The posture of democratic citizenship is avowal of rights and obligations of membership in a civic community. The rationale for this is the moral and political goodness of a civic way of living and the shared promise of human self-realization through interdependence. As such it is the exemplary, most inclusive form of membership; it is a precondition for the sustainability in the modern secular era of other expressions of membership in our lives—social, economic, kinship, familial, and intimate.[17] Again, citizenship avows—makes a vow, takes on a trust—on behalf of a future of moral and political potential toward which it is reasonable to strive. Citizenship is iterative and ongoing; it provides continuity and provokes innovation; each generation of democratic citizens begins a new story of the demos and continues an ongoing one.[18]