AROUND two weeks ago in Shenzhen, a 35-year-old woman collapsed in a coma and lay on the steps of a metro exit.

Passersby and metro staff immediately called medical emergency response team and police. But none of them ventured to take other actions because they knew little about first-aid. Fifty minutes later, when medical emergency personnel arrived, she was dead.

That was tragic. But I do not know if the next case is more uplifting than tragic. On February 13 in Beijing, after accidentally knocking down an elderly man while riding a motorbike, a young migrant woman, instead of taking to her heels, sent the victim to a hospital, and vowed to take care of him.

The good Samaritan’s kindness was so unusual that she was held up as a model of superior virtue in her native town in Shanglin County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The county magistrate and his entourage even made a special trip to Beijing, expressing their admiration for her, presenting her a gift of 5,000 yuan (US$820), and promising 40,000 yuan in subsidies to her parents at home.

In short, her decision not to commit the crime of hit-and-run was such a deviation from the norm, that this aberration alone was enough to elevate her to sainthood.

These two incidents are deeply disturbing, reflecting our collective depravity. This indifference and unwillingness to help others in need stems from the many cases in which good Samaritans have been held responsible for injury to the people they helped.

 Spiritual cleanup

It is increasingly difficult to make moral assumptions about our fellows.

This is the consequence of nearly a century of systematic destruction of the traditional cultural and intellectual foundation underlying the distinctly Chinese outlook and attitudes.

Almost everyone not steeped in materialism agrees we are in dire need of redemption. Familiarity with our Confucian classics — the background of our traditions and thoughts — would probably be one answer to the problem, if the principles they contain were internalized, preferably at an early age.

Recently our top leadership has asserted the importance of traditional culture in the cultivation of socialist core values. But some effort is needed to make room for traditions in an age inundated with information.

Spearheading the effort should be a cleanup initiative, aimed at creating an environment favorable for the spread of traditional values.

Most of the people I meet are genuinely concerned about the toxic smog plaguing sizable parts of eastern and northern China. Some would take alarm at the mention of food safety scandals, but they appear very indifferent to their spiritual fare. Many are little aware how impoverished they are in this respect, how in need of sustenance they are.

An average urban resident might not hesitate to splurge a hundred yuan on junk food, but how many of them have ever thought of spending that amount on a book, a real book?

As a result, KFC, McDonald’s and other fast-food franchises are like wild fire, even in backwater, third-rate counties, while it is increasingly difficult to find a bookstore in downtown Shanghai.

In the anonymity of urban life, individuals, so long as they move within legal constraints, are not subject to any surveillance. In this private sphere, we  no longer care about our salvation or our meaningful participation in society. The real sense of neighborhood and community is facing extinction.

In contrast with traditional rural societies where there used to be little privacy, many urban residents today derive their biggest satisfaction from the gratification of their private pleasures in their private conditions.

That privacy or insularity is one condition of being “civilized.”

And rural areas are quickly being civilized. Following stepped-up rural transformation, more and more rural residents are housed in insulated, multistory apartment buildings that discourage casual neighborly visits.

Extended family and clanship are old fashioned. Some of the biggest pleasures are derived from television.

People feel more comfortable with their mindless and effortless consumption of soup operas, sitcoms, talent shows, “super girls,” idols, and so on, and this crudely fashioned entertainment reinforces their isolation from their fellow citizens and the real world. In 2011 alone, 469 TV dramas totaling 14,942 episodes were produced in China, most of them so poorly made that they were never aired.

While we condemn those responsible for food safety scandals, we are surprisingly permissive when it comes to makers of shoddy spiritual goods.

The number of TV dramas imported from overseas is equally impressive.

Xu Qinsong, dean of the Guangdong Academy of Painting, over the weekend criticized the recent fever for Korean TV dramas. He suggested they are damaging to our cultural dignity and indicative of a lack of cultural confidence on our part.

Cultural confidence

This lack of confidence is just one consequence of nearly a century of systematic denigration and demonization of traditional Chinese values.

But these are the milder symptoms of a worsening malaise, for generally we assume adults to be responsible for their own private conditions.

On Monday, Wenhui Daily reported about a village in Lufeng, Guangdong Province, which had become prosperous after becoming a den for drug traffickers and narcotics producers.

Primary school students in that village used to be profitably employed in the drug business during their summer holidays, but on a recent trip a reporter saw several children aged seven or eight gathered around a slot machine.

What can we expect from their adulthood if they are allowed to abandon themselves in this criminal indulgences as kids? Where are the collective supervision and restraints that used to be strong in rural China?

The triumph and glorification of the market forces have made money the sole test of success in life. In a much-anticipated transformation, the market appears to be the litmus test of the worth of culture.

In this transformation we are unknowingly robbed of the inner light that once connected us to our sages and forefathers, that once made us respectful and respected.

The good Samaritan and non-Samaritan examples cited at the beginning of this article attest to the need of acquainting our citizens with our values. Policy makers should make systemic efforts to redeem the inner lives our citizens from the pervasive vacuity purveyed in the name of “culture.”

Redeem some of our public spaces — streets, metro stations, bus stops — from the clamor of advertising.

Ideally, we should establish a national public radio or television network whose primary aim is to educate and inform, rather than mindlessly entertain.