When Personal Responsibility Becomes Tangible

One of the biggest issues that underlies the problem we face is the belief that we cannot act alone, or that when we something it “isn’t my problem”, however the recent Foreign Policy article China’s Missing Children highlights the role of the individual, the personal.

More specifically, the respnsibility that exists at the individual level to act.

Dealing with the kidnapping of children in China’s rural areas, the article highlights just how hard it is for these families to find their lost children once they have entered the system.

However, it was on the last page of the article where one parent (whose son was kidnapped) speaks to the culture of silence within their own community, that the importance of personal responsibility stands out:

“My son will never know he was kidnapped and purchased,” Mr. Liu says. “In our hometown, when people buy wives, no one says anything. No one talks. Our child was too young to understand what happened to him; when he grows up he won’t understand that it’s all fake.”

It is a system that took his son, but at the same time he has himself allowed to exist by allowing the daughters of others (in his hometown) be sold into other families, and it is here where I personally believe changes need to be made.

The problems can not be left solely to the market, or to governments, to be solved. Citizens need to begin actively (and constructively) engaging within the issues that are faced (kidnapping and otherwise).

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