Do you believe that we should all aim to be better global citizens - Essay Example

By extension, one needs to examine how feasible the arguments for or against world citizenship are. Perhaps there is no better way of defining global citizenship than to adopt the viewpoint expressed by Thomas Paine when he said “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good” (Chumbley & Zonneveld 61). The world has advanced in more ways than one. It is for this same reason that the concept of global citizenship has become rampant; as widely acceptable as it is widely rejected. The same reason applies to the belief people have about globalization.

The world, overtime, has been divided into countries. Although some of these countries and their people have certain features in common, they are not totally the same. These differences that mark them apart are many other peoples of the world. For instance, countries in the world are commonly classified into developed, developing and under-developed. This is just one of the main divisions. The basis upon which countries of the world are sub-divided is their social and economic standing, among others.

However, the essence of being world citizens is to share responsibilities. Since some parts of the world seem to be experiencing little or no progress, while others are progressing rapidly. The advanced countries of the world find it imperative to unite under a number of organizations to ensure that the under-developed and developing nations of the world measure up to what they are supposed to be in the comity of nations. All these happen because in the long run or in the short run, the advancement or backwardness of one nation would affect other nations of the world (Jacobson 27).

Nonetheless, one must not fail to mention that not only the developed nation have a responsibility to bear, the people from advancing and under-developed economies of the world also have roles to play. In spite of the different points of view people have about global citizenship, there are certain beliefs that are true. One of such beliefs is that it is not legal for anyone to state that they are global citizens because there is no document that formally stipulates such. This is in spite of the existence of such a body as the United Nations.

Yet facts that accrue reveal that there are basis upon which one can safely assume that many of the peoples of the world are indeed global in their citizenship, automatically. One of facts is represented by the internet. Virtually everyone in the world is connected via the internet. This connectivity is so potent that when an incident happens in one part of the world, everyone knows about and is affected in one way or the other. Yet despite the advancement of global citizenry via the internet, there is still a whole lot to be done.

For instance, some people in the world know little or nothing about the internet. So, if the condition for being a global citizen is having a presence on the internet, it can only mean that some people in the world will, by design, be disqualified. Nonetheless, this does not cancel out the benefits of being a citizen of the global community. There are obviously many ways of being a global citizen. Some persons would even believe that once anyone is born into any family in any country on planet earth, such a person automatically becomes a global citizen.

This is based on the assumption that since the family is a smaller constituent of a