OPEN OUR VIEW
What Does it Mean to be a Global Citizen?
At The Global Citizens’ Initiative we say that a “global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.”
To test the validity of this definition we examine its basic assumptions: (a) that there is such a thing as an emerging world community with which people can identify; and (b) that such a community has a nascent set of values and practices.
Historically, human beings have always formed communities based on shared identity. Such identity gets forged in response to a variety of human needs — economic, political, religious, and social. As group identities grow stronger, those who hold them organize into communities, articulate their shared values, and build governance structures to support their beliefs.
Today, the forces of global engagement are helping some people identify as global citizens who have a sense of belonging to a world community. This growing global identity in large part is made possible by the forces of modern information, communications, and transportation technologies. In increasing ways these technologies are strengthening our ability to connect to the rest of the world -through the Internet; through participation in the global economy; through the ways in which world-wide environmental factors play havoc with our lives; through the empathy we feel when we see pictures of humanitarian disasters in other countries; or through the ease with which we can travel and visit other parts of the world.
Those of us who see ourselves as global citizens are not abandoning other identities, such as allegiances to our countries, ethnicities, and political beliefs. These traditional identities give meaning to our lives and will continue to help shape who we are. However, as a result of living in a globalized world, we understand that we have an added layer of responsibility; we also are responsible for being members of a world-wide community of people who share the same global identity that we have.
We may not yet be fully awakened to this new layer of responsibility, but it is there waiting to be grasped. The major challenge that we face in the new millennium is to embrace our global way of being and build a sustainable values-based world community.
– Ronald Israel, Kosmos: Journal for Global
Transformation, spring/summer 2012 edition.
How do “points of view” become divisive?
Points of view – while supporting certain orientations, conceptions, values, and beliefs – are characteristically younger in formation, less examined, and based on assumptions and preconceived expectations of how the world (including our place in it) is or should be. There is a sense that the world affects us; there is less awareness of or willingness to see how what we feel and act upon affects the world. Points of view tend to be more insular, not fully examined in the face of world events – even held in opposition and resistance to what is not yet deemed as trustworthy.
There are as many points of view as there are people on the planet. If not opened to re-examination, the simultaneous and often competitive sounding of these views creates noise. It is then difficult to discern what essential issue or need is being voiced. Conflict intensifies as warring factions fight to be the “right one” (faith, nation, political agenda, even perspective on “God”) with the strength of leadership and mightiest weaponry to shape the world order.
What are the responsibilities of a strong leader?
A “strong” leader (a maturing society) re-examines and questions which values, beliefs, emotional responses, and causes for action open space for progressive liberties and mutual accountabilities. This leader is capable of seeing all the moving pieces; they use the power that is in their hands to influence a wise and decisive course. Challenged by history, even faced with imminent threat, a mature society grows within itself a collective sense of what its challenges are truly about and how to face those challenges through restorative and peaceful means.
What is our responsibility?
Points of view are not easily changed for they are formed as part of early learning and experiences that we believe are “true” – about us, others, and the world around us. The will to grow and develop our personhood, our leadership, and our national psyches must ultimately be chosen. Even so, there is a common responsibility to hold one another accountable to causes beyond the self.
This developing, maturing worldview is at its core a psychospiritual process; only then can economic opportunity, political voice, sharing of power, and creative justice mean something and be rooted into the soil of our nations.
Peace is personal because what we value, believe, feel strongly about, and act upon has been shaped in ways intimate to us. We can lay our territorial and religious stake in these early formations – or re-examine if they permit us to lead our lives – to restore in our nations and our world a just and deep peace.
Peace is personal because, while retaining the core of what drives us and makes us passionate, we choose (to the extent context allows) how to let events and exposures affect us – how they challenge our sense of what breeds fear or understanding, openness or protectiveness, violence or peace.
Peace is personal because our common humanity touches us – we feel pain for those who suffer, desire to be present to those who are alone, love for those who are terrorized by fear and violence, hope alongside those who persevere to dream. We are part of one another.
Peace is personal because how we use power, how we bring value to “currencies” (beyond money) that grow deeper human and spiritual relatedness, has consequences and can serve our common humanity.
Peace is personal because we – each person, each race and culture, each national and religious identity – hold an “unsurrenderable” need to preserve what we believe is our (Holy) birthright. How we evolve our understanding of this birthright can form new trajectories that move us beyond competition, divisiveness, and war.