Week Three - Chapters 4, 5, 6, & 7

While doing the assigned reading for this week, I was immediately struck by the amount of social inequalities that still continue to exist in our modern world today.  Both at home and abroad, the media constantly reminds us of stereotypes that reaffirm our class using our perceived education, the color of our skin, and our occupations.  With the exception of the few and far between “Cinderella stories” many cultures, like ours, continue to allow perceived labels to dictate our thoughts and actions.  While some cultures are considered more advanced then others when it comes to social hierarchies, the recent events in China really illustrate a point that is not being broadcasted enough.

A mere forty-eight hours ago the Wall Street Journal reported that, “A newborn’s cries… in a residential building in eastern China led to a tenant to a startling discovery; a baby boy trapped in a sewage pipe beneath a squat toilet.”  What is it that continues to feed the Confucian ideology of a preference over men to women?  Even today, China has a strict one child policy that reinforces the belief that it is better to have a son over a daughter.  Had the trapped infant been a female would such efforts to rescue and save her life have taken place?  China’s “family planning policy” has been in practice for over thirty years and shows no signs of discontinuing.

We still do not know if there were other social factors involved that caused this young woman to abandon her own child.  Was her mother an unmarried peasant, “untouchable” in China or a modern day “Brahmin” who did not feel compelled to lower her social status to that of a commoner?

Then we can factor in religion.  Given that Taoism is one of the major religions of modern China and that Taoism got its roots from the Dao religion, where would the attempted murder of your own child fall within the ways of nature?  As stated in the text, Daoism called for a limited government.  While not trying to abjectly fight the government could we not assume that there might have been some moral imperatives that would have allowed the mother of this child to rethink her own values and what statement her actions would make?

Nonetheless, our world still focuses on the things that we apparently value the most… money, prestige, and social standing.  Ask any teenager today what the name of Mother Teresa’s child was.