With Great KNOWLEDGE Comes Great Responsibility

I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Denver, Colorado last week to attend the University of Denver’s Transformational Voices: An Afternoon with LeadingGlobal Thinkers hosted by the Josef Korbel School and the Sie Cheou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy. The day featured lunch and an afternoon of panel discussions, which included 6 of Foreign Policy Magazine's 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. I was blown away by the caliber of the visiting speakers, and the wide array of topics that they discussed.

The speakers ranged from a political scientist, to a NOAA scientist, to economists, a filmmaker, and a social activist (full program HERE), but they all discussed an interesting moral dilemma within their professions: what responsibility do we have when we gain new knowledge?

I think I first encountered this in my own life several years ago as an overzealous and idealistic freshman at DePauw. I took several environmental science courses my first two semesters, as well as an environmental ethics course, and I felt a strong sense of moral obligation to the information I learned. I encouraged conversations with my friends on recycling and water conservation, stopped eating meat at fast food restaurants, and went through stages of not eating anything that was packaged in a plastic wrapper. Since then, my habitats have continued to evolve, guided by my moral compass and developing interests, however, parts of me feel like I have become complacent with the amount of work I apply given the amount of knowledge I have received.

Given the information base I have in social and environmental science, should I be personally striving for carbon neutrality while constantly berating my local representatives with suggestions about changing key local/national government policies? Is that annoying and idealistic, or just attempting to be an involved citizen?

Stephanie Herring, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as filmmaker Steve Elkins, and political scientist Erica Chenoweth briefly discussed this messy question during last Thursday’s panel at the University of Denver. Dr. Herring told the audience that she believes there is a moral obligation to do something with the ground-breaking information she researches, she just does not know what that something could look like.

I don’t have an answer either, but I have an opinion (and lucky for you, this blog to post it on). I believe everyone with the fortune to be able to reflect on these issues should strive to be global citizens, understanding that the small acts we do can acquiesce into something influential, both for good and bad. I have no definition on what it means to be this global citizen (I assume it largely varies by the individual), but that only makes it a more sticky and interesting topic for discussion. Why do we feel a sense of responsibility when we acquire new knowledge (do you?)? What does modeling a global citizen look like? Is there a learning experience that you felt has changed your daily routine or a particular habit?