion.
It’s true that in China you can get into trouble when you try to help. . .
Tragic as it may be and it is indeed tragic… it is my opinion and belief that with the population reaching 7 Billion, we seem to be regressing back as a society, to tribal times. Take the economic blocs for example, NAFTA and expansion of, in the Americas. The EU bloc the Caucus. SEATO and now ASEAN being the Asians and the Africans I am sure have an economic/social Bloc but for the like of me I can’t remember it’s Acronym.
I could write a long discourse on this, pointing out the social comparisons and obvious non similarities between the Animal kingdom and us the Human but I choose not to and will leave my opinion vague and pocked with generalities.
Suffice it to say that as we regress in human behavioral characteristics the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest keeps ringing true and Buckminister Fuller’s over specialization of a species leading to extinction continues to harbor in my thoughts.
I would like to conclude with one thought provoking comment, so ponder this: How many animal species save there own, from harms way ? I am not taking about a Lioness protecting her cubs, just talking about the Pack mentality. When a social knit of animals is in harms way, then it is very seldom that we encounter the herd protecting the weak or down trodden.
When a Killer whale grabs a seal along the shore, the rest of the seals step a bit off to the side, much like when the Croc’s grab the Wilde-beast, they move off to the side …etc… etc.
Nick
25 October 2011 at 3:17 pm
It’s true that pack animals quickly go into “every animal for itself,” and though some food sharing is done with the pack—actually, quite common, along with caring for the sick, exhausted, and wounded—I’ll grant that animals have not come up with a cohesive social safety net. Nor agriculture, for that matter, which provides surplus food to free some for more than looking for the next meal. Nor have animals yet invented language, which has led to many things, including enormously socially valuable contributions from the physically frail and sickly (a long list, but pick just Newton, perhaps Beethoven as well—and Kant was frail, wasn’t he?).
Indeed, humanity has discovered that even the weak can contribute to the betterment of everyone, which is one significant advantage we have over animals. But, as you point out, we can throw it away and become as animals ourselves. That would indeed be a squalid end. I hope that we do better.
LeisureGuy
25 October 2011 at 3:52 pm
And i am sure we will, i just wonder how we will fare until the wake up call bellows out to us all. The article actually sites an interesting analogy of human behavior, that being the proximity of one to the demise of another.
i was thinking about the poor girl on the roadside, then tried to relate the indifference to her, with the thousands of Muslims in Bosnia buried in mass graves or the pieces of bodies of the Tutsi’s in Rwanda floating down the rivers of Africa.
They were of course being massacred with no one to really care, save a few western nation cabinet members sitting at weekly meetings, voicing their displeasure that no one was stopping the slaughter by the Serb’s and the Hutu’s. How many hundreds and hundreds of thousands died before world leaders thought to themselves they must act to put a stop to it.
Or the indifference towards the millions of children that die everyday to simple treatable illnesses and famine is mind boggling, when compared to a person injured on the side of a street being ignored by the populace. The social indifference rather bizarre in comparison.
I mean the question begs to be asked doesn’t it ? What’s the difference ? is it the proximity of the individual in need of help, to me or you (us) that makes the difference ? Is that what it is that makes us rest easy at night ? the thought that there was someone closer that could help ?
You see that all this makes me wonder, it really does.
Why is it that for years now the ‘Lords resistance Army’ has been brutally massacring and terrorizing the populace in central Africa (especially women) and no one in the Govt or media for that matter, have laid any interest on this until now ? Ahhh….it must be that….hidden agenda, it cries out ! screw the populace but let’s conveniently use them as an excuse for incursion !!! It’s disgusting !!
And I haven’t even touched on the PRC or Iran, I better quit while I am ahead.
Nick
25 October 2011 at 5:50 pm
Here’s a link to the LRA if you want to read the horrors of the “bible army” and this was written in 2009 – http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch-Archive/Detail/?lng=en&id=105498 (Zurich based – International relations and security network)
Nick
25 October 2011 at 6:16 pm