Global Citizens

Okay,

I admit that I am a little behind the curve but nevertheless I will endeavour to continue to log as many ideas as possible.

Today, I present to everyone the notion of a global citizen.

I thought it was absolutely cool that a speaker Reggae Life was asked to speak to us about having a global perspective and being a global citizen during Orientation. There was a wonderful presentation and was speckled with short film clips that were made by Reggae himself.

He essentially featured the Africa-American that had moved to Japan and how they were initially repelled by society. He then dealt with the complex isssue of inter-racial marriages between the African-Americans and Japanese. It was a difficult struggle to belong and establish an identity. Communities in Japan and America would view them as the other side. Last but not least, it spoke of Americans that had to re-adjust and re-adapt to Amercian society after living in Japan for many years. It would be hard for me to bring out every point in the presentation but the key idea was to imbue with us a sense that we should establish an abstract concept of a new form of citizenry. One that is without borders and that we as global citizen will have perfect mobility and fit everywhere and anywhere.

The deep desire and instinct to belong is often a strong emotion and the journey can be ardous due to racial divides as spoken by Reggae. This made me related to Singapore.

Singapore is essentially an immigrant country. We're multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-religious society. We therefore epitomize this notion of global citizenship. However, in recent times, I found out that divides are not necessarily racial but due to group dynamics even. For years, we sought a common identity for Singapore and now, I think it might have just worked too perfectly against the ideal.

With the introduction of foreigners into Singapore society, my fellow Singaporeans have grown increasingly xenophobic. Imagine that we can now even divide Singapore Chinese and Chinese from Mainland China. The difference is slight but these rifts are obvious. In my opinion, this is a negative development.

For a globalised city like Singapore, it is still not truly globalised yet. We can only claim that when we as citizens acknowledge that we are truly global citizens and adopt an all inclusive global perspective.