I Am ... a World Citizen

The first people to identify themselves as world citizens were the Stoic philosophers (see Zeno of Citium).

World citizens are people who transcend the geopolitical divisiveness inherent in the national citizenships of the various sovereign states and countries. In this respect the concept differs from internationalism that is still based on the idea of nations. By refusing to accept a patriotic identity dictated by any national government, they assert their independence as citizens of the earth, the world, or the cosmos.

The perspective of a world citizen has affinities with an existentialist philosophical outlook in that world citizens:

- do not want to be categorized by any artificially imposed categories

and/or

- wish to identify themselves first and foremost as human beings and then by any groupings to which they may seem to belong.

Some world citizens may also:

- work for a reformed, strengthened, yet sufficiently decentralized United Nations which represents and responds to the will of the people of the world, more than to intergovernmental hagglings, and adheres to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, similar to a federal system on the national scale

and/or

- work toward other developments to strengthen a common identity and harmony between their fellow world citizens on the planet, while respecting local and national loyalties and diversity.