LocalEyes: local-cosmopolitan visions

As I've written here before, living locally has entered my consciousness the more I consider how to best be in the world. Living off of local food, supporting local businesses, walking local streets, engaging in local discourses all are ways in which we can exist in a more sustainable way. If Indiana stopped trucking in meat or produce from California or the Amazon, we would enjoy cleaner air and water, and would live healthier without the chemical pesticides and preservatives that make long distance diets possible. Getting to know our neighborhoods and neighbors gives us a strong sense of belonging to a place and a community, and interpersonal networks would become much stronger and more reliable. If a disaster were to strike your town, do you know who you would call on for help? Would your neighbors feel free to come to you when they were in need? Do you share garden space or produce, or automobiles to cut back on purchase and consumption of fossil fuels? Do you know your local artists, business owners, politicians, or those who hold no social position at all? The benefits of living exactly where you are far outweigh the convenience of fast food, fast media and fast highways. If our world is to have a chance at survival, we must know our own backyard, and live deeply within it.

At the same time, I have increasingly come to see myself, as one of the earliest philosophers of Cosmopolitanism, Diogenes said, as "a citizen of the world." Whenever July 4 comes around, and at most other time of the year for that matter, I have a hard time identifying as an American, or at least as a patriotic one. If there is one nation that does not see itself as a citizen of the world, it is the United States. Our government has done so much harm to those beyond our borders that it is difficult to say that we have the good of the world in mind when we act in the international arena, especially with force. If I had to pin down my identity with a place in terms of its outlook toward the rest of the world, it would be my home state of Pennsylvania. Founded by William Penn, a pacifist Quaker, Pennsylvania was purchased fairly from the indigenous tribes. Penn began a colony of religious freedom and popular democracy with the understanding that all humanity is linked together in a way that demands respect, even love, for those who are distinctly "Other." Cosmopolitanism does not mean heterogeneity amidst local cultures, but instead encourages each local culture to live in whatever way is most true to their own identity, while allowing every other group that same right. If we lived in a world where every inhabitant saw themselves as fellow citizens of one planet, war would--if not cease altogether--drastically decrease. Aggression between nations would dwindle, and people of various faiths, genders, classes and ethnicities would respect each other much more than any time in modern history.

The local creature is also the cosmopolitan, for both are connected, just as each person and each place are connected. Being local-cosmopolitan is necessary for the survival of our world. Our technology and media must become open and available to all, for the good of all, rather than remain in the hands of the few and powerful. Our art, film and literature, which promotes the universal in the particular--the global in the local--must be given priority over the manufacture of weapons and control of natural resources. Our very life depends on it.