What is a Global Citizenry, and Can It Save Us?

Headlines this past spring claimed that for the first time ever, more than half of poll respondents around the world said they saw themselves more as global citizens than as citizens of a country. What did they mean in saying that?

First of all, to lower the heart rate of certain U.S. readers we should state that they clearly didn’t mean they’d sworn loyalty to a secret global government for the period of time until the Dark Side crushes all light from the Force, or until Mom, apple pie, and sacred national sovereignty expire in the satanic flames of internationalism. How do I know this? For one thing, something that a majority of the planet is aware of is the opposite of a secret. More importantly, what’s at issue here are the poll respondents’ attitudes, not their situations. In many nations the responses were almost evenly split; half the people weren’t wrong, they were just differently minded.

Still, what did they mean?