Global Citizenship
by Scott Hughes
My favorite philosopher, Diogenes The Cynic, first said, “I am a citizen of the world.” He wanted people to recognize him as a human being and not by his geographic origins or some other trivial grouping.
I like to take that philosophy and apply it to the concerns and problems of our contemporary world. I want to feed the hungry children all over this world. I want to provide clothing, shelter, education, and socioeconomic opportunity to all the children – and adults for that matter – of this world.
I want to see the end of the world hunger that kills 16,000 children every day. Similarly, I want to see food, education, and opportunity offered to those who have it not, namely the 3 billion people living on less than $2.00 a day. I want to proved food, clothing, shelter, education, and socioeconomic opportunity to everyone in the world, not just the people geographically close to me or ethnically similar to me.
I do not want to rob people of another nation so that the people of “my” nation can benefit. For example, I do NOT want to wear fancy sneakers if it leads to the abuse of foreign children in a foreign sweatshop. I do not want innocent Iraqi citizens to die in an ignorant attempt by the U.S. and the U.K. to help and protect themselves. In the same respect, I do not want innocent U.S. citizens to die from collapsing twin-towers in an ignorant attempt by Arabs to help and protect themselves.
I value innocent lives equally – whether they’re the 40,000 slaughtered Iraqi citizens in the Iraq War, or the 3,000 American citizens slaughtered in the 9/11 Terrorist Attack, or the 16,000 innocent children who die every day from hunger, or the 2.2 million Americans rotting in American jails and prisons – most of whom have not been convicted and over 25% of whom are charged with victimless “crimes” – and the uncharged unconvicted children suffering in Guantanamo and other U.S. international prisons, many of which are secret.
I try to be a citizen of the world.
However, I do not think the recent adoptions by celebrities of third-world children exemplifies the aforementioned philosophy. That’s not to say I don’t commend these adoptions, such as that by Madonna. I find the adoptions very commendable; Madonna has not only saved this child’s life, but also brought the child into a whole new environment where the child won’t be deprived of many necessities such as would have happened otherwise.
Despite the incredible commendability of the adoptions, I think the adoptions exemplify a common misconception. They exemplify and symbolize the illusion of a separation between the hunger and poverty epidemic in the third-world and the global problems facing all of us, including working-class America.
It seems we find it easier to treat the terrible hunger and poverty epidemic in these third-world countries as some completely separate issue of unluckiness, rather than admit that that epidemic is just one terrible symptom in a global line of many symptoms of an even worse underlying problem.
So, while what Madonna and these other caring celebrities individually did is commendable, we as a collective cannot solve these problems of hunger, poverty and such if we look at these particular epidemics as separate issues.
For example, we must not just go to Africa like Madonna and see the problem as something only faced there. That’s not to trivialize the terrible epidemics in these third-world countries; they’re serious problems and they need to be addressed ASAP. Nonetheless, we cannot solve those problems unless we recognize and admit that they share the root cause with most of the social problems in our world. I’m not just talking about the 14 million children in the U.S. that live in food insecure households; that’s just another terrible symptom.
Henry David Thoreau said, “there are a thousand striking at the branches of evil to the one striking at the root.”
I commend Madonna and anyone who strikes or even takes out a branch of “evil.” However, no matter how many of us – and we’ll never get everybody – hack away at the branches, we’ll never knock down the tree unless we strike the root. To truly solve these problems, we need to strike the root – social inequality and corrupt politics.
To put this in perspective, look at the following facts: The U.N. says that a $40 billion increase in funding could feed, clothe, and educate the entire world. The U.S. governments alone spend over $50 billion every year on the war on drugs. (Interestingly, the war on drugs not only wastes money that could help, but the war hurts the poor and minorities. It’s poor and black people who end up rotting in jail-cells. For example, in the U.S. more white people take illicit drugs, while more black people go to jail for illicit drugs. Classism is even more of the issue, with rich people using expensive lawyers, bribes, and such to get off.)
Some would say, make the government solve this problem. That’s an arguable solution, but I would argue that the government will never solve these problems. Obviously, the politicians care about their own well-being and their own interests, not ours. The politicians only pretend to care about our interests to gain votes. We need to understand that the government – and the mostly-corporate special-interests that control it – use OUR money, which they steal through taxation and inflation. The government – and the mostly-corporate special-interests that control it – will never spend that money the way we want it spent, and they will never spend it to solve our problems. Indeed, it is these very problems that give the government an excuse to steal the money and freedom from the people. If we want to decide how to spend the money, I believe we can only do that by taking our money and freedom back, and then using it to solve the problems that face us, namely hunger, poverty, and lack of socioeconomic opportunity.
Thomas Jefferson said, “when the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
We want to solve the preventable problems plaguing the citizens of this world, right?
To do that, we need to tell the powers that be that we no longer will allow them to steal our wealth, freedom, or rightful power. We need to tell and show them that we plan to use OUR wealth, freedom, and meritocratically rightful power to solve the problems facing us, the citizens of the world. We can tell them that they can do whatever they want, but from now on they will have to do it without stealing our wealth or freedom, and without the government.
The key of course, we actually need to use our wealth and power to invest in education and development, namely with student loans and business loans, respectively. If we include food, clothes, and shelter with tuition costs, then we can solve these epidemics essentially for free.
About The Author: Scott Hughes runs a Self-Defense, Safety, and Security Blog as well as this Hunger and Poverty Blog. He also owns The Online Book Club, and SpokenWordArt.com. Discuss these serious issues with him at The Hunger And Poverty Forums.
© Copyright 2006, Scott Hughes. All Rights Reserved.