A small piece in a newspaper last week might have gone almost unnoticed even though it speaks volumes about what humanity is all about.

A girl in Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, broke up with her boyfriend. Nothing newsworthy, one may assume. Hundreds of thousands of girls and boys do that for personal reasons every day. But this Harbin girl is different. She felt betrayed not as a girlfriend, but as a person.

After seeing him deliberately give the wrong directions to an old woman, she ran after her, apologized for the boy's behaviour and showed her the right way. Having completed her duty, she returned to the boy and bid him the final adieu.

Morality is what many would say drove her to take the decision. Others would call it altruism. But perhaps her action goes beyond the realm of ethics.

As we know, morality deals with right and wrong. We also refer to it as moral values values that are shared within a cultural, religious, secular, humanist or philosophical community, as well as the codes of behaviour or conduct derived from these systems. In personal morality, an individual has the desire to conform to the behaviour of a group to which he or she belongs or aspires to belong.

But the Harbin girl is part of today's global society, where personal benefits, many believe, far outweigh the greater good. In breaking up with her boyfriend, she in fact suffered a personal loss, not in material terms but definitely on the emotional level. Most of her peers would jeer at her for doing what she did.

Altruism, on the other hand, is the practice of placing others before oneself. But she didn't place all "others" before herself. A true altruist would have given the old woman the right directions and scolded the boy, but would never have subjected him to the ultimate humiliation. Altruism is truly distinguishable from a feeling of duty and loyalty. It is all about helping others or wanting to do something good without reward, which she did. But she was also clearly driven by a sense of duty and loyalty her duty towards the old woman and her loyalty to herself. And despite her youth, she exhibited both.

Did ethics have anything to do with her decision? Philosophers have spent much of the past two decades trying to figure out why our traditional understanding of ethical theory has come under attack on several fronts. The importance of personal relationships in these postmodern times has prompted a number of philosophers to question "the demand for impartiality" that lies at the heart of modern philosophy. Others have expressed serious reservations over "the ideals of moral goodness" implicit in mainstream moral theories.

Providing a set of rules to guide our interaction with strangers is essentially what much of modern moral philosophy is concerned with. The overwhelming concern has been how we should behave with people considered simply as moral agents. The question of whether we have any special relationship with other people, such as spouses, family members, lovers, or close friends has been ignored, according to some philosophers.

This, to say the least, is a dangerous trend, as our decisions about other people should never be influenced by our relationship with them. As long as the moral point of view is necessarily impartial, we will have to set aside the ties we have with other people and treat them impartially. To do anything less would be to show a kind of moral favouritism.

And that is exactly why the Harbin girl's decision is such a great lesson for all of us. All parents, all spouses, all siblings, all lovers and all friends should cite the girl as a shining example of humanity.

Email: zouhr@chinadaily.com.hk

(China Daily 07/21/2006 page4)