On citizenship

We must also begin to grapple with what it means to be good citizens as individuals and communities in an era of rapid globalization and change. How do we take on the responsibilities of belonging not only to our local communities, but to the nation and the human race globally? With all the problems in the world it easy to become overwhelmed. But really, most of our responsibilities are pretty clear and simple at their core. It is easy to become distracted by the apparent complexity of the world's problems, but in reality our responsibilities are simple and common sense: whatever support and care we would provide to our families and friends should be provided to all of our "neighbors," wherever they area. Be a friend. Be a good neighbor. Just do it at the right scale.

People retreat to the private realm of friends and family because we have lost the skills of collective action and the experience that it can actually work. And there is great fear of the "other," however people define that for themselves. The scale of a solution needs to match the scale of the problem. For example, an individual is unlikely to make a sustainable impact on the poverty in the United States. But, the people of the United States could easily make an impact by being "a good neighbor." The solution is no more complex than what one would do for an individual in one's immediate community, it just means figuring out the coordination at a much larger scale. Some things that come to mind are asking them what sort of problem they are having. If you have never met them before, perhaps you could invite them over for lunch to meet them. Then one can provide some temporary relief in the form a small loan. If the father in the family seems to be an irresponsible drunk, maybe you give the money to the wife instead. If their problem is more serious, perhaps you take the issue to your town selectman. And so on. ALL of these simple actions have analogies at the national level: the only barrier is being organized at large enough level. Unfortunately, we let our leaders keep us paralyzed with their complaints of complexity and that we "just don't understand." Any problem or issue should be explainable in language that anyone can understand. We do and can understand, and we should trust that. We know what is right in our hearts. This is not to say being a good neighbor is easy, but it is certainly not very complex. Every solution we need will flow naturally from our care for others, and time to think together when we get stuck. The greatest challenging is letting ourselves feel connected to those we may have the inclination to wall off as "others."

So what are our responsibilities? I think this is a pretty good list:

• Participate in the process of self-governance. This means not only voting but being engaged in the workings of providing outselves with shared common goods (e.g. good schools, transportation, social welfare, safety)
• Help to organize communities into neighborhoods and neighborhoods into towns and towns into regions and regions into states, states into a nation and nations into a global community. This organization does not happen naturally: it takes our intention and effort. To make matters worse, "experts" at higher levels will constantly be seeking to dismantle this social infrastructure. Are the interests and opinions of your community reflected in your town? Do you even have a regional form of organization? How could they be in a way that involves many people in a way that does not overburden any particular individual? This is possible.
• Start small. Don't worry about the nation until you have build the capacity of your community. If you don't know anyone, meet a neighbor. Then begin to think about your neighborhood and town. Aiming too high leads to frustration and burnout. On the other hand, starting small creates positive network effects that start to leverage and multiply our efforts.
• Make it a priority to create time for you and other folks to participate in self-governance. This may mean instituting a living wage, limiting your own consumption and material needs, or organizing together to provide common services that save everyone time (like a babysitting club), etc. We can't govern ourselves if we are all working 60 hours a week.
• Figure out what what your (and your community's, and your state's) fair share of the world's resources are. Figure out how to live on that fair share. Bioregional calls this "One Planet Living."
• Figure out how to do your fair share socially. How many homeless people are in the US? How many people live in poverty in your state? Develop a strategy to help out and do your share. There are only 3.5 million homeless in the US and nearly 300 million people. (Really the number of homeless is probably less because most homelessness is temporary if caught early on.) That means that every community of 500 people would need to figure out how to house 6 people! That's it. I'm sure in a community of 500 people there are 6 unused guestrooms or basements that could be converted, etc. And solutions like this are likely to be more effective than anonymous federal bureaucracies, which will save your tax dollars and make it even easier to do. Decentralized, local solutions: even to national or global problems.

For a more explicit description of my assumptions regarding how I think the local and global are connected, click here.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License by Brendan Miller.