Being A Citizen
In using the term eco-citizen as part of Still Waters I am tapping into a long-running and not entirely resolved debate about what it means to be a citizen. Scholars can’t even agree when the concept of citizenship began. The modern interpretation, based on a legal definition applied to being a member of a nation-state, is different to the more classic Greece-invented idea. For Still Waters I am going more with the Greek definition.
Much of the common use of the word citizen today is when we are talking about our rights. So as a UK citizen, I apparently have the right to have freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of religious worship. The children of the world have rights, defined by UNHCR, as citizens of the world. As a society we work hard to protect these rights and freedoms.
The various modern definitions are full of descriptions of rights, freedoms, privileges, belonging. What is missing is the idea that alongside these rights we have responsibilities. The US legal definition makes this clear – “A citizen is a person who, by place of birth, nationality of one or both parents, or naturalization is granted full rights and responsibilities as a member of a nation or political community”. So as well as rights, we are also granted (interesting choice of word) responsibilities. In the UK, there is a list of what these responsibilities are, which starts clearly and then gets fuzzy.
Paying taxes.
Voting in elections.
Obeying the law.
Doing jury service.
Respecting the rights of other citizens.
Active citizenship.
It’s in the domain of active citizenship that I think we need to focus more attention. And for that we have to go all the way back to the Greeks. I don’t normally quote Wikipedia but I quite liked this excerpt as a way of demonstrating my point. “The obligations of citizenship were deeply connected with everyday life. To be truly human, one had to be an active citizen to the community, which Aristotle famously expressed: ‘To take no part in the running of the community's affairs is to be either a beast or a god!’”
This idea that to be truly human requires us to take an active part in the community we live (local or global) really resonates with me, not only because it gives to the idea of responsibilities to go alongside rights, but also because it suggests that we ourselves benefit by being citizens. We become ‘truly human’ when we serve others as well as ourselves. This is something I know to be true. But somehow it doesn’t feature in the conversation about being a citizen.
So my definition of being a citizen balances rights with responsibilities. It encourages offering active service as something that is as good for you as it is the community you serve. It embraces the idea of belonging and feeling connected to something. It’s a wholesome, wholehearted way of being. I think I’ll finish there, I’m getting carried away!