World Issues of Concern

For the Florian Pichler reading on cosmopolitanism, I want to focus on a finding that seemed contradictory and surprising to me. Pichler claimed that the strongest global identities were found in non-Western societies, yet it was then stated that education, place of living and religion play the largest role in global identification. In many cases, surely Western societies would have better forms of education and place of living so it doesn’t make sense to me that the non-Westernised societies have stronger global identification.  Perhaps it is a case of cognitive dissonance where the non-Westernised societies believe they are not doing enough to become globally aware yet are not happy with that situation, so they state otherwise. 

I also want to comment on a sad irony that I found in the lecture notes: I have an abundance of food which I sometimes waste and this makes me feel sick and lose my appetite since at the same time, there are many poor nations who have a large appetite and a need for food yet they have none and are starving to death. My education has helped me be a global citizen by teaching me how to extract some of these main issues from the readings, and as highlighted in the Madeleine Green reading, education is the key to global change. At the same time, other than donating money to organisations, I wonder how else I could do something to help these starving nations, or if there is even a way to stop famine in the world through being globally active.