Living in a small, middle to upper middle class town in North Jersey, we have a particular perspective on what the world is like.

The majority of our town is Caucasian, has a house or apartment of some sort to come home to every day, owns a computer, is well fed, etc. Because of this, we have what I call a “bubble ideology”. Basically, this means that we assume that what we see around us every day, or what our own personal world is made of, is what the majority of the world outside of Verona is also like. Now, this is not saying that all of us truly believe this to be true, it is saying that to some extent, though, we all have the comfort of not really wondering or thinking about if it’s not.

How many times have you watched the news and been absolutely appalled by what you see? How many times have you wondered how this could possibly be happening? How many times have you just not been able to believe what you hear because it is so beyond the realm of what you experience in your nice, safe little bubble here in northern New Jersey?

I am not saying that everyone here has a perfect life. But what I am saying is that we have no idea, no perspective, of what the world as a whole is really like.  Recently, a small set of infographic posters online caught my attention titled, “If the World Were a Village of 100 People” by Toby Ng.

These posters aim to put the world into perspective; to show us that what we believe to be so common is not as customary as it is here.  What Ng has done is take specific subjects – language, religion, computer ownership, education, etc. – and create a graphic for each that demographically represents that item in global terms.  For instance, if the world were 100 people, only nine of them would speak English, 33 would be Christian, 50 of them would not have a regular and reliable source of food.

The graphic on race is an example of how skewed our perception of the world is. We consider people of color to be a minority, but when you look at the bigger picture, Caucasians are the ones who are in the minority. Throughout history Caucasians have seen themselves as the superior, but if the world were made of only one hundred people,  only 30 would be white.

Living in an upper middle class community, we tend to assume that everyone has the same comforts, privileges, and opportunities that we have as a part of our everyday lives. We have even gone as far as considering these things to be necessities, when in reality, most people in the world will only ever dream of having what we do. In Verona, if someone does not have a computer or television in their home, it is unfathomable.   However, if the worldl were 100 people, only seven of them would own a computer.   Twenty four of them  would have no acces to electricity at all.

Think about this: if the world were 100 people, only one of them would have been able to get a college education.  For most of us, getting into college may be a struggle, and affording it requires loans, sure. But for 99 percent of the world; that isn’t even an option. We take this for granted every day, to the extent that we complain about it. Senior year, all anyone talks about is college, because for the most part, that is what everyone is doing next year. But worldwide, those of us lucky enough to get a college education are few and far between.

We are so privileged to have the opportunities and experiences we have every day. Verona is a very small town that has us all living in a bubble. We tend not to see things on a large scale; we assume that for the most part, the rest of the world is not too different than our town.

But the world is so much larger and more diverse than we can even imagine.  Check out Toby Ng’s work and see for yourself.  http://www.toby-ng.com/graphic-design/the-world-of-100/