opinion

 Profound citizenship for

the country to get ahead
by Raúl Leis --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

Citizenship can be active or passive. It's passive with respect to its action in relation to the state, and active when it mobilizes with suffrage or electoral participation.

The problem with active citizenship is that it's restricted to more or less formal activities and only a few are entirely active citizens. On the other hand, beyond that and more fundamental is the building of profound citizenship, which involves continual political obligations and activities, which is difficult within the confines of formal democracy and thus demands a politicization of civil society. Paul Barry Clark states, in his text “To Be a Citizen,” the characteristics of this profound citizenship:

• To participate in the direction of one's own life;

• To be conscious that one acts in and for a world that's shared with others and that our own identities are mutually related and created;

• To understand diversity as pluralism;

• To participate in a conversation --- not idle chatter --- with the world;

• To engage in high-minded dialogue;

• To offer alternatives that don't make citizenship merely formal or superficial;

• To think boldly about the world so as to make bold commitments to it;

• To have a shared existence;

• To reconcile, in a permanent tension, personal interest with the universal good (becoming a part of the universal);

• To be political: someone who participates in the public affairs that concern us;

• To flee from mere egotism and sectarianism;

• To be an active citizen, expanding the public space and extending the reach of civic activities;

• To educate ourselves in the exercise of citizenship;

• To be a social subject, that is, to be an active participant in a direct democracy and, beyond that, to exercise democracy close-up;

• To be “I, the citizen,” cultivating a reflexive judgment, living a many-layered existence, all of this enriched by the exercise of freedom;

• To care about the fate of the world, bringing out the best in one's self, in others and in the world;

• To be capable of thinking from the point of view of others; and

• To think nomadically, keeping away from the tyranny of singular categories.

Our country is defined at present, overwhelmingly, by passive citizenship, and it's not a coincidence. In different ways the traditional, vertical and manipulative ways of doing politics; the reigning political culture; the alienating media influences; the individualist outlooks of different religions; the weakness of civil society and the social networks; an educational system of low quality and little equity; machismo and racism, all conspire to contain and repress the rise of active citizenship, let alone profound citizenship. Although some gain, the country loses. The country loses because a submissive and prostrate citizenry can't be the builder of new societies and real democracies, nor of economies linked to human development. Some win, because they can do their utmost to accumulate wealth, power and influence without knowing or without wanting to accept that this gain is the generator of endless crises and conflicts and can lead to social cataclysms on a massive scale.