About Last Night: Together People Just Happens to be The Etymology of the Word Citizen
But who speaks Latin any longer? What if we iterated our vocab and made ‘citizening’ a verb? An action word bantered about as frequently as reading / talking / caring / surfing? And, hey, what if we lived in a society where all those other action words were considered to be acts of citizenship?
According to the creative folks who gathered at Together Culture last night to take part in a conversation about citizenship with Jon Alexander (author of CITIZENS and founder of the New Citizenship Project) and Mike Davey (Leader of the Cambridge City Council), we’d be members of a society where….
more people had a deeper belief in their own self-worth
sharing joys and easing the burdens of your neighbours was common place
we didn’t struggle to find connections
we showed up as our true and full selves and felt like we belonged
community and council managed budgets and made plans for our future together
we made the money we need doing things that made us feel fulfilled and purposeful in service to one another and the rest of life on earth
we had far more time to get stuck in to building more inclusive systems and adapting to a climate changed world, together.
Yes and brigade…add your own thoughts here!
So, what’s stopping us? Everything and nothing at all. Meaning, we are the custodians of a time period in which humanity faces existential threats of our own making. We cannot don rose tinted specs of optimism and pretend that is not so. There are powerful forces who don’t want people to wake up to the power that we hold in our hands and in our hearts. Yes and…the thing is, we DO have tremendous power to create a world in which citizening is de rigour.
The stories that we tell ourselves shape our feelings, our actions, and our culture. In this country, our cultural norm is a blend of a ‘subject’ story (we are subjects of King Charles) and a ‘consumer’ story (we make money to spend money; many councils refer to residents as customers). To live a new ‘power with’ narrative and shape new cultural norms, we have to get deliberate about what it means to be a citizen, reflect on what feels comfortable, what doesn’t and why, and turn up proactively to do things cleaning streets, planting trees, teaching, learning, talking and staying informed about civic issues, and, yes, voting. We need to get comfortable with disagreement and learn how to deeply listen. We need to see the value in others, tell them, care for them, and champion them whenever possible.
There are cultures in which there is no word for nature. Where people distinguish between a human, an elephant, and a baobab tree but, have no need for the word nature because they are considered interdependent parts of life. Perhaps if we imagine, believe, and build a world in which there’s no need for the word citizening (say it out loud, it surely doesn’t trip off the tongue, so there’s that…) we might end up creating communities where the daily business of simply being human was citizening.
Huge thanks to everyone who turned up to think and share last night. Special thanks to Richard Whymark, Bisha Mistry, and Lele Sala for helping to manage the event. And of course, to Jon and Mike for sharing their stories and energy. If you want to revisit the conversation or weren’t able to attend, we’ll be uploading it to our YouTube channel soon!
If you’re looking for a plot twist in your own citizen story, pop on down to Together Culture and get stuck in - we’re hosting a summer party to Celebrate our Neighbourhood on Saturday 22 June. Yes and…I promise, just turning up is citizening.
