Jake Brock October 8, 2012 MOI Dr. Strickler First Critical Thought Paper Multiple words in the English dictionary get seen as words in which people may all have different definitions for. Citizenship is one of those words. Each person may have their own version of what citizenship means. And more specifically each person may have their own ideas of what the duties of a citizen involve. I feel some of these duties include favoring the interest among citizens over foreigners, arguing for the social rights of future generations, voting, and thinking of military service as an unconditioned, mandatory national duty. All of these duties are shown in the texts we have read in class. These texts include Eboo Patel’s Acts of Faith, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and John Varley’s Persistence of Vision. According to Seth Lazar a duty of being a citizen includes favoring the interest among citizens over foreigners. Varley shows this in Persistence of Vision when the narrator in the story basically goes in a trial after he left a bucket on the pathway and got a citizen hurt. The jury could of easily got the narrator kicked out of the community for this however they listened to the citizen who got hurt and she said give him a chance to stay here. The narrator did not get to defend his case they did not listen to him. He was a foreigner, and they listened to the girl who got hurt, because she was a citizen. This gives a clear example of them favoring the interest of the citizen over the foreigner, although their interests were the same they did not even ask the foreigner before asking the citizen. However you can indeed look at this from the flip side to this idea of a duty. According to Lazar some people believe “There is little reason to treat compatriots any differently from how we treat foreigners.” By this people mean that we should not treat someone different just because they do not have citizenship of your community. If they have an idea or interest we should listen and respect them just as much as our own citizen. This contrary idea can also show in Varley’s Persistence of Vision when Pink and the rest of her community let the narrator into their community even though he is not a citizen. They respect his interest in their lifestyle and him wanting to contribute by giving him things to do. This shows that they do care about the interest of foreigners by allowing him to do things he wants to do in the community. Another duty of a citizen according to Maurice Roche involves arguing for the social rights of future generations. In Roche’s book called Rethinking Citizenship: Welfare, Ideology, and Change in Modern Society, he discusses that he believes people should think of how their decisions effect future generations. He involves this as a duty of a citizen. If you do not look out after future generations then you cannot consider yourself a good citizen. You actually may just consider yourself of being selfish, and being selfish does not include what he believes of an attribute of being a good citizen. In a way Eboo Patel’s text Acts of Faith shows this. For example Patel said “I will do everything in my power to become an effective teacher here.” (Patel, P. 62) Patel’s referring to a school in which he would teach high school drop outs in order to help them pass their GED exam. This shows that Patel looks out for future generations. By helping educate more of the youth he makes the future generation more educated overall. This will help get more people working and more bright minds out there to look for their own social rights. Patel has a very good education and people consider him a smart man, he could have done many things at that point of his life including make a lot of money. But he decided to take this low income job in order to help the youth get more educated. The sacrifice he made shows how Patel became a good citizen and acted upon his duties of being a citizen. He especially acted upon the duty of arguing for the social rights of future generations. However people can still think of a potential downfall to this duty. The downfall people think of says that if you spend too much time worrying about future generations then you do not worry enough about your own current generation and community. And this could hurt your community at that given time. A third duty of a citizen involves simply voting. Michael Schudson brings this up in his book called The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. In the book he says that everyone should vote. Because in order to get the full understanding of what the citizens want you need them all to express their opinion and the only way to do that is to have them all vote. Without doing so you will not become a good citizen and could potentially get the wrong person in office who could then easily hurt your community. In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, a person could easily assume that in order for that community to get changed so much in what most consider a bad way, that somewhere along the lines someone bad got elected. And you could also assume that during that election some people who if forced to vote would have voted for the other guy. Since they were not doing the duty of voting then they were all hurt because the wrong man got elected and changed their community for the worse. However some people may feel that not everyone should vote. That some people just simply don’t know enough about the candidates and if they were to vote that they would make mistakes. That this too could get the wrong person elected. That is just one consequence of forcing everyone to vote. The fourth major duty of a citizen wants you to consider military service as an unconditioned, mandatory national duty. According to the article From "Obligatory Militarism" to "Contractual Militarism"--Competing Models of Citizenship written by Yagil Levy, Edna Lomsky-Feder, and Noa Harel, they consider military as a national duty. This belief says that to act as a good citizen you have to become ready to fight if your country goes to war. It is your duty to protect your country and you should have the willingness to risk your life for it. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 he has a military war going on throughout the whole book. This war has citizens fighting in it. These citizens more than likely have volunteered to fight for their community during this time of war. They took it upon themselves to make it their duty to risk their lives for the better good, what Levy, Lomsky-Feder, and Harel would consider an act of a good citizen. Although in Bradbury’s novel, not all citizens fight in the war. If it ever came about that a government made a law saying that all citizens had to fight in a war it would cause many problems. For one there may be people forced to fight who just cannot physically or mentally fight in a war. Secondly you need people in the community still to keep things running smooth. Either way if the government needed everyone it would make you a good citizen to consider the act of fighting in a war as a duty. Therefore you do not question it when you get called to action. Citizenship still gets defined differently by everyone. Although most people would agree that being a citizen comes with certain duties. And even though everyone may have different ideas on what those duties involve, some may look similar. Some may include favoring the interest among citizens over foreigners, arguing for the social rights of future generations, voting, and thinking of military service as an unconditioned, mandatory national duty. These duties get seen in multiple spots in our class material such as Acts of Faith, Fahrenheit 451, and Persistence of Vision. However these duties don’t change the fact that everyone has their own definition of citizenship. Work Cited Lazar, Seth. "A Liberal Defence Of (Some) Duties To Compatriots." Journal Of Applied Philosophy 27.3 (2010): 246-257. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012. Levy, Yagil, Edna Lomsky-Feder, and Noa Harel. "From "Obligatory Militarism" To "Contractual Militarism"--Competing Models Of Citizenship." Israel Studies 12.1 (2007): 127-148. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012. Roche, Maurice. England 1992: Rethinking Citizenship: Welfare, Ideology, and Change in Modern Society. Oxford, Policy Press 1992. Schudson, Michael. New York 1998: The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. Martin Kessler Books 1998.