Idealistic not realistic

Cosmopolitanism is an idealistic way of perceiving how the world should and could be by means of creating a community that shares similar values. Although the idea of creating a global community that shares the same beliefs and values may sound ideal, there come many issues caused by contradictions. According to Appiah, intervening with another society and trying to influence it with one’s own culture is not seeing the similar values one may have, but instead, it is pushing another belief or value that the “outsider” may see as a cure or value that will make the society better. Outsiders of one society make look at a culture and see that something is wrong with it because it goes against their personal or religious views. In seeing this, there are people who feel the need to intervene and push forth their beliefs, or the right belief (in their mind), and attempt to create a global community with the same values and beliefs that they find are true. The problem with this is simply that many cultures and religious beliefs and values clash and so there is no way to create a global community with shared beliefs without disrupting and possibly destroying cultures and religions because a new and “shared” belief system would be ultimately forced onto people. Appiah gives examples of how different cultures have practices that many outsiders would find atrocious but the people within the culture see no wrong or harm in what they do. Appiah also describes what he calls Positivism which consists of beliefs and desires. “Beliefs are supposed to reflect how the world is. Desires reflect how we’d like it to be” (Appiah, p 18). According to an article by Bohman J. he states that “It is no longer possible to assume national or cultural sovereignty over publicity: the de facto principle of one culture, one public sphere' hardly holds true for any society around the world.” I believe that although this idea sounds great to some, it can be scary for others in the sense that many people will be pressured to follow the one view and belief system of one global community which can also create tension with people who may not agree. The mix of beliefs and desires seems to conflict with one another in that we see the world the way we want it to be and how we need to go about changing it in order to make it that way. Because there are so many different beliefs and values in this world there is no way that all of them will simply blend together without some disruption.

Kwame, Appiah. Cosmopolitanism, Ethics in a world of strangers. New York: Norton & Co, 2006. Web

BOHMAN J. Philosophy & social criticism.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998, vol. 24, no2-3, pp. 199-216.