—Jorge Luis Borges, "Homage to Victoria Ocampo," in Borges en Sur"The great American writer Herman Melville says somewhere in The White Whale that a man ought to be "a patriot to heaven," and I believe it is a good thing, this ambition to be cosmopolitan, this idea to be citizens not of a small parcel of the world that changes according to the currents of politics, according to the wars, to what occurs, but to feel that the whole world is our country."
Funny, how Borges was so cool for school, that he refers to Moby Dick as "The White Whale". Regardless of this, these are some insanely relevant words. He was far ahead of his time, the intellectually popular book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, was just released last year.
While I am apt to subscribe to Don Borges words, I find myself clinging to the "think globally, act locally" idealism. To clarify:
Right Thought: There are so many kids without homes.
Not-so-right action: Travelling across waters and time zones to adopt children just as brown as the ones here.
Right Thought: People all over the world need a democratic voice.
Not-so-right-action: Spending a month with the Zapatista rebels only to return and volunteer for America Votes door-knocking in places like Westlake.
Right Thought: Wal-Mart is Satan's outlet store.
Not-so-right-action: Shopping at Target, while blocking efforts for Wal-Marts to develop in low-income neighborhoods that lack basic shopping provisions. (For the record, Moxie Lady shamefully admits her love/hate affair with Target.)
And in the spirit of "cosmopolitan" here is the Carrie Bradshaw-esque question: In our quest to become worldly cosmopolitans, have we forgotten how to embrace our fellow metropolitans?
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