Exemplary Global Citizens: Inclusion and Ecocentrism

Today's posting will combine parts three and four of Dr. Arcaro's thesis into one entry.

Three, an exemplary global citizen is inclusive and works toward the goal of creating a more just world for everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, tribe, clan, or nation. To me, this means working especially hard for the rights of women and children. To paraphrase the activist Bono, “Neither distance nor difference determine who is and who is not your brother or sister.”

In one of my first blog entries, I addressed the concept of excluding people from consideration as fellow human beings, with all of the same rights, and how to go about removing the concept of "the other". Click here to read this post. This post will serve as my commentary for part three of Dr. Arcaro's thesis.

Four, critically, an exemplary global citizen realizes that we are one species among many, and that we must be keenly aware of our relationship to the environment. We cannot ignore, for example, global climate change. We must replace our egocentrism with ecocentrism.

I also touched on our relationship to the environment in a prior post, this one as part of the Millennium Development Goals series. MDG 7 is to ensure environmental sustainability. Click here to read this post.

To add to this post, I have a fantastic analogy (in my opinion). Imagine that you just used the restroom and left a mess in the toilet. Now, you have the choice to flush and to be courteous to whoever comes next, or you can choose to be prideful, think that your mess does not stink, and walk away without flushing. If we are to see the toilet as our planet, and flushing as reducing our carbon footprint and respecting our environment, we are refusing to flush. Our messes are starting to pile up, and they are becoming toxic for those who come after us - our children, their children, and so on. We should stop being so egocentric as to think that our messes do not stink. They, in fact, do, especially when we make an active effort not to clean up our act.

Inclusion and ecocentrism are tied together in an indelible connection. Exemplary global citizens see all of our fellow citizens as entitled to fair treatment - just the same as we would expect from them. We also see the environment we live in as worthy of being treated well. We are on this earth to be stewards of our environment, not to trash it, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Therefore, we must look after our fellow citizens, and those who come after us, by keeping ecocentric attitudes and making an extra effort to leave them with a better world.