My Philosophy of Global Citizenship:

Katie Dul
Sometimes, its hard to make sense of my own thoughts. I often
find myself overwhelmed with so much to look at, to hear about, to
think about, and in all of what seems to be limited time. It is true that
everything has become globally interconnected. Its an interaction I
experience on a daily basis. And most countries nowadays are living a
new reality; other countries that are in the works of being introduced to
the Western way of life are seeing new developments. But the path
of which weve taken has led us astray.
We have gone so long with the mentality of not in our lifetime.
As we pass from generation to generation we proceed with this cycle of
going about our lives without considering the consequences. We worry
about the economic, the political, the cultural, and the ideological
realms before we can come to consensus of instituting real change.
Now take a step back, and lets ask ourselves how these realms even
exist? These webs of dimensions all revolve around one leading factor.
And that is our planet.
We all share a common home here on earth. I believe we deem
the term globalization not only because we are sharing ideas and ways
of life amongst each other but also because we are sharing this planet.
And that does not pertain to just human beings alone, but the animals
and creatures of this ecosystem. We all play an integral role in the way

in which we shape the growth and maintenance of our homes. What I

dont understand is how we fail to see the importance of setting aside
all conflicts and issues that are being dealt with over selfish terms. One
always protects their home with security, their country with pride, and
their possessions with their might. How is it possible that the one
home, most crucial to a beings survival is the one they protect with the
least amount of greed, security or pride?
The destruction weve brought upon ourselves is of pure
negligence and disrespect. Our planet is the one thing that the people
of this world truly share; the one thing that has sustained us for so
long. And finally in the past decade we have begun to see our planet
rebel to what it has made the world into today; one with changing
weather patterns, with limited resources, limited land, destruction,
chaos, immoral actions etc.
Will we continue to live in this world where our worst enemy is
ourselves? Everyones own actions affect not only themselves but also
others. If you liter, you pollute the land or the water. If you do that
then youre hurting the ecosystem and the home of many different
animals. If you take resources from the ground, you have to consider
the benefits, the pros and the cons. How to make it last? How to
replenish it? The depletion of our ozone causes increased radiation that
heats the earth, too much carbon dioxide is being released into the
atmosphere than can be cycled back in and there is a noticeable shift

in climate change. This climate change is unbalancing the ocean levels

and affecting coastal shorelines. These are major issues that cannot be
undone at the drop of a hat; or potentially can never be undone. And
because each generation lives in the present it is rare that many
stop and think about the future in terms of where the world will be
rather than just where they will be. It is only when natural disasters
occur that people no longer feel in control. Some things you just cant
anticipate and this is one of them. But thats why we must STOP, and
think about our future, as a human race. Not only as a country, an
individual, state or continent but as a human.
Years down the road, nothing will be the same. Waking up to the
beautiful sunrise and sitting to watch the sunset will be never the
same. The sun will be too hot to withstand but with all the new
technology around that has grown to dominate our markets and our
lives we will have survived but in a completely different way. The
simple pleasures of playing in a wide-open field, owning acres of land
or taking in the foliage are no longer an option. The people that had
fought over land, over resources and over petty differences have
exhausted their resources and over populated the world. Now we live
in condensed neighborhoods where the only place to go is up. We
destroyed our rainforests, and impacted the status quo of a wellbalanced planet to the point of driving biomes and multiple species to
extinction. The every-man for themselves, idea spread and

brainwashed the motives of all individuals. The consequences were

irreversible and the generations to follow lost all notion of what it really
meant to live on planet earth. An earth where things happened
naturally, things were organic, and nature actually existed will be no
more.
This world I describe above is one that seems to have so much
potential of happening if our continuing generations of capable human
beings keep living the way they are living. And I am not saying
everything we are doing is bad because the human race has made
some amazing and impactful contributions to the society, the earth,
and to human advancement. The problem is that we have advanced
systems in many parts of the world that always want more; more food,
more money, more land, more energy. And we take all the measures to
get more without considering just how we are getting the things we
want and just how much we are taking. That leads to competition,
which leads to fights and wars. And when we go in search of the things
we want, we invade places that are not our property, places where
people live differently from the way we live and ultimately dont always
share the same values we share or others may share. These cultural
and global differences dont make others or us any less worthy of a fair
chance of contributing or impacting our global community because
once again we all reside on this planet therefore have an inherent
responsibility as a global citizens of this planet to care for it. The key is

that we dont all have to like each other but we do have to respect
each other because if we never learn to respect each other we will
continue to fight over dissimilarities and disagreements and no
problems will be resolved. Those arguments are never-ending till the
people are able to put differences aside, treat one another like humans
and work together.
And as I mentioned earlier and in speaking on the gravity of
change I see in our world years down the road, I believe we as global
citizens of the world play a crucial role in saving life, as we know it.
Because we all have different backgrounds, lifestyles and values there
has been an unequal role in the way we all up bring or destroy of our
global community. Some people and societys like those of the first
world countries have overtaken a greater share of causing problems,
burning more fossil fuels, taking up most of the worlds natural
resources, exploiting the countries who cant keep up with western
development and contributing to the pollution of our planet. But then
there are people, some societys and countries more conscious of living
a sustainable life of making due with what they have and how they get
it, who dont contribute as much problem and destruction to our
community. From this all we must take that we must learn both the
good and the bad from each other because although some may hold
more responsibility than others we must all still take responsibility for
our actions and our futures. It sounds clich but as a global community

we must listen to what has been a generational saying throughout

many cultures, Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
From there we can learn to act globally, interact globally, take global
initiatives and make an impact.
So to once again to reiterate, we are all Global citizens, and we
are, because we are all humans. We all live on this planet, and we all
share a responsibility for the well-being of it. These obvious facts give
us common ground amongst the people of our global society. But
because it is shared does not mean that responsibility is fairly
distributed. There are consequences to our actions that affect not only
us but those far away. Being that we face a myriad of interlocking
crises, a solution to these problems seems so distant but that can't be
the case. So we must remember to work with each other not against
each other for the sake of the environmental health of our planet. Each
person to its own must keep in mind that recognition of these problems
begin with them and if we dont start somewhere, when and where will
we ever start? We must learn to respect each other and even those
who seem so different from each other.