“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” – Socrates
I have always considered myself to be a citizen of the
world but I don’t know why. I was born
and raised in an isolated place on the northern margins of the United
States. The overriding ethos was “mind
your own business”. I don’t know if that
just fit my personality well or if my personality was molded to fit that rule
but I was and am very good at it. Despite
that trait my exposure to people from other cultures and ethnicities through sports,
school, the Peace Corps, and work went very well largely because I saw them as
people with the same day to day problems that I had. Everybody’s trajectory
through the world is unique and common at the same time. We all grow up in
families and at some point, have families of our own. We all strive for
continuity over time. We get up in the
morning, go to work, and expect to come home to the safety and support of our
families at night. We all know that despite our efforts – disagreement, illness,
accidents, disability, and death are major obstacles that we are going to
encounter along the way. There is no way
around them. It is universal human
experience.
I had that idea about people in my neighborhood and people
I read about from all over the world. It made sense when I heard from the
leaders of the protest movements in the 1960s and 1970s. It made sense when I heard Muhammad Ali
talking about why he objected to the war in Vietnam. It makes perfect sense
when I hear from people protesting about gun violence and women’s reproductive rights
in the United States. In every case, these protests are about people who are
not minding their own business and who are not mindful about the challenges
that we all face. Why would you want to perpetrate an unnecessary war, take
away women’s rights, and make gun violence a norm when people are just trying
to make it home every night and survive?
In my lifetime, the United States has been involved in three unnecessary
wars – 2 in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.
The one in Afghanistan was the longest and third most expensive war in
the history of the country. That expense
minimizes the total cost of lives lost, disability, and infrastructure
destroyed in these countries.
And yet everywhere currently – the world is in a crisis.
The multiple crises are not precipitated by average folks like you and me but
by a small number who seem intent on inflicting their will on the rest of us. I
like the term megalomaniac. It
has nothing to so with psychiatry – but it connotes a person obsessed with
their own power. When that exists, it is rare to not see the megalomaniac
exercise that power often with horrific results. The context that the power is exercised is
also critical. Autocrats and dictators
who have absolute control of the military are probably the worst-case examples
and history is full of them. On the
current world stage – Putin is probably the clearest example. The estimate of
his net worth from various sources is anywhere from $1.7 to $200B. At a time when most people are working toward
retirement, he launched as assault on Ukraine based on the fictitious claim
that it had to be “denazified”. He is
systematically destroying the infrastructure and killing people. He has also
alluded to using nuclear weapons, based on further exaggerations of NATO being
a threat to Russia. At this point he is
the clearest example of a leader out of control. He is holding the world hostage in order to
get control of Ukraine. This strategy
benefits only Putin and not the Russian people.
The most recent crisis that prompted me to complete this
piece was the balloon over US airspace that originated from the People’s
Republic of China (PRC). The timing coincided with a scheduled visit to
China by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. The visit was cancelled because of
the balloon. As I type this the United States has added six PRC businesses to
an Entity
list
to restrict them from buying US technology.
That decision was made based on inspection of the retrieved wreckage
after the balloon was shot down by a US fighter jet over the Atlantic. The United States also claims that US spy plane
flybys confirmed that this was a surveillance balloon capable of eavesdropping
on communications at US nuclear installations.
When I first heard about his development I thought the obvious concern
would also be the dispersal of some kind of weapon at high altitude. At any rate, it is a clear violation of US
air space by a hostile government, despite denials by the PRC and their failure
to communicate directly about this incident over a hotline between Washington
and Beijing.
What does all of this mean for cosmopolitanism? It leads to an obvious level of analysis that
nobody ever seem to comment on. Is the average person in Russia, the PRC, or
the US involved in all of these decisions?
Are they cheering their governments on? Are they keeping scorecards on
who is winning? I have no reason to
believe that they are. At some level people around the world realize that their
counterparts in other countries are facing the same challenges that they are
and just trying to make it through the day. At that level of analysis – all of these
actions by their governments are detached form that simple reality. I some
cases, so detached that nuclear war is being threatened. Nuclear war is really
a euphemism for the end of civilization as we know it. Even a limited number of
nuclear explosions can put enough debris into the atmosphere to destroy the
crop growing environment and cause mass starvation. What citizen of the world
wants that?
That disconnect between people and the governments who are
supposed to represent them endangers the entire planet and it is unnecessary.
There are very few places where this disconnect is not evident, but in some
cases it is obvious. Iran comes to mind.
The Iranian government is clearly not sensitive to the day-to-day
concerns of its people especially women, but at the same time is actively
exporting weapons and terrorism across the globe. It illustrates a qualitative
difference in governments that directly impacts cosmopolitanism captured in
this quote (1):
"Only a state which understands its role
as a governmental mechanism, rather than as having claims to particular truths,
is likely to be able to play the enabling role that cosmopolitanism
needs."
There are clearly many governments across the world that
see themselves as much more that a “governmental mechanism” and instead insist
that people under their rule live a certain way. Theocracies work out of the
assumption that a certain religion is superior.
Autocracies do the same for a particular ideology. In both cases large segments of their
population can be suppressed, persecuted, or in extreme cases killed for
non-adherence to these doctrines. There are many obvious historical and ongoing
examples.
Reviewing some of the literature on cosmopolitanism it is
typically criticized for being too idealistic and impractical. How can large
numbers of people practically adhere humanistic principles when they are
fractionated by governments and in many cases oppressive governments opposed to
humanism? Some authors write about socioeconomic status of cosmopolitans –
seeing the very wealthy classes as being the most likely cosmopolitans while
others see refugees as having that status of necessity. Critical features that
are not mentioned are humanism and empathy. Both need to be emphasized at an
international level to attempt to move the threshold for more appropriate
international behavior in the right direction. Citizens of the world recognize that their
counterparts around the world have the same problems and the same goals every
day. They hopefully have some input into the mechanism of government in their
geographic locations, but that is obviously not universal.
One of my favorite modern philosophers Massimo Pigliucci (2)
examined the issue of cosmopolitanism from the standpoint of tension between
altruism and selfishness. He suggests
that this may be a false dichotomy.
Pigliucci is an expert in Stoic philosophy and the developments that
group added to cosmopolitanism. He
explains that the Stoics as intelligent social beings had an expanded concern
for humanity and thought that free people flourish in a cooperative society,
therefore caring for others assures that you will also
flourish.
This is an excellent individual philosophy that may not
translate well at the international level.
Part of the problem seems to be that entire nations do not operate on
cosmopolitanism – at least not predominately.
There are certainly elements like international assistance in the event
of natural disasters and catastrophes where it may occur. But countries are more likely to operate out
of a vaguely defined self-interest. That self-interest may lead to the
vilification of average people in other countries rather than understanding
that we all share similar struggles and problems in living. In some cases that
vilification may extend to factions in the country of interest for not
supporting government propaganda and aggression.
A recent review of the current situation in Russia by Hill
and Stent (3) is illustrative. They describe the 23-year reign of Vladimir Putin
in Russia and how his absolute power is basically unchecked. The clearest evidence is prosecuting a war
against Ukraine based on his fantasies about what Russia should be and making mistakes
that would have led to his removal in any country where there was personal accountability.
In addition to the ruthless attacks on Ukraine and its people – he is equally
ruthless on the home front. The authors describe deserters from the army being
murdered and the videos of those murders released. He has assassinated businessmen who do not
support the war against Ukraine. He has
sent poorly trained and equipped inmates from Russian prisons to the front
lines to fight. He has basically inflicted a tremendous amount of suffering on
both the Russian and Ukrainian people. And yet at this point he continues to
maintain absolute control over the country.
Many countries in the world today are run by similar
autocrats. Autocrats have also been a part of
human history and the amount of suffering they have caused is beyond biblical
proportions. Why does that cycle continue to repeat itself? I think a lot of it has to do with the human
tendency to simplify issues by tribalism. There is significant anthropological
study showing that very early humans have a tendency to get into all out wars
at the tribal level and then successively higher levels of organization. That
suggests that it is easier to mobilize for a violent conflict than to think
about or conduct negotiations. It also implies that there is very little
thought given to the fact that the purported enemy is facing the same
uncertainties and problems as the aggressors. Wartime rhetoric suggests that
the enemy is the cause of the problem.
What are the potential solutions? If cosmopolitanism is a tough sell – it can
potentially guide solutions. The first necessary step is to make all the people
of the world aware of the process. Education is a first step. If you are a citizen of the world, you must
be aware of the similarities of all people and how they differ from
governments. There must be a sense of empathy for fellow citizens across the
globe. That must be true for people of different regions within the same
nation. The only way to be a global citizen
is to be see yourself as like everyone else in your geographic location as a
first step. A second step is to notice how politics attempts
to affect that basic inclusiveness. Politicians everywhere thrive on pointing
out the differences between people, suggesting that they are irreconcilable,
and then proposing a plan for winning against the marginalized group. Recent
events suggest that this process is very common in democracies including the
United States where we witnessed an insurrection against the government and a significant
increase in hate crimes against ethnic groups as a direct result of extremist
rhetoric from a specific political party and their members. Cosmopolitanism
cannot get off the ground in those conditions, but there is a chance that exposure
to those principles may harden the population against demagoguery.
Cosmopolitanism after all is a very humanistic approach to
relationships. That runs counter to recent human history where the focus has
been on episodic warfare and violent confrontations. It would seem to set the
baseline conditions for peace and peace is not a common word these days. It only comes up when the direst of conditions
exist and lately with the threat of nuclear weapons from the Kremlin. Peace and cosmopolitanism, need to occupy a much higher position on individual and collective agendas.
George Dawson, MD, DFAPA
References:
1: Kendall G, Woodward
I, Skrbis Z. The sociology of cosmopolitanism: Globalization, identity, culture
and government. Springer; 2009 Apr 28.
2: Massimo Pigliucci.
When I Help You, I Also Help Myself: On Being a Cosmopolitan. November 17, 2017. https://ordinaryphilosophy.com/2017/11/17/when-i-help-you-i-also-help-myself-on-being-a-cosmopolitan-by-massimo-pigliucci/
3: Hill F, Stent
A. The Kremlin’s Grand Delusions What
the War in Ukraine Has Revealed About Putin’s Regime. Foreign Affairs February 15, 2023.
Graphics Credit:
Image of Chinese surveillance balloon over Billing MT
Chase Doak, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Page URL:
File URL
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_surveillance_balloon_over_Billings,_MT.jpg
