Things are pretty tense right now in the U.S. And that might be the euphemism of the century.
We’ve got systems being dismantled left and right (though mostly left – quick bad joke, sorry!) and a divided populace with feelings ranging from excitement & hope, to confusion & denial, to righteous indignation & anger.
Many of us in the despair or avoidance camps are looking anywhere we can for the antidote to the hypernationalism that has gripped the nation. If my own behaviour is any indication, I apparently hope to find it in my Netflix account, and while that may sound dark, I do think that reaffirming joy, thought leadership, and compassion through a well-told story isn’t the worst coping mechanism.
That said, there’s another important antidote to hypernationalism that is very much needed right now: cosmopolitanism. (No, this has nothing to do with the drink – though if you want to enjoy a cosmopolitan with your Netflix affirmations, I’m happy to endorse that.)
So what is cosmopolitanism and how does it stand up to hypernationalism? More importantly, what can ordinary people do to help seed this important value? Let’s dive in.
Definitions
Defining hypernationalism
Nationalism means identifying, quite strongly, with one’s own nation. This often equates to pursuing the nation’s interests above all else, and without much regard for the interests of neighboring nations. Hypernationalism takes this to an extreme – often to the detriment of other interests. It carries with it the ideas of superiority and separatism – advancing the perspective that one’s own nation is the best and only one in view, along with an unwillingness to identify shared interests and goals that might transcend national boundaries.
Defining cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism, in contrast, is all about transcending national boundaries. In Greek, the word kosmopolitēs, from which the term cosmopolitanism derives, literally means "citizen of the world.” And indeed, the idea behind cosmopolitanism is that all humans, regardless of their physical location or other ties, are part of one global community. This carries with it the idea that each of us are partially responsible for the well-being of others, and questions the preference to help only those who happen – through accident of birth – to be part of our local neighborhood, city, or country.
A values crossroads
What happens when we approach reality with only a hypernationalistic perspective? The view that everyone should fend for themselves, regardless of their starting point, is normalised and justified. Whether you (or your country) started as a billionaire or a pauper, you’re on your own. There are no wins that transcend national boundaries – if I help you, that’s a loss for me. In other words, everything is very much a zero sum game.
In this zero sum game, common goals (like advancing human rights, mitigating climate change, or ending world hunger) get deprioritised. A poignant example is Trump’s statement that the Paris Accord – meant to be a symbol of international cooperation to achieve a common goal – was “a rip off” because the U.S.’s emission reduction targets were more aggressive than China’s.
Another example is the stance on Ukraine, which, in the administration’s eyes, now owes the U.S. for helping out and needs to repay them by ceding a portion of its mineral resources. The U.S. has paused the aid and intelligence it was previously providing, and there has been an increase in attacks and civilian casualties. In fact, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, “casualty numbers have been higher so far in 2025 than in 2024.”
From a hypernationalistic worldview, there’s nothing wrong here – except that Ukraine has yet to pay its “debt”. An increase in casualties that the U.S. could have potentially prevented isn’t the U.S.’s fault. Why not? Because the U.S. doesn’t owe Ukraine anything – it would be a sign of weakness, or stupidity – a “bad deal” – to help just for the sake of saving Ukrainian lives. If they were American lives, that might be another story.
Possibly, this sounds uncharitable. Sadly, I don’t think it is, given that many people voice similar perspectives when hearing about the results of the USAID freeze. Logically, if you believe those around you should come first, “not my responsibility” is a remarkably easy stance to defend. (“Why should we send aid over there when people are suffering here?”) This stance only becomes repugnant when you acknowledge that the lives outside of your own borders matter too, and that caring for “our own” and caring “for others” aren’t mutually exclusive.
The cosmopolitan perspective
On that note, what would happen if these two situations were approached with a cosmopolitan perspective? Here’s my best guess. (Though this piece is intended for a global audience, I’ll use “we” in place of “the U.S.” to better personify the worldview.)
The Paris Accord would no longer be a “rip-off”
Under a cosmopolitan worldview, we’d feel good about curbing our emissions to a greater extent than China because we’d acknowledge that a rapid emissions scale-down in China would likely lead to an increase in poverty and suffering among its citizens. We’d want to prevent this because – even though these aren’t American lives – we’d feel that people are people, and that everyone deserves to live with dignity. We’d acknowledge that curbing our emissions would help facilitate a global and sustainable transition to clean energy, with the aim of avoiding massive food shortages, deaths from severe weather, biodiversity loss, and other ill effects of climate change that could cause high levels of suffering all around the world.
Under this worldview, the U.S. is part of a larger, global project – a “citizen” of the world – and we’d feel responsible and motivated to do what we could to protect all the world’s citizens, ourselves included.
We’d view aid as an opportunity, not a loss
We wouldn’t pause aid to Ukraine, and we wouldn’t have dismantled USAID. We’d feel a moral obligation to help those in need, even if they weren’t inside the borders of our own country, especially since we could do so at little cost – the U.S. was spending 0.24% of gross national income on aid and saving millions of lives.
We’d acknowledge that some country’s governments don’t have the infrastructure in place to provide life-saving services to all of their citizens, and we’d want to do what we could to ensure citizens received the services they needed. We’d do this because we’d view our fellow humans (who extend far beyond the borders of our own country) as equally deserving of a good life, regardless of where they happened to be born and with what resources. Because of this, we’d also likely increase our aid budget well beyond the ~1% we’ve historically spent.
Some other notable consequences of a cosmopolitan worldview:
- a vastly different stance on immigration, one that didn’t portray immigrants as external threats to American safety & security. Under a cosmopolitan worldview, it would be much more difficult to garner political support with the ”immigrants are criminals infiltrating our country” rhetoric that was a hallmark of the recent Trump campaign.
- a vastly different stance on DEI, if this Oxford Review article is any indication.
Okay…but how is this an antidote?
At this point, you might be feeling a bit sceptical. Sure, cosmopolitanism sounds great and all, but the odds of the Trump administration suddenly adopting a cosmopolitan mindset are next to zero. It would be similarly unlikely for the portion of the U.S. populace who resonates with hypernationalism to suddenly expand their moral circle of concern. So what’s the point of talking about it as an “antidote”?
I think the point is that, like it or not, trends in the national and global conversations do eventually affect public perception. This doesn’t happen quickly, but it does happen. So when these trends have a hypernationalist current, we need to make sure it doesn’t carry us, against our will, to places we don’t want to go. In other words, I don’t think leaning into cosmopolitanism is likely to convince hypernationalists to do the same, but I do think it’s likely to slow the tide of change, so to speak, guarding against any broader, unconscious shifts towards the nationalist mindset.
Actioning cosmopolitanism
I see your hypernationalism, and I raise you … hyper cosmopolitanism! If this wasn’t such a mouthful, it could be my new mantra.
Imagine a world where people went out of their way to look after others, without worrying or wondering what would be in it for them. Imagine using cosmopolitanism as a form of non-complementary behavior to restore some balance to the way people are currently behaving, and to the global conversation as a whole.
In the same way that we might attempt to “counter hate with love” or “counter alternative facts with science,” in this world of hypernationalism, let’s lean even more fully into cosmopolitanism than we might do otherwise.
Admittedly, I’ve always leaned somewhat into cosmopolitanism, believing that everyone deserves to live a good life, and that it’s unfair that some people are born into relative privilege while others have to fight to live past the age of 5. This was part of what motivated me, long before I started working there, to take Giving What We Can’s Pledge to “give what I can” to highly-effective charities like those that are tackling the preventable diseases that were killing around 14,000 children every day before the aid freeze and are likely to kill more now that 42% of the global humanitarian aid tracked by the UN has been frozen.
But this year, it feels even more necessary – both from an ideals perspective & from a practical perspective.
If this resonates with you, check out Giving What We Can’s 10% Pledge: it's a public commitment to donate a portion of income to the charities you believe can best use it to improve the lives of others. (The Trial Pledge is a great option for those looking to stand up to hypernationalism but who want to pledge a lower percentage of income.)
By the way, if it seems ridiculous that individuals could ever do enough to make a concrete difference, consider that the team at Longview Philanthropy did some recent research which suggests that if those earning at least ~ US$62k a year post-tax gave 10% of their income to highly-effective interventions, we could in two years:
🍞 completely end world hunger
💧 provide clean water and sanitation for all
🐥 halve factory farming and
🌎 build the systems we need to prevent pandemics.
See the research
Also consider that it costs only around $5 to buy and distribute a malaria net to help protect a household from a disease that kills around 600,000 people – mostly children – per year.
Leaning fully in
You might wonder why the burden of funding life-saving programs should rest on individuals. That’s a fair question. In an ideal world, governments would take care of this. But in the absence of that world – we have two options: do nothing because it’s not fair and it’s “a bad deal” for us (sound familiar?) or step up and do what we can because we care.
For me, leaning into cosmopolitanism means doing the latter. Yes, it’s not fair that things are the way they are. But I prefer to see the opportunity to help change them – to help more people live a good, full, life – as an opportunity, not a burden. I choose to play a positive-sum game, where everyone benefits from spreading some resources around and increasing the number of flourishing, happy people in our global community.
I’m planning to attend my share of protests, call my reps, and do what I can in my local community. But one thing I really like about donating to evidence-based, life-saving programs overseas is that it transcends the borders (and the limits) of what is possible locally, especially right now.
In the current climate of gridlock & confusion, it’s easy to feel powerless – and while I don’t believe we are – I also believe that by expanding our actions outward, we have far more opportunities to make a concrete difference while at the same time challenging the narrow worldview that has gotten us here in the first place. So let’s stand our ground against the nationalistic tides that are pulling the world’s psyche into the confinements of a reality centered on us vs. them & zero sum games. Let’s reaffirm our place as citizens of the world.
***
P.S. If you want to ramp up support for global health programs in light of the funding freeze, here are some options:
GiveWell’s All Grants Fund: A fund to improve global health & wellbeing by granting to high-impact opportunities that meet GiveWell’s grantmaking criteria. GiveWell is considering the funding freeze in their grantmaking decisions and making some grants to fill urgent funding needs due to the freeze. Learn more and donate here
GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund: A fund supporting the highest-priority funding needs among GiveWell's Top Charities, which are evidence-backed, high-impact, and highly cost-effective opportunities to save and improve lives. GiveWell is considering the funding freeze in their grantmaking decisions. Learn more and donate here
The Rapid Rapid Response Fund: Launched by Founders Pledge & The Life You Can Save, this fund aims to fill critical funding gaps for top recommendations & other high-impact orgs affected by the USAID freeze, so they can continue life-saving programs. Learn more and donate here
This is a brave thing to publish in the current political climate and I am grateful you did!