Citizens Together or Individuals Apart?

“Citizens Together or Individuals Apart?”

A conversation with Dr. Derick Wilson, Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at St. Philip’s College and professional peace practitioner from Northern Ireland.

We are conceived in a relationship and then shaped and formed in a host of relationships through our life. Some set us free and give us confidence and others skew us, and sometimes demean us! We are relational beings!

Strong and robust democracies are made, in part, through the engagements between diverse citizens, not always agreeing but acknowledging one another’s rights as equal citizens. This common experience between us is not always explicitly acknowledged except at times such as Annual Commemorations, Public Holidays, singing the National Anthem and Voting.

This conversation is to ask:

• are we committed to build respectful relationships together as diverse citizens?
• are we committed to engage in robust conversations in which we respectfully share our honest differences and hopes about the societies we live in? ,or
• do we merely stand back and slide into living apart as individuals in much weaker and less cohesive democracies?