Tiny Drops

There are many roles that a person plays throughout their life, yet throughout everyone’s entire life they are students. As they add what they learn to the knowledge that they possess they can better make decisions to fit who they are. Steven Pinker says in his book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature that “While conflict is universal, so is conflict resolution.” For every conflict currently in the world there is an active citizen/corporation/group working on conflict resolution. Each of these active citizens/corporations/groups is working towards an ideal future without conflict. It is doubtful that this will ever actually occur, after all, conflict is universal, but less conflict will make a positive difference for the world. When responding to globalization one should look for the conflicts and find a away to help them fade, even if it is simply a tiny thing. Mother Theresa said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think that ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” The extent to which one responds to globalization isn’t as important as actually responding. Eventually those tiny drops will become something far larger, but the drops were needed first.

Global Citizenship

There is no way to be a global citizen unless you consider the global world in all decisions. The decisions of what companies you buy products from and where they’re made can be smaller issues or they can be bigger ones. But whatever the issue there are often no easy answers. Civil society groups convinced Nike to no longer use sweatshops but this left the people unemployed and perhaps in a worse situation then before. Oxfam’s list of traits of what makes a person a global citizen is an excellent one. A trait that should be added to this list is someone who does their research. It may prevent actions that are meant to help people but put them into worse situations. Global citizens who research should be able to come up with more creative ideas to use for solutions.