Identity Lost in the One World Social Imagination...

Society at large takes for granted its identity and the individual identities within it.  Identity is a deeply complex construct that should never be taken for granted or assumed to be easily referred to and or transferred, replicated, duplicated, or extricated - freed from entanglement or disengaged.

There can never be one label "citizen of the world".  Such a label has no real depth of meaning or identity. One certainly can say that they are but that does not say much.  Because, being a citizen of the world is a wide and broad general term; it is the same as saying one is a citizen of the universe.

As a citizen of the world, one is actually an undetermined entity.  Being such is not the same as identifying as someone specific in the world from a certain place on a certain map as either one being among many or as many beings as one group in a certain place. Given that, and in the light of past discussions on globalism, being a citizen of the world is likely the agenda of the day and for exactly what was just pointed.

Within such a bland construct, at first one might feel liberated as in not tied to a place or to certain expectations often felt as imposed on from above or from around oneself in a given place. Then, as one steps fully into the construct embracing the label, losing oneself in it... one realizes that there is no sense of time or space or place. One has no face, no sense of who is who. One has no sense of being with others as they have no means to identify with anyone around them.

Yes, you can argue that one is a citizen of the world and identify with that. But, what would that look like? You say it can look like whatever you want it to look like. Really? If my view of or symbol for being a citizen of the world is different from yours, then there isn't any 'real' citizenship 'citizen of the world' as in belonging to the same country, state, town, or local community. Ironically, in saying that there is or there can be a citizen of the world (I am my own citizen and you are yours), we find an  isolated figure, nameless, faceless and placeless.

Yes, but 'so what' you say. Look at where we are now... conflicts and disparity world wide. You argue that being a citizen of the world would put a halt to all that and everyone would be the same and be happy or living in a harmonic symbiotic paradise. Well, to that all I can say is that we are back to nameless, faceless and placeless.

We deceive ourselves thinking that just because we are connected to the world, we are a citizen of the world as if that defines who we are. It does not. Identity is deeply profound and complex... the social imagination cannot exist as a nameless, faceless and placeless entity.