A Global Passport
Are you a citizen of this earth?
Yes. (Don’t my arms and legs give it away?)
Do you agree to burn less carbon next year than you did this year?
Yes. What other choice is there? In fact, I’ll skip this flight and take the train.
Do you pay some percentage of your earnings to your neighborhood and some to the world at large in a progressive fashion meant to reduce global income inequality?
Of course. In fact, I support the idea of a maximum global wage as well as a minimum one.
Beyond the suffering it will cause if America becomes Hungary or Turkey or Gilead, it will also deal a blow to the idea of citizenship itself, an idea America once helped bolster.
Live in a small French town for fifty years without being born there and you won’t ever be made to feel French. As an immigrant to America, though, you can feel you belong after a day in New York City. Or so the cliche goes. However true in practice, America did once suggest to the world the idea that citizenship could be nobler than nobility, could be based on allegiance to self-evident truths rather than granted by bloodline, culture, or history.
But since the current degrading of American democracy means the idea of citizenship degrades too, let’s start to argue for the next upgrade.
The phone we carry with us creates a world of all talking to all. While bad actors have exploited the instability inherent in this, the daily reminder we belong to that “all” persists. That we are all susceptible to Corona and all victims of a warming planet only reinforce the message.
Our connection to the all is more important than the flag we wave or the team we cheer at the Olympics. A new notion of global citizenship, like our passports, ought to reflect this.