Are You A Citizen of the World?

The speed and ease of travel by car, train, and air, along with the accessibility of communication via the Internet, has made the world seem a smaller place. For some people that has resulted in a social network that reaches far beyond the local community in which they're living.

Have you stopped to consider how many of your friends live in your close neighborhood compared with the number living elsewhere? Many people are linked far and wide by work associates, acquaintances, friends, and even family. Social links traverse counties, countries, oceans, time zones, cultures, languages -- all with little regard for the historical formalities or limitations of borders.
There are an infinite variety of reasons for traveling or moving. Some people move to find work. This is a big motivator these days and the distances traveled to satisfy these needs are farther and farther away from the person's place of origin. Some are forced to move to avoid conflict in their region. Some people move looking for better weather or to live near a place where they can more easily pursue their hobbies. Others just want to explore and experience new environments, learn languages and make new friends.

Children with parents that move frequently have both opportunities and challenges as a result. They may move to completely new continents in which they learn new languages and cultures. As children they adapt and become very much a part of the societies in which they live. If this happens even once in a child's life it can deeply influence their outlook.

As more and more people move and adopt new communities as their own, it not only affects their lives, but it also exposes the friends they leave behind to new things. The new place is shared by description, friends and relatives come to visit, some move to be nearby. A large cultural exchange and growth occurs as a result. Whether we travel or not, if we know people who do and we're in contact with them, we indirectly experience some of their new environment. Each contact of this nature brings the extended world closer to us.

Do you have friends on the other side of the world that you miss? Or family that you see only after getting on a plane? Do you meet people and make new friends on the Internet who are in places you've never been to? Do you miss a culture you no longer live in? Do you feel torn in your feelings of belonging to more than one place or society? As more and more people answer these questions with yes, the more fully our planet is moving toward having a functioning integral global society.

Benefits and Repercussions of a Global Society

With modern forms of travel and the Internet, the Earth has become a relatively much smaller place. We travel easily and quickly from one distant country to another. There has always been movement of people since history began, but it seems that more individuals, or small groups of people are moving around, leaving friends and relatives in other locations.

This has many advantages as well as disadvantages. The dictionary defines society as "an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization". In the past, societies have been largely woven out of local influences and have been very closely associated with location. There are a large number of very tightly knit communities with characteristic cultures and customs carried from the past into present times.

The large movements of individuals from every conceivable origin to every conceivable destination brings new elements into communities all over the world. The intermingling of different cultures and outlooks can bring tremendous benefits, but it can also cause confusion as the customs and familiar rules of etiquette become diluted by the presence of newcomers.

Change can be difficult to accept. People leaving what they know may be prepared to learn new ways, but while they're acquainting themselves with a new community they inadvertently bring new elements into that society themselves. Locals meet such new elements with a variety of responses.A society is an evolving entity, change is inevitable. Some personalities enjoy embracing the new, and patches of a modified society occur where mixtures of outlooks are adopted and accepted. But how does a community ensure that the qualities they hold dear are not overcome and lost by the rapid insertion of new ways and ideas?

The richness of variety is extremely important to moving forward constructively in any endeavor. If we, as people of the Earth, can respect and admire our differences and learn to bring them together without obliterating our varied heritages, we will have the best of everything for building the future.

What Can We Do As Individuals For The Environment?

In his article My web vs. The web Seth Godin points out that the world wide web has billions of pages and that the percentage each one of us will actually see of these in our lifetimes is so small as to be nearly unmeasurable. It's like thinking of grains of sand on a beach: there are so many out there that it's hard to really understand what that many means.
These pages represent an incredible amount of human activity, and yet they only represent a small fraction of what is actually taking place on Earth.

Even in the relatively small number of pages that we do encounter on the web, they bring us closer to people all over the world than has ever happened in history before. We can be aware of events affecting the lives of others, far away from us, almost in real time as they are happening. We can read about, hear and see those events, either as news reports, or as first-hand personal accounts and views.

There are so many of us now, that in relatively short time periods, actions taken in one hemisphere can directly affect the lives of those in the other. For example, pollution created in one country can have serious repercussions in others.

In addition, communication and mobilization of goods and people have created a global environment that can affect our lives just as much as our local environment. For example, the job market and the placement of industry are no longer defined simply by local demand, but also by global economics.

In a BBC article about the current plight of Europe's seas it says that they are in a serious state of decline due to coastal development, overfishing and pollution. The article goes on to point out that the study also showed that in some places, such as the North Sea, the ecosystem was improving. The reason given for this is that some of the heavy industries have been moved to China or India, probably having a severely negative effect there.

We are so many people going about our daily lives as best we can, sometimes unwittingly contributing to the unfolding of events. It is very easy to feel daunted by the enormity of the situation and the roller coaster ride we are taking ourselves on, along with all the species on our planet.


It's easy to forget the importance of the individual amongst all the numbers of people. Some individuals do a great deal to influence the world around them; others do things in small ways.




But society can only move forward when many individuals push toward improvement.

Each of us can make a vitally significant contribution by learning what we can do, and implementing it to minimise our personal negative impact on the Earth.