Sunday October 23, 2005
Making double standards obsolete
Starting tomorrow, Kelowna hosts a series of events called Global Citizen Week. It\’s the first such event in the world, according to the organizers. It will focus on “Regular people making a difference.”
The University of B.C. offered a definition: “Global citizens are willing to think beyond boundaries of place, identity and category, and [to] recognize all human beings as their equals while respecting humanity\’s inherent diversity. Within their sphere of influence, global citizens seek to imagine and to work towards a better world.”
It\’ll serve as a definition, despite being both unwieldy and uninspiring. It resembles those mission statements that corporations and churches love – a grab bag of generalizations.
We would do better, I believe, to simply tell stories about living globally.
Stephen Lewis, currently the United Nations\’ envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, told about visiting a refugee camp in Pakistan with an Amnesty International volunteer. In a tent near the border with Afghanistan, they met a man recently released from an Afghan prison.
“I got out because of the letters people wrote,” the man said. “At first, the guards used the letters to taunt me. Then they used the letters as an excuse to punish me. But as the letters kept coming, they began to take them seriously. Finally, they freed me.”
“My God!” said the volunteer, with a sudden shock of recognition. “I wrote some of those letters!”
That\’s what it means to be a global citizen.
More examples
In the U.S., the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union wanted to show its members and the general public what globalization really means. They created an interactive online tool that shows the differences in buying power between two people working the same jobs in the U.S. and in Mexico.
If you\’re a nurse in the U.S., for example, you\’d work 25 hours to pay the rent for your home. But in Mexico, 159 hours.
The site gives a human face to these issues.
That\’s also what it means to be a global citizen.
Eric Lee, of the International LabourStart organization, urged unions and members to send messages of support for imprisoned trade union leaders in Eritrea. Over the next 48 hours, Lee reported later, “Thousands of messages poured in — at one point, we were hitting 200 messages per hour. Many of those messages have been re-sent by fax to Eritrean embassies around the world, prompting one official in the Oslo embassy to phone up LabourStart and demand that we stop sending them.”
They didn\’t, of course. They stepped up the pressure.
But being a global citizen goes beyond trying to influence the policies of other nations. It demands changes in our own attitudes.
No “us” and “them” any more
It requires a paradigm shift – that is, a change in our basic patterns of thinking. We have to stop thinking of “us” and “them.” There is only “us.”
And that change won\’t be easy. Almost everything in our industrial world focuses on the individual, as if any of us could survive alone. It\’s nonsense. We cannot do without each other.
Each of us is only part of a larger whole. And what affects any part affects the whole.
For good reason, British prime minister Tony Blair titled his special commission\’s report on the future of Africa, “Our Common Interest.” The World Bank\’s “2006 World Development Report” says that when any are excluded from better health and education, for any reason, they reduce the overall capacity of an economy to grow.
The report\’s introduction also states, “Institutions that perpetuate inequalities in power, status, and wealth… typically are also bad for investment, innovation, and risk taking…”
If the avian flu does become a pandemic, the virus will not care about the color of our skins or the size of our bank accounts.
We are all in this together. Global citizens need to get that truth through our heads.
Universal rule
We also need to recognize a fundamental truth expressed in every major religion. The Christian form, commonly called the Golden Rule, says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
But that wasn\’t original. A hundred years before Jesus, Rabbi Hillel said: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.”
And the even-older Hindu Mahabharata says: “One should not behave towards others in a way that is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All else is due to selfish desire.”
Most people treat those sayings as instructions for individual behaviour. Towards the end of the 1700s, philosopher and theologian Immanuel Kant tried to universalize their message in what he called the “Categorical Imperative.” I find it best paraphrased as a question: “Would you want to live in a world where everyone acted like you?”
In other words, no double standards. Period.
If we want other nations to reduce pollution, control population growth, stamp out corruption, or protect human rights, we have to be willing to do the same ourselves.
We can\’t ask residents of Myanmar or Iraq to sacrifice themselves for freedom and jutice unless we\’re equally prepared to make sacrifices.
We can\’t demand free access to their markets unless we\’re willing to grant equal access to ours. (Despite professing globalization, U.S. softwood lumber and cattle producers repeatedly violate this principle.)
Global citizens can have no double standards.
A revolution in thinking To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to [email protected]. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to [email protected].
It\’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
That\’s more than just a minor attitude adjustment. It demands a revolution in thinking.
More than 100 years ago, British author William Morris wrote: “The word revolution… may frighten people, but it will at least warn them that there is something to be frightened about, which will be no less dangerous for being ignored; and also it may encourage some people, and mean to them not fear, but hope.”
I don\’t expect Global Citizen Week to change the world. But it\’s a start.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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