A World Citizen

Having lived and worked in more than one country, I consider myself to be a world citizen. As the saying goes, the world is a village and we can no longer continue to pretend that what happens in a remote corner of the planet will never affect several people living thousands of miles away.

Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, most countries seem to have embraced capitalism as the best economic model for a society. Countless individuals nowadays praise the free market economy as the ideal one that all world governments should seek to establish.

With so many countries that have their economy strongly based on capitalist principles, it is not surprising at all to notice how certain issues faced by a great deal of individuals in, say, Italy are also having an impact on the lives of vast numbers of people in, for example, Germany. To me, this shows how - once you remove the nationality clothing from a person - similar human beings are. Although Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs might be challenged, we all seem to have much in common, regardless of whether we were born in Australia or in France.

When we look at the world, rather than our own country, as our home, it becomes much easier to see how a solution to a problem in one area could benefit the lives of thousands of other people living in other areas of the planet. For this to happen, though, communication between human beings is essential. Fortunately, as the Internet becomes increasingly popular around the Earth, more people can exchange their views about numerous matters and work together to think about possible solutions.

We now live in a world where millions of people are exposed to the same magazines, TV channels, Internet websites, restaurants, and so on. As certain things, such as MTV, become universal, it becomes even more important to monitor them and to determine what sort of impact they are having on the lives of countless individuals. Is it possible to expect a teenager who watches MTV all day long to think about social problems such as homelessness?

Capitalism might have allowed businesses to flourish and customers to have more choices. Yet, as it spreads its tentacles across the planet, it is very clear that this philosophy is, ultimately, about money - not about people. My opinion is that when a society becomes more obsessed with profit rather than with human welfare, something is very wrong.

The most worrying thing of all seems to be when governments start becoming victims of a handful of ultra-rich companies or individuals. When that happens, a government tends to start losing its social consciousness.

As a world citizen, I am concerned about the poverty that exists in several African countries. As a world citizen, I am worried about the high level of crime in El Salvador. As a world citizen, I am sad to see the hardships that many young couples go through to buy their first property in Malta. As a world citizen, I am optimistic that a day will come when such problems will cease to exist. As a world citizen, I aspire to live in a planet which favours universal human welfare over money...