some thoughts

Here I sit, writing from a closed room with windows that look out onto the sunny porch.  Basanti sweeps yesterday’s dust as she does every morning, and plays with the puppies.  Susee is chatting leisurely with her because the owners of the porch and the house it surrounds are away.  They hold hands and chase the puppies and laugh when they roll around on the ground.  Here I sit, reading, typing away on my machine, inside in a cool room on a hot, sunny day. 

 

How do our experiences shape our relationship with the physical world?  I have learned about the physical environment more in a classroom and through books than in a field.  These women know how plants grow because they’ve seen it, and helped them grow since they were children. They know how to do practical things with their hands and their bodies.  They don't take recreational walks to stay fit.

 

The more affluent and educated we become, the further we seem to stray from the world of physical labor and relationships with the other creatures of the world (flauna and flora alike).  Perhaps we think more cerebrally about these things (I’m reading a book about farming and gardening) but these young women, both from large families on small farms in rural Karnataka, have a tactile relationship with them, and know no other way to relate to the world except directly.

 

Am I reading about farming because I feel that more knowledge will build up to some greater goal, or am I reading about farming because that’s how I’ve learned to relate to nature?  If my concept of nature is fed to me second hand in this way, can I really say I have a relationship with nature, or is that second hand too? 

 

It must be my higher level of education that allows me to see how our actions and decisions affect the greater environment and thus I am concerned about the impact of humans on the earth.  The uneducated farmers and manual laborers with whom I work don’t share this concern.  That is certainly a benefit of the Western education I’ve undergone.  But it wasn’t until my shift into a rural tropical setting for an extended period of time that my environmental values were solidified, given substance, and morphed from knowledge to understanding.

 

What kind of interesting, holistic and informed perceptions would these young women, who know the land like a member of their family, form if they were educated after their development of a tactile relationship with the physical world.  Most of India is comprised of these so-called “simple” villagers, who in many ways know more than any of the educated and isolated young people in the West.  What would they contribute if they had access to the world-wide communication systems we take for granted and a globally visible form of expression? 

 

So many people in my generation, and all the children after us in the Western world, live with their noses fixed to a computer screen.  They have learned about deforestation in the Amazon, but aren’t aware that they are eating plants for dinner.  That even their iceberg lettuce had roots and flowers to go with those leaves. That even the additives in their packaged dinners are made of corn (which also has roots and flowers).  That the soil doesn’t make things “dirty,” it makes things alive.

 

Could there be an exchange between these kids with virtual lives and the forgotten villagers who still live firmly in the physical world?  Would either side of the equation benefit, or would the rift be too wide for mutual understanding? 

 

Both of these groups are disadvantaged.  One lacking what the other takes for granted.