Obligations of a Global Neighbor

Abstract

Globalizing processes increase the importance of developing civility both within societies and between societies. More broadly, they point to the need for global civility. Building global civility requires the development of a sense of neighborliness. Civility will result from a strong sense of neighborliness. Understanding the obstacles to building neighborliness requires some consideration of how personal identities are constructed. In a time where the usual institutions for creating identities, particularly nation-states, are losing legitimacy, building a personal identity becomes even more important for making sense of the world and living in that world. The difficulty for the formation of civility is that individuals build their identities in different ways, aspects of which can be summarized in terms of three ideal types: Kantian Man, Post-Modern Woman, and Dyadic Members. For neighborliness to develop, and thus for global civility to have a chance, interfaces between these types of identities must be found. These interfaces will be found if a sense of moral obligation to one’s neighbor is developed. The development of moral obligation becomes more possible if we look to three processes: building obligation through spirituality, building obligation through social capital and reducing insecurity.