"Why ‘Citizens of the World’? Towards a non-alienated relationship with world and humanity."

Why "Citizens of the World"? There are some basic reasons for creating this group:
1. The world as creation of God doesn’t belong to any nation, ethnos, country or group of people, but constitutes the "common house" of the Humanity as a whole,
2. Our relation to the world is essentially alienated, because we have interpreted the world as a "part" of our psychological, political and cultural identity, that is, of our "subjectivity". So we usually say: "this is a beautiful French landscape", or "what a wonderful Greek sea", or "this is American soil", and so on and so forth. But, essentially, the world is not a part of an “ethnos”, or a political human self-interpretation; it is the Common House of all people as creatures of God.
3. I have the dream and the ideal of a Common world, where all the goods (material, cultural, spiritual) are at the disposal of every people as "part of the Humanity" and "God' creatures", for a rational and spiritual exploitation, and not as a sort of a "dispensated good" by a political State, interpreted as a "being at hand", that is, as a "thing" that can be used or indiscriminally exploited by man according his own ethnical or political interests.
4. It is difficult not to be a "citizen", that is, a part of a "major political-cultural totality". That's why I think of being "citizen of the world", signifying our belonging to the whole Humanity, beyond any "nationalistic", "patriotic" or "political" interpretation.
5. Till now, Humanity has been compelled to get somehow "united" in nationalistic-ethnical groups, or in political frames and structures. Even the sense of Church itself is commonly apprehended and interpreted from national or ethnical points of view. This has proved with the time to be a false and essentially alienated relation of mankind with the world and with itself. It's now time to get over these ethnic and political interpretations of the human "being in the world", and to get united in the ground, essential and common ontological structures and "interests" of Humanity as such.
6. According to what I see and understand, the only gnosis as well as practical experience able, at the present, to contribute and lead Humanity to this transcendental realization, is a well-understood Christianity. "Well-understood" means "non-moralist", non-nationalist", “non-discriminatory", really soteriological, eschatological and "resurrection-shaped" Christianity, that is, a Christianity quite different from this we know, live, and suffer to-day.
7. This "getting over", this change, cannot be realized by force, or through armed actions, or by war, or even leaded by some kind of "revolutionary ideology", because all these thing have proved to be just another form of alienation of Human being with the world and with himself.
8. This change, this transformation from a "politically-divided world", to an "essentially unificated" supra-ethnic world, must be achieved only by the real comprehension of the eschatological dimension of Christ's resurrection, its meta-ethnical and basically non-political horizon, and by the real "mind transformation" that this comprehension brings into being.
9. We are not denying here the "being in the world" of Human being. On the contrary, we are affirming and underlying here the necessity of a non-alienated relationship of Human being with himself and the world as a whole. We are denying the authenticity of the ethnical and "patriotic" interpretation and appropriation of the world by Human being, because, among others, this interpretation constitutes a basic cause of the destruction, wars, wrath, hatred and self-alienation, Human being have systematically been exposed to.
10. Ironically may be, the fore-exposed, constitutes in itself nothing "new" at all: it is not but the basic, ground and essential doctrine of Christianity.
11. From this standpoint, the Church itself, in its Human dimension, is also alienated in its relationship to the world and to the peoples, as long as it understands -in practice, not in theory-, Human beings through the same categories of "citizens of political systems", "beings with nationality", "ethnic entities", an so no and so forth. In general, the Christian Church is not promoting to-day the meta-political and supra-ethnic dimension that, notwithstanding, constitute its own essence.
12. The notions of "ethnos", "nation", "patriotism", etc., are not co-essential to Human nature, but cultural and politically re-enforced conceptions and self-interpretation that must -and will indeed- pass away.
13. The origin of these notions is basically twofold: a. The fear of death and pain, proper of Human being, as well as the co-related necessity of "being on earth", that is, of surviving as individual and "specie". This continuously provokes war and fights for territory, goods as well as, in general, means for a living. b. The psychological, intellectual and practical (costumes, habits, etc.) identification of a group of Human beings, upon the "subjective" ground of common ideas, world- and self-interpretations ("Weltanschauungen"), religious beliefs and practices, as well as political-administrative structures. All this complexity of elements becomes sublimated in the historical praxis, and, -upon the basis of the dialectical inter-relationship of the individual and the collective "ego"-, it comes into effect the "propriation" of the natural and cultural "world-around" interpreted as a part of my own being, and so, the world and the human inter-relations become essentially "subjectivized", taking shape the notion of ethnical consciousness, racial identity, as well as of patriotic duties as "objective categories" of "being in the world". Of course, these are all "ways of human surviving" and self-affirmation as "being in the world", but this truth -this fact- has been concealed, and, as a result of that, the sublimated notions of "race", "ethnos" and "homeland" have been understood as essential and necessary references of the Human being as "being in the world". But, "being in the world" as Human being, constitutes a much more primary structure in the ontic-ontological constitution of man. That's why, the self-identification on Human being with these notions as "natural" structures of his own humanity constitutes a basic alienation in the relationship of Human beings with themselves and the world. Nevertheless, this all process has been a historical and ontological necessity for the very being of man.
14. In the far deeper dimension of the Human "being in the world", can be found the most essential and common condition of Human being: to be "created at image and likeness of God". But this, paradoxically, cannot be apprehended by Human being, if not in the historical praxis, through a concrete "ethnical" reference, that is, in the already alienated Human self-consciousness.
15. The only "nation" should be Humanity itself; the only "ethnos" the compromise with the realization of Good on earth; the only "patriotism" (from a Christian point of view) should be the faithfulness and the consecration to the "House of God" as the Common place for all Humanity.
16. So, the "objective" of this group, is not but to create a dialogue space with all peoples, but especially with those who share the same ideals of a non-alienated Humanity and a common world united in the experience of self-consciousness, universality and love. This way can spontaneously change the general consciousness, can Human being comprehend its own "being in the world", not as "struggle for surviving" but as "communion" and "inter-happiness", and can Humanity as whole step forward to a higher level of self-experience: beyond instinctiveness, fear, suspicion, and unhappiness.
P. Atanasio Yanes
Athens
September 24th, 2010.