The just republic and the idea of citizenship in the global communication

Abstract

Let's assume that a Martian (human being) comes down to Earth and wishes to remain here for the rest of his life. He would be confronted with the choice of society in which he would live ever after. After describing to him the form of political societies that exist on Earth, we would then ask him to decide upon which society he would wish to live. Even if this question made no sense to him, his answer would nevertheless be haphazard and accidental, because he would have no basic understanding of what it means to be a citizen of a society and of what constitutes the essence of political society. Corresponding problems — on a smaller scale, however — could arise if we asked citizens (or members) of various tribal or closed primitive and traditional societies to name the state, apart from their own, in which they would necessarily prefer to spend the rest of their life. By all means, the political societies they would choose to be members of, would undoubtedly be related to their experiences, their way of life, as well as to the theoretical and other models that they would have accepted (if such models existed in their minds) as to what constitutes the essence of political society. If this last case could exist, it would definitely be related not only to the particular way of life of each person, but mainly to the form of life that was prevalent in the society the citizens in question came from, and, in particular, to the form of the inner structure of the political society in question. For instance, the citizens who would choose a society that can form theoretical, as well as practical models which its citizens can modify reject or accept accordingly, can only be citizens of a political society which allows for free inquiry, investigation, expression of views and theories and for the scientific attitude towards and philosophical outlook on the world. Furthermore, if someone asked the citizens of the society in question (i.e. citizens of an advanced scientific and technological thought and of a multi-dimensional form of life) about the kind of political society we are heading for nowadays, quite a few (amongst them those most advanced, technologically wise) might answer that the political society we are heading for is that of the universal city {cosmopolis) and that the prevalent concept of what a citizen is, is that of the universal citizen (cosmopolites). This is proved by the widespread concept of the "global village" nowadays, which is naturally very closely related with the development of electronic technology and, as a consequence of that, with the possibility of rapid communication between even the most isolated and remote parts of our planet. However, is this really how things are, or is there a conceptual confusion and an unacceptable expansion of analogies?