Twelfth Reflection

3. Global Consciousness and citizenship If the previous two parts of the statement of Baha’u’llah discuss the true identity of human beings and the culture of human liberty, the third part emphasizes a new institutional imperative of the new world. Baha’u’llah’s global consciousness now deals with a new basis of discrimination and oppression, namely citizenship. In his worldview, the present nationalistic definition of citizenship must be extended to a new concept of global citizenship. When Baha’u’llah speaks of a human being as one who dedicates himself or herself to the service of the entire human race, he is rejecting all traditional forms of discrimination and inequality, including class, gender and race. Sociology, influenced by the logic of equating society with nation state, has been concerned with these traditional bases of oppression. In the middle of 19 th century, however, Baha’u’llah is announcing the emergence of a new basis of inequality and injustice which proved to become the most important basis of oppression. That new basis is citizenship. In the past, various countries were mostly similar in terms of their technology and standard of living. The present world, however, is distributing life chances of the people primarily on the basis of nationality and citizenship. Economic and technological capacities of different countries are worlds apart from each other. It was in this context that the Persian prophet prior to anyone else, spoke this revolutionary and prophetic words: The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. This statement calls for reconstruction of the global institutions of the world. The solution to this problem is not mass migration of poor people to more wealthy countries. The point is development of global institutions that promotes development of all parts of the world. All people, as the citizens of the world, should be entitled to real opportunities for a creative and prosperous life. Such lofty goal requires assuming new culture and responsibilities both at the level of developing and developed countries. Extension of democratic participation of people in local, national and global decision-making is one of the requirements of this ideal. This ideal is one of unity in diversity. It is neither one of global uniformity, nor diversity of mutual estrangement. It represents the institutional realization of the human spiritual potentialities as a being who is both a unique and independent being, and one with the entire human race.