On being a citizen
A piercingly honest and somewhat contrarian viewpoint
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The concept of citizenhood remains an enigma to me. It contains a curious blend of myths and half-truths upon which we, by virtue of birth or naturalisation, become legally recognised subjects of a nation. We are inadvertently held captive in the iron grip of an imagined status quo - joining an undistinguishable herd of narcotised clones. And so it begins, our induction into the cultural imprisonment of imbued duty.
It may be an unfairly harsh assessment, but the truth is, this carefully preserved collective delusion of being part of a nation state, is only maintained by the lumbering machinery of institutions to justify our unbridled desire to belong. Sadly this brand of citizenhood, one that anchors a person to a set of national ideals, lends legitimacy, in some parts of the world, to preposterous decrees and unfathomable human rights violations. As we all know too well, the rhetoric of citizenhood and, by extension, the human tendency to assert one's beliefs in terms of unrelenting negation of others, provides ideological fuel to ignite senseless wars, in what can only be described as twisted expressions of jingoistic bravado. One can’t help but ponder on the countless women and men who were muted by the arbitrariness of history and sacrificed to preserve a national ideal that’s driven through power and bureaucratic pomposity rather than genuine goodwill.
You see, for all the supposed universality and democratic virtues that citizenhood promises, it is also responsible in enforcing a type of uniformity, triggering resignation or victimhood in individuals whose feelings of alienation and marginalisation fester in their distorted image of a multifarious reality. Because the truth is identity is never formed from a single wellspring - a single tradition, a single ideology or a single religion. Our identities are patchworks in progress - of presences and absences, of the felt and unfelt, against the backdrop of constant change.
I’ve often wondered, rather idealistically and maybe even naively, what it would mean for mankind if the concept of citizenship, at least in the traditional sense, ceased to exist. What if the rallying cry for unity emanated not from the brick and mortar institutions of power but from a mutual recognition of the humanity that resides in all.
This humanity I speak of refers to the challenge we all face to live with compassion, hope and sincerity in an age of crippling cynicism and unfathomable inequality. We are all, regardless of political affiliation or geographic location, captive audiences to an unfolding drama; a drama that showcases both the luminous tenacity of the human spirit and the depravity of human action (or inaction).
Amidst this ongoing dance with positivity and pessimism, hope and resignation, we are as a human species, united in forming stories about how we see the world. These stories whether false or true are always real as they form the basis of how we experience reality. We are collectively invested in our stories reacting to their realness. This eternal subscription to life, a subscription we’ve all been signed up to without consent, for better or worse, is the only citizenship that matters. We have a choice to either embolden our human connections with others or dismiss it in a quest to remain numb. Because the world will continue to exist with or without us, as Rebecca Solnit beautifully posits in the following spellbinding prose:
“The sun will rise, the winds will blow, the waves will lick the shore, the earth will tilt on its axis so that there is more light in the summer, less in winter, rains and snows will fall, if not as they used to, and the waters will turn to solid ice and melt again. This is the world that existed before life and will after us”
Our zest for life and liberty is only consecrated when we are able to boldly disentangle ourselves from the limiting myth of a national identity. Only then can we free ourselves from the tenacious grip of history and ideology. That’s the symphony of human triumph - a triumph rooted in the common human endeavour to live with love and harmony no matter the circumstances.
Here it is, a day before I see your next post, Josh. I finally comment after a week of mulling. I think the word citizen connotes a location, a place. Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned in that regard, but it seems to me that the power of citizenship diminishes as the circumference of the circles around us grows. I am more easily heard, potentially more powerful, and therefore more responsible in the nearby "city" (Rougemont is very little hamlet of a place) than I am in the larger frames of state (i.e., province) or nation or, heaven forbid, planet.
And so, I do think that the concept of citizenship has meaning and even a moral substance that is tied with the plain and increasingly outmoded notion of locality. I think that locality has transformed through technologies like the telephone, the radio/television, and (most of all) the Internet and its applications. I live a world away from you, Josh, and yet I have easily exchanged ideas with you. I have waved at my neighbors in the heat of the US southern summer, but have I exchanged words?
Does this technological re-centering of our spheres make citizenship a cipher? I wonder if that's part of the problem with the concept; perhaps that warping of locality also warps our responsibilities or perceptions of power. And makes it more likely for evil to emerge in larger frames. Or, perhaps, makes it easier for us to see the evils that are done as if -- as if! -- on our behalf.
Powerful, honest raw words - respect