Global Citizenship

If we are to herald the word globalization in an economic and information sharing sense, then it cannot be bound to those two fields. It must also require a rethinking about our identity and spirituality, about relationships, love and sex. If we were merely machines, then perhaps globalization could be taken as one dimensionally as it is currently envisioned. But given that we are humans, round and wide-eyed, complex and spiritually keen, we must, we must, we must envision a globalization that encompasses this. Think of this as holistic globalization. Globalization that needs and requires a sense of global citizenship. Wherein we take care of each other.

In this progressive model, entire nations cannot be turned into factories simply because they are brown skinned, simply because they are economically disenfranchised.

This model means taking responsibility for the atrocious lack of women’s rights that women face all over the world. Im not talking about ME–a woman who generally enjoys a particularly large sense of respect.

But ME is WE and WE are not beyond gender if one arm of our body–if one finger of our hand–is not “beyond gender.”

It may be on the dark side of the moon but the moon is still there. If there is a woman in the world who gets raped by a married man and then charged with adultery and jailed, she and her accusers are part of our society. We are her accusers.

If we friend someone on facebook in this country or that, haven’t we already begun the steps to imagine a cyber-Friend-nation identification? Could we not theoretically Friend a shepherd in Afghanistan? Would we care more if this Friend were to be killed than if he were not our Friend? Can we not make the mental leap?

This model requires that we make the mental shift of valuing lives in all parts of the world equally, citizens of all nations, and that we do not place relative value on lives based on the language they speak, whether they look like us, live near us, or share national citizenship with us.

Driving to Mantova on the Landstrassen

7 December 2011

– www.alfabus.us