CITIZEN OF THE WORLD

Citizen of the World (cosmopolitan)

cosmopolitan |ˌkäzməˈpälitn|

adjective

familiar with and at ease in many different countries and cultures : his knowledge of French, Italian, and Spanish made him genuinely cosmopolitan.

• including people from many different countries 

The OAD lists Cosmopolitanism as a noun form of the word, and I'm not talking about the results of having one too many tasty cocktails. And though the definition cited is adequate, it fails to plumb the depth of the word's origin which suggests a philosophy, a way of seeing.

There's some debate over who first coined the term cosmopolitan which means: citizen of the world. It's often attributed to Diogenes, the 4th century BCE Greek Cynic, but Socrates expressed the same concept when he said (via Plato) "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." Roman Stoics like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius also elaborated upon the concept.

Being a "citizen of the world" is probably as close as you can come to comprehending what these guys had in mind which included but was not limited to: balance, compassion, fairness, goodness, reason, self-knowledge, truth (see Ortega y Gasset above), and social responsibility. 

Cosmopolitanism is an outlook, a state of mind (or geography of mind), as well as a moral compass. In today's hyper-marketed, product-driven culture, you might say it's also a lifestyle thing. More precisely: how to live. And perhaps out of all the precepts bundled together with Cosmopolitanism, one of the most important is self knowledge. "Know Thyself" (γνῶθι σεαυτόν, gnōthi seauton ) was inscribed above the doorway of the temple of Apollo at Delphi where the oracle used to hang out.

It's curious that by knowing something specific –ourselves– we might come to understand something in general about the world. In his book Self Comes to Mind, the neurologist Antonio Damasio suggests that awareness of what he terms the "autobiographic self" may be the highest form of human consciousness.

Self knowledge is about thinking about why we think the way we think. And Kundera might have added self knowledge as an antidote to provincialism, rephrased: self knowledge allows the observer to embrace the large context of world, gives them the ability to see themselves, and their own culture in the large context.

Critics of cosmopolitanism suggest it's an outlook only the rich and privileged are entitled to– people who have the means to jet about the the globe. While in some cases that might help, money, and globe trotting doesn't a citizen of the world make. Think of all the members of the US Congress and Senate, with their multi-millions in campaign contributions who don't own passports. They hold onto their provincialism as if it were a badge of honor. But this sort of blindness, and head-in-the-sand posture is less and less plausible in relationship to the internet, internationalism, the global economy and a world wide view. 

Cosmopolitanism is a metaphor about a way of thinking, a way of seeing. It's global in perspective and views social responsibility, and concern for the whole human community as the fundamental idea of morality. The point isn't to make other people think just like we think, but to accept and embrace the fact that different people live in different ways and have a right to express their point of view. A Citizen of the World sees why tolerance, inclusiveness, cross-cultural communication and unity in diversity are of the utmost importance; that free human beings will choose to live in different ways and be able to express themselves, freely.

–PHA