School project: What Positive traits should a person possess to be considered a good citizen?

For a school project I am supposed to get some answers for the question, what is a good citizen? Post answers below.

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Someone who does no harm to others

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Someone who contributes to society in a positive way.

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A good citizen is someone who posts a topic with a title that you don’t have to click on, to find out what the topic is about :wink: … thus being thoughtful and considerate with other people’s time.

(I may or may not have edited the topic title…)

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Lol. That wasn’t my intention.

Edit: and thank you

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It’s a good excuse to post an example of what (I at least) consider being a “good citizen”… helping improve stuff together by working on it together :handshake:

(This is also why Discourse has those kinds of somewhat controversial abilities that you can earn… “how dare you edit the title of my topic?!” … but it should be “hey thanks for helping me make the topic title really clear and descriptive so more people can find it and contribute to the conversation!” Is there risk? Sure! But every other human is a risk, the idea is to find ways to turn those risks into positive outcomes by doing good things!)

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Here are some of my ideas of what constitutes as a good citizen:

  • Acknowledges that people differ in a lot of aspects, yet treats them as equally as they would expect to be treated

  • Uses their time or money to better society or environment (not to just make life better for themselves)

  • Stands up to injustice that befalls onto others

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that is a really fantastic reply. thank you. :smile:

Pinhead - Be A Good Citizen - YouTube

The best Citizen was made by One Drop.

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What about somebody in a vegetative state?

A good citizen can give and adhere to an objective reason as to why they should be a good citizen. The rest follows.

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Conclusion: Someone who doesn’t break the law

Reasoning: Each person has different standard of morals, you cannot objectively classify somone as a “good citizen” by using ur/their standard of morals. However, laws exist to put a general contrainst of what is acceptable or not in a country. As an example, in the U.S., you can eat beef; however, some other countries consider cows as their sacred animal and should not be consumed. But if let’s say a person from a country views consuming of cows as illegal comes to the U.S., he cannot just tell every beef consumers that they are bad citizens. However, he have the right to form his own mind that those people are morally incorrect and are bad people. Another example would be that some other coutnries don’t really have laws preventing eating pets like cats/dogs, whereas in the U.S., he would be charged for doing that. So even if he thinks there’s nothing wrong with eating cats/dogs, he cannot justify his action in the American court.

In my own opinion, being a good citizen doesn’t have to mean that you are a good people, and vice versa. Citizenship are contrstained within a nation, but beign a good people, that depends on how you look at it. If a country purposefuly try to go to war with some other nations just to kill people with or without informaing their people(take Vietnam war as an example), the soliders serving at the frontline are risking their lives just to perform their duties. You can interpret their actions as trying to be good citizens, but for being good people, that’s very arguable. On the other hand, Edwar Snowden, who leaked the Prism Project (american gov spying on their ppl without informing them), is not considered a good citizen by the current U.S. government, but he’s widely viewed as a good person who sacrified his career and citizenship for a good cause. So since the question is what is a good citizen (citnenzships are cosntained by countries), I would have to say the ones who are obeying the law. Because the law is what determines if the countries thinks you are a good citizen (not people) or not.

Counter argument: what if the law has loopholes, or the law itself is actually “bad/incorrect”, well I think you can expand on that urself.

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thank you! i didnt mean you had to write an essay on it, but i suppose that just shows you to be a good citizen :wink:

lol was just writing down some thoughts

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and when the title is preceded by sovereign

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I personally think being a good citizen isn’t something you can just sum up with one fact, or attribute a person must have. Such as a respect for others and their property, or being a person who is willing to go out of the way to help someone or improve smthg. But rather a scale of being a horrible person, to someone who is so perfect that they probably could walk on water. But the two things I listed above are something that a good citizen should have in general, and are a huge start to being a better person in general.

I heard a few years back that the best test to tell whether someone was good or bad was if they put their shopping carts back in the cart return or just leave it wherever. I have always returned mine and even regularly straighten out the carts if they are a mess. In general I think it’s people that live and practice the golden rule.
Good luck

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I too return carts! Out of a habit I developed at work I try to acknowledge as many people as possible with a head nod, good morning, hello, have a great day, etc. In a world where acknowledging people is done more comfortably on social media I want to spread more real world acknowledging. Maybe the stranger I said good morning to will then say good morning to another stranger and it will spread and people we do not know will not feel like strangers anymore. Despite what we see on TV news we are all way more alike than we are different.

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