Achieving Global citizenship

Yee G. H.

I wished I am a global citizen. However, I am sad to admit that I had not reached the standard to be a global citizen. First of all I would like to define my ideal requirement one must achieve in order to attain the global citizenship.
What defines a global citizen?

In my opinion, a global citizen should be one that is no longer bounded by race, color or religion. The only race that a global citizen should regard them as is mankind. They should provide aid to other fellow humans indiscriminately within their capability, just like how the Chinese, Malays and other races are lending a helping hand to their own race through their respective self-help organization.

They should know about people of other race, religion, and culture. They must overcome the differences between them be it skin color, language or other features and accept the differences.

How do we achieve global citizenship?

With globalization taking place rapidly throughout every corner of the earth, human mobility are also increasing at a fast pace and the wider use of internet where the world is undivided by borders. This will lead more interaction between different types of people. Through this interaction, they will get to learn more about each other and thus, reducing the gap between them. Eventually, everyone will know about almost every type of race, religion, and culture on earth and thus promoting global citizenship.

One can also easily have access to information of other countries through multimedia like books, television shows on local channels and on cable vision, the internet. Countries are also advertising their tourism spots and unique cultures on foreign channels in order to attract more tourists. This will help others to learn more about their countries.

Currently, there had been a few international events that had managed to draw attention from people around the globe. A few examples are the FIFA World Cup, The Olympics, Ms. And Mr. Universe and also the few international summits and conferences like the recent international monetary fund Annual Meeting. These events had captured attention of viewers from all over the world and they are good evidences of the world being united as one. Hence, this showed that the global citizenship can be achieved. All the people need are chances and leaders that are capable to bring them together to achieve a world with no strangers.

Obstacles to achieving Global citizenship.

No doubt with the improvement of technology and guidance from a capable leaders, we can all become global citizens. However, I would like to highlight the fact that human are not perfect. Most of us, or in fact all of us are overwhelmed by greed and power at some time of our life. As the Chinese saying goes, : “人不为己， 天朱地灭.” All human will fend for themselves and protect their own interest first before considering about others. Therefore, it is difficult to persuade one to provide aid to others of the same type, so I foresee that it will take more effort to convince one to help others that is totally unrelated to them. Hence, in order to achieve global citizenship, each individual must be able to support themselves first.

In conclusion, the best possible way for global citizenship to be spread is for each country to accomplish a degree of economic growth so that their citizen will get prosperous and have enough to help others.