Becoming a Global Citizen

            I often read the Los Angeles Times as a respite from homework during meals at home.  I do so mostly for its entertainment value, and as a writer, to reflect on the rhetorical strategies employed in its often-editorialized coverage.  A couple of things came to mind this morning as I read Benjamin Barber’s Op-Ed piece, “Think Globally, America.” First, I realized I would have skipped this piece entirely had I not just spent the early morning reading about globalization in Frank Webster’s Theories of the Information Society.  I generally skip over the “world news” section because of its seeming irrelevance to my life and the reality that “we” already have enough problems here in the United States as it is.  Webster’s discussion of globalization primed me to have a more open mind, so I didn’t skip Barber’s piece just because of its title. 

Barber sums up his position:

Political conventions won't take up global issues until politicians are willing to do so; politicians won't think or talk like cosmopolitans until citizens applaud them for global realism; and citizens won't be ready to cross the traditional national frontiers that have defined their parochialism until an information-grounded media help them grasp the meaning of interdependence, which is about bridges not walls, cooperation not frontiers, commonality not exceptionalism. [1]

In pointing out the deficiencies at each level of political activity, he offers a means to remedy them, a means which starts with individual Americans having access to globally-relevant information.  Specifically, this is a call to American media sources, our primary information-providers, to alter the breadth and depth of their coverage to create a more world-savvy public, a public which knows its fate is inextricably linked with the fates of those beyond our immediate borders. 

An hour earlier, Webster had already introduced me to this connectedness: that globalization “signals the growing interdependence and interpenetration of human relations alongside the increasing integration of the world’s socio-economic life” (69).  Although Webster does not propose a plan of action like Barber, he similarly concludes by calling attention to the role of information in our evolving global society.  He explains that the economics and politics of our relatively cocooned “nation state” are dependent on “conditions [which] are increasingly rare in the days of global marketing, frenetic foreign exchange dealings and enterprises located at multiple points around the world” (74-5), and that, as information has facilitated many of these innovations, so is it integral to adapting to the consequent changes (97).

            With this fresh in mind, I could not help but reflect on my position in relation to globalization and my heretofore perspective of isolationism.   This led me to my second realization: that every day when I skip sections of the paper, I undermine Barber’s position by undermining the “information-grounded” media’s ability to reach me.  Of course not all that purports to be “world news” is worth a critical eye, and I do not think my local newspaper is exactly the best source, but my attitude thus far has been clear: I would rather stay secure in the problems with which I’m familiar than take the risk of exposing myself to the reality of the world around me.  As both Webster and Barber point out, my world is changing, and to understand and appreciate my agency in this changing world, I must have access to information. There seems to be no dearth of information; now I just need to choose to access it.

Barber, Benjamin.  “Think Globally, America.”  Op-Ed.  Los Angeles Times.  20 Sept. 2012: A19.  Print.

Webster, Frank.  Theories of the Information Society.  3^rd Ed. Routledge: London, 2006.  Print.

 

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[1] Here is a link for the rest of Barber’s text:

 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-barber-interdependence-20120921,0,5337193.story