DAY #1

Welcome to life, CTZN.eu

Hi reader,

this is the blog of CTZN.eu. What is it, uh? I like to think that it is my little creature that will live thanks to our thoughts and discussions about politics and society. I'm Maria Chiara, by the way.

This project started playing on my mind during the last few months, while discussing society and politics with my boyfriend and one of my professors. I started asking myself questions on various topics, which I discussed with my staff ( for example, monetary policy and smart contracts, nuclear energy and its future, China and Hong Kong, and so on), and I decided that I wanted to try to bring those reflections to a wider audience.

However, the real problem that interested me is that most people do not care about what's central to our life, that's politics. We live in the age of the alienation from the world, as Hannah Arendt named it, where people lose interest in the public sphere and retreat in their private affairs disrupting the public domain, as the disengagement of people from politics means the fragmentation and decadence of the public institutions and the Commonwealth as a whole. There is no longer any trust in politicians, and people start thinking that things can be changed without effort. We at CTZN.eu instead think it fundamental for each one of us to be an active part of the public discourse. In fact, the goal of CTZN.eu is to create personal reflections on contemporary time and encourage people to critically assess, formulate and express opinions, because this is the core of a democratic system: we need to think about our society’s problems, talk about them with others, try to find solutions and implement them, always with respect for human rights.

Therefore, if you ask me “What is CTZN.eu then?”, I think I will answer you in this way: CTZN.eu is a movement of citizens and liberal democracy lovers. In a world where populism and nationalism are on the rise again, in a world where young and old people alike think that democracy is full of flaws and perhaps other regimes would be better, like a military one or a single-strong-man-in-power one, we want to spread our voice in favour of liberal democracy, which is the only regime where rights of the majority and the minorities are respected and the will of people is implemented. We are well aware that the liberal-democratic system is not free from deficiencies and wrongs, and we do not intent to uncritically defend it, but it is our task and wish to find new and innovative ways of protecting and reforming a fundamentally just system to make it better, rather than throwing away the sacrifices and lessons of the past along with our hopes for a better future. For the sake of this all, we want first to increase awareness of (active) citizenship among people.

We will have time to focus on each phase of what I just said, but for now I just want to express how happy I am that this project is finally coming to life. I'm not alone in this adventure, of course. By my side, I have my boyfriend, Davide, who studies Diplomatic International Sciences at the University of Bologna, and my sister, Agnese, who is attending a Digital Marketing Master in Paris.

Our activity will be realized in this way: we will sometimes publish long reflections on this blog, which will be promoted on our social profiles, and more often we will publish shorter thoughts only on our social profiles. We have prepared 7 different macro-categories, each with a different color as background: Citizenship (brown), Environment (green), Italy (light blue), European Union (blue), International Relations (orange), Technology (indigo), Economy (yellow).

Tell me what you think about this project, follow us on our social profiles (Facebook: @ctzn.eu, Instagram: @_ctzn.eu_, Twitter: @ctzn_eu) and stay tuned!

Thank you for your attention,

Maria Chiara

Mail: ctzn.eu@gmail.com

Facebook: @ctzn.eu

Instagram: @_ctzn.eu_

Twitter: @ctzn_eu