Certainly not. That would be a discerning response when one maintains a conscientious perspective. Allow me to construct an argument using insights from my three workshops involving children from diverse economic backgrounds.
The initial two workshops transpired in a semi-urban locale encompassing a blend of economic strata, cultures, and religions. During these sessions, we tasked children with illustrating "the pathway from school to home." The first group hailed from the lower-middle or below-middle class, depicting a vibrant panorama featuring dogs, cats, plants, flowers, snakes, frogs, birds, cycles, cars, buses, roads, and people traversing the journey. Conversely, the second group, comprised of upper-middle and affluent class children, illustrated a starkly different scenario. Their drawings solely comprised buildings – shopping malls, theaters, religious sites – interconnected by lines, reflecting their lack of firsthand experience walking to school. Despite inhabiting the same city, these groups had limited or no exposure to each other's ecosystems and habitats.
The third workshop, conducted in collaboration with the Hume Foundation in Wayanad, involved Tribal children. Given that these children were relocated to urban government hostels during school days due to a dearth of educational facilities in their native communities, the exercise shifted to depicting their habitat. Although their drawings included trees, birds, and people, similar to urban affluent kids, animals were notably absent due to a historical backdrop of man-animal conflicts. Furthermore, unlike urban children's drawings, there were minimal representations of the sky. To glimpse the sky amidst the towering trees in the forest, they had to tilt their heads 90 degrees, an unconventional routine. In contrast, when I conducted a similar exercise with metropolitan children in the college where I taught, I discerned no distinctions between urban children and their connection to ecology and habitat.
Presently, individuals from villages or lower-middle to poor economic backgrounds are the only ones with some semblance of connection to the natural or chaotic facets of our world and its ecology. The urban and metropolitan middle class and above inhabit a distinctly disparate ecology and habitat. Their experiences, fears, joys, desires, and perspectives stand in stark contrast.
Village and urban lower-middle-class children still exert physical effort in their daily lives. They walk, run to catch buses, and engage in activities that necessitate physical exertion. Conversely, the upper class has systems in place that obviate such physical efforts. Even a trip to the store is a luxury for the urban affluent, with gardens tended to by gardeners, water flowing from taps, and transportation arranged through cars and services. Their lives have transitioned from physical effort to finger inputs, thanks to technology.
Our world now exists in two distinct ecologies – one tethered to the physical effort and the other ensconced in technological comfort. The urban affluent no longer need to physically connect with nature, except perhaps during recreational pursuits or vacations. They constitute a new breed that believes money and technology acquired through wealth define their existence.
In the realm of academic research, I find it intriguing that, armed with resource aggregator software, scholars produce papers justifying their research conducted in one corner of the world by citing findings from a distant continent with which they have minimal connection or understanding. No, we are not all the same. We are not universal citizens. Despite seemingly inhabiting the same world, regional disparities manifest, evident in differing contexts, habitats, and circumstances.
As a human species, we now reside in two distinct ecologies – one rooted in physical efforts and the other steeped in technological comfort. From nomenclature to modalities, these ecologies diverge. Of course, there exists a cohort in transition between these two realms, navigating migration and displacement. Current estimates indicate that 56% of the global population resides in cities, a figure projected to rise to seven out of ten people by 2050.
In one of his essays in the American Rural and Agrarian Ideologue, Wendell Berry deliberates on the global phenomenon of rapid urbanization and its attendant challenges. He contends that a rural villager, farmer, or craftsman who migrates to a city experiences not only physical displacement but also severs ties with the knowledge and skills intrinsic to farming, crafts, or physical labor that hold little relevance in urban environments. Such individuals become a new breed, uprooted from their traditional moorings and communal living. In villages, mutual acquaintanceship and interdependence prevail, whereas in cities, anonymity reigns, and human connections diminish. The primary objective in the urban milieu becomes the pursuit of financial gains, channeled into banks, stocks, and insurance under the belief that these mechanisms safeguard and define one's life. Those who once derided villagers for their "primitive belief systems in natural forces" find themselves ensnared in the belief of an artificial financial system – uprooted, disconnected, and disoriented.
Determining which lifestyle is superior is not within my purview. However, one certainty prevails: in answering the question of whether we are all the same, the resounding response is no. We are distinct. These two ecologies are different and can not be compared with one another."
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