Active Thinking Topic 89  - Are You Citizen of the World?


 18 & 20 August 2024

Recommended Viewing: Weirong Li (6 Dec 2023) "What Is A Global Citizen?" TEDx @
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2MyPSm9RLg 

Talking Points

1. For you, what does it actually mean when someone says "I am a citizen of the world"? How about yourself? [The first person to make this claim was Diogenes of Sinope, Greece c. 412 B.C.]. Does the word 'cosmopolitan' differ somehow for you from 'citizen of the world'?

2. How many people in Adelaide would you guess see themselves as citizens of the world? ["Beginning in 2005, the World Values Survey (WVS), administered across almost 100 countries, included the statement, "I see myself as a world citizen". In the WVS Wave 6, conducted from 2010 to 2014, across the globe 29.5% "strongly agreed" and another 41% "agreed" with this statement. However, there were wide national variations, as 71% of citizens of Qatar, 21% of U.S. citizens, 16% of Chinese, and just 11% of Palestinians "strongly agreed"". [Wikipedia 2024 @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizenship ]

3. How different for a traveler, actually, is any country in the world? Of course you will notice details large and small that ARE different. But think of the things which are now the same. You will be able to buy a toothbrush anywhere, book into a hotel that could have come from anywhere, turn on a TV, find a taxi ... the list is endless. Doesn't this list add up to a WORLD culture?

4. Think of mass education, and the kind of organizations and teachers which make it possible. This pattern really began in the mid-19th Century. It is now found in every country. Education systems transmit culture. Aren't they mostly transmitting a World culture?

5. Humans argue a lot about choices of economic systems. These choices are often dressed up as "retail ideologies" (capitalism, communism etc) for public politics. However, business is business. When it comes down to the nitty gritty, most of what happens daily in every country is pretty much the same. Isn't this a World culture?

6. Albert Einstein declared that ""Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." Why do you think he said that? Was he right?

7. Why does racism persist? Will we grow out of it? From the beginning of time humans have cross-bred in almost every part of the world. Any geneticist will confirm this. Now the genetic blender is spinning ever faster. Australia is home to over 300 source cultures. Half of Melbourne's population was born overseas. ...

8. Does world culture pose a lethal threat to local cultures, or can both be maintained in their own domains?

9. Climate change, and every thing which follows from it, is seen as a challenge which can only be dealt with by all the countries and cultures of the world working together. Is this kind of cooperation possible in practice?

10. English is now spoken in some form by 1.46 billion people, or 18% of the world's population. For better or worse it is the world's lingua franca. All languages carry culture. How influential do you think that English is in the spread of what we might call a world culture?



Extra Reading & Viewing

Global Citizenship lWikipedia 2024 @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizenship  [Quote: "Beginning in 2005, the World Values Survey (WVS), administered across almost 100 countries, included the statement, "I see myself as a world citizen". In the WVS Wave 6, conducted from 2010 to 2014, across the globe 29.5% "strongly agreed" and another 41% "agreed" with this statement. However, there were wide national variations, as 71% of citizens of Qatar, 21% of U.S. citizens, 16% of Chinese, and just 11% of Palestinians "strongly agreed"".

Weirong Li (6 Dec 2023) "What Is A Global Citizen?" TEDx @
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2MyPSm9RLg  [Quote: "Join Weirong to unveil the untapped potential of multicultural experiences! Explore why Third Culture Kids are the rising stars in our globally connected society. Together we will unlock the power of cultural diversity and, regardless of our multicultural experiences, become citizens of the world! Weirong Li is the CEO of Raw Culture, a media tech company dedicated to offering professional opportunities for individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds with the aim of creating a positive societal impact. She is a versatile professional, serving as an Intercultural Keynote Speaker, Trainer, Moderator, and Facilitator. With her diverse background and fluency in English, Chinese, and German, she brings a unique and valuable perspective".]

Hugh Evans (5 May 2016) "What does it mean to be a citizen of the world?". TED talk @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODLg_00f9BE  [Quote: "Hugh Evans started a movement that mobilizes "global citizens," people who self-identify first and foremost not as members of a state, nation or tribe but as members of the human race".]

Tuan Nguyen (27 Apr 2023) "Global Citizenship: Aren't We All Citizens of the World?" TEDx Talks @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JMRb-GDv  I 
 
Tanja Schulze (22 May 2012) "How does one become a Global Citizen?" TEDxBMS @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JMRb-GDvI 
[Quote: "An exploration of the concept of Global Citizenship, a search for a definition and a quest to find the conditions needed to form Global Citizens -- interwoven with personal stories by the presenter"]

Simon Moss (28 Apr 2014) "The power of the global citizen". TEDx Talks @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNshs1srmhc  [Quote: "Ted Moss is a campaigning and community education expert. As Managing Director of Programs for the Global Poverty Project ..."]

Thor May (2014) "Multicultures – communities of familiar strangers". The Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/Multicultures.htm  [Quote: "When a stranger asks “what do you do”, as he fishes for the right stereotype to pin on my chest as a mark of admiration or secret contempt, I am at a loss to answer. That is, I am a man of my age, a chameleon creature accustomed to slipping amongst a kaleidoscope of roles. This plurality of role plays does not mean that I am "values free". I don't care if you wear a hijab or burn incense in a Buddhist temple. I do care for a marker such as "above all, do no harm" - not always achievable perhaps, but at least a navigation beacon ..."]

Thor May (1987) "Super-Culture And The Ghost In The Machine". The Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/skeptic/philos7.html  [Quote: "The essay had its genesis in the startled observations of a fresh expatriate teaching in foreign surrounds. In this case, it was the PNG University of Technology, Lae, Papua New Guinea in 1987. I found my untried liberal conscience struggling to comprehend the sheer incompetence of people faced with institutions and technology which didn't seem to work. Many of the locals were bright and friendly enough, but somewhere a spark of insight was missing. Much later, surveying Australia with the naked eyes of a returnee, it was all too clear that the paralysis of imagination was a universal problem."]

Soon-Yong Pak (13 Aug 2019) "Understanding Global Citizenship and GCED". GCED Online Campus @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-nvnEglFZE 


Thor May (5 September 2010) "Cultural Operating Systems - Thoughts on Designing Cultures". Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/cultural-operating-systems.html

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Are You Citizen of the World? (c) Thor May 2024

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