MANDEVILLE — Ryland T Campbell, chairman of the Capital and Credit Financial Group, has called for a new spirit of personal social responsibility, in order to rescue the Jamaican society from the threat of disintegration.

Campbell made the call at the weekend, as he addressed a fundraising banquet of the Moravian Church in Jamaica at the Golf View Hotel in Mandeville.

Pointing to the various manifestations of societal breakdown — including the high crime rate, the abuse of children and the disregard for law and order — Campbell argued that each individual has a personal social responsibility to ensure that these ills are addressed.

“Increasingly our minds and consciences have become numb and desensitised to the violence around us,” he said, citing the recent stabbing of a police woman, as onlookers failed to act.

The outcome may have been different, he said, if any one of the onlookers believed he or she had a social responsibility to help.

And he blamed the financial melt-down in Jamaica in the 1990s on industry players’ failure to grasp the implications of their actions. Personal social responsibility, Campbell asserted, recognised that one’s action can have far-reaching implications for the wider society.

Jamaica’s national heroes, he said, provided excellent examples of personal social responsibility, and he challenged Jamaicans to make this their guiding principle as history will ultimately judge whether we have sought to improve our society for the generations that will follow us.