What does a global citizen really mean?

Bernard

Imagine that you're a citizen in your own country, and you try to think, "What does it mean to be a citizen of your own country?" The first few things that would come to mind would be that "I must be someone who contributes to my country." or "I must be loyal to my country and must not betray my country." The same actually applies to being a global citizen.

For me, I think that being a global citizen involves contribution not only to his or her own country, but also to the world. Global means international, and being global citizens may mean everybody living under one roof. So, being a global citizen has a lot of meaning to it. Everyone respecting each other's religion, race, country and so much more, living in peace and prosperity, the world growing as one, that is what I think being a global citizen mean.

To add on to what my friend has said, I think that not only youths can bring about more global citizens. Everyone living in this globe has the ability to be global citizens. However, in my personal opinion, I think that it will be an uphill task in nurturing global citizens.

For example, in our country, we have people who are patriotic and love their country. At the same time, you would have people who is the direct opposite of these people, people who do not like their country and does not have a sense of belonging to their country. The government is having a hard time to make people who do not like their country do the opposite. We do have special days like National Day to showcase what Singapore can do as a nation, to let people to be amazed at how we, as a nation, grew from a fishing village, to a thriving cosmopolis. We also have museums reserved to display the milestones that we went through before our country became successful. The government has done much, however we still have quite a handful of people who do not feel that they are a part of the country. Similarly, if we have these people all over the world, I do not think that the concept of being global citizens would be applicable. To implement ways to curb this would be finding a needle in the haystack.

Yes, we can say that the world is changing rapidly, and our thoughts and ideas are also going through metamorphosis. But can we say for sure that everyone is becoming a global citizen? For me, I think that it is highly impossible for this to happen, because there is also the possibility that the opposite may happen. There is this possibility that more and more grow to abhor the idea of being a global citizen. Many reasons may account for this reason. One of the reasons that I can think of is that they may be ill-treated when they visit other places. This may make them intolerable of people from other countries, and would thus feel that it is not possible for them to become global citizens.

No matter how people may think, it is how they treat one another that make them have good impressions of one another. For me, I think that the concept of what it means to be a global citizen actually refers to how people interact with one another, across boundaries, all over the world. It does not concern where you are from and your family background. As long as you are part of the world population, being a global citizen is a choice.