ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a Daoist interpretation of global citizenship and its implications for global citizenship education for youth. UNESCO’s description of global citizenship (as having a sense of belonging to a broader community and humanity) serves as the chapter’s starting point. Drawing on two seminal Daoist texts, Daodejing and Zhuangzi, it is posited that all human beings share a common humanity in dao (Way), the source of value and being for all. To love dao is to be liberated from repressive rules that suppress personhood, to return to one’s innate nature, and to harmonize oneself with one’s surroundings. The achievement of collective flow is made possible through wuwei (non-coercive action), wuming (nameless), wuzhi (non-dogmatic knowledge), and wuyu (objectless desire). A global citizen, from a Daoist viewpoint, is spontaneous, open-minded, and inclusive, demonstrating deference and empathic care toward all people and nature. A Daoist conception of global citizenship is then applied to formal education, using the example of racism experienced by Asians in a post-pandemic world. Because racism reflects the self-centered, divisive, and oppressive worldviews, norms, and practices to which Laozi and Zhuangzi object, a solution to racism is to (re)turn to dao where human beings act naturally, ethically, and collaboratively.
