In approximately 500 AD, during the Gupta Empire, the Indian sub-continent's "caste system" came into existence.
The "caste system" is used interchangeably by most Westerners for "Varna" and "Jati".
Varna has four classes: Brahmins (Priests), Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), Vaishyas (middle-class) and Shudras (worker-bees). A fifth level is implied, the untouchables who fall into none of those classes. They are the butchers, renderers, leather workers. These classes are hereditary.
Jati is much more complicated. There are thousands of Jati categories with subtle nuances of status and complicated overlap with the swirling storm of other Jati categories. Jati "basket-weaves" with Varna. Jati classes are also hereditary. For the vast majority of modern East Indians, the strictures of Jati are voluntarily...perhaps even enthusiastically...complied with.
One theory for the formation of Varna and Jati are that as population and technology increased, legacy social orders proved inadequate for managing the disruptive effects of the social challenges during the Gupta Empire. Those challenges included maintaining and growing increasingly complicated technologies while continuing to enforce social order.
Rather than dismiss the (East) Indian Caste system as obsolete and of no use to us, perhaps we should see what parts of it might apply to the "First Worlds' " rapid divergence in culture, explosive divergence of intellectual ability and the resulting social disorder.
I bet I have countless readers who believe in their heart that self-segregation is the only viable solution for the chaos we are heading toward. If you squint your eyes and look sideways at what they are describing after their fifth beer, it looks a little bit like the Indian Caste System...a system that has worked surprisingly well for 1500 years.
I am basically a lazy guy. If you can show me an off-the-shelf solution that has most of the "aw-shits" worked out of it, I am a buyer. Especially if there is a snow-ball's chance in hell that a majority might buy into the solution.
We had a damn fine system running here. It produced freedom and a huge middle class, and world-wide wealth
ReplyDeleteThen the Communists in the D party started diddling with it, for their own enrichment
Change. IT. BACK
"...a system that has worked surprisingly well for 1500 years."
ReplyDelete...According to the elites at the top... 'Sounds a lot like what we've got here now...
I think you need to go live in an east indian neighbourhood, Joe. You'd get red pilled mighty fast. Faster in a black one. The multiculti experiment is going to end badly and contrary to the Establishment, whites aren't the only bigots and racists out there.
ReplyDeleteThere's exceptions to every rule but they ARE the exception.
Winner winner chicken dinner.
DeleteThe multi-culti thats a problem.
Joe cites culture A and its trappings, insert wiggle room, the system works!
System A could be East India, or West LA, maybe even Southside Chicago... ok, yeah, nothing else is like the southside, you're right. But you get my point. In any group, for a period of time, any system can work.
But when you insert a new culture....? Its like a virus.
https://tinyurl.com/3pkwmmaj
ReplyDeleteCaste : The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
You are too late. America is already a caste system.
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley | May 26, 2020
One of the things I remember about this is Fascism sells hierarchy. The Nazis and South Africans came to America to learn how to create a caste system. Even the Nazis were shocked at how extreme it was there.
Is Freedom a value anymore?
Tribalism...the inherent wish to associate mostly with those who are most like us is a biologic reality. A fact of life. Ignoring biologic reality always results in conflict and social disorder to some extent extent. People can choose to associate with those who are different and do so successfully but it requires a distinct effort to make that happen.
ReplyDelete> explosive divergence of intellectual ability
ReplyDeleteThe sole cause of this is education. Maybe some of you are too young to remember, but in the 80s and 90s, race issues mostly went away (there were and always will be pockets of chaos, but on the whole...).
All of todays social issues come down to one thing: children aren't taught 'morality' in schools, and if they have no good parents, they never get taught how to behave like people. Much like a kitten taken away after weaning can't hunt, people aren't taught to be people. Push out your brain and imagine you're a 12 year old black boy in Philly. NO ONE helps you (blog readers included), at home or school. Everyone around you values ego and strength, and hates the ones who act white. You have NO idea 'conservative values' exist, and can't imagine life any other way.
The social differences causing hostility among adults is solely the cause of the news media. Sit down and really watch CNN, MSNBC, or ETC. Put away everything you know, and just listen to the show, and imagine that's all you know about life. There is NO dispute that whites are discriminating against blacks, NO dispute that Trump lies, NO dispute that we have to stop using fossil fuels, etc. How do you live with people who are genuinely racist, polluting, and want to elect Hitler? You can't.
These are both simple issues that are impossible to fix without a major war. You can see the parallels with every major war in the modern Western world. It's not that people want to fight, it's that things can't change without it.
Reminds me of the parable of Platos cave.
DeletePeople believe the shadows they watch on the television are real, and attack anyone who tries to alter their contrived reality.
You're funny. I remember the 70's and 80's. The negroes were always dumb and violent, but segregation kept it in their own communities, where they couldn't bother decent folks.
DeleteYou can't fix stupid. You could slowly train them to a basic level of education, though, through sufficient harsh discipline. Discipline you're not allowed to enforce any more. Greater and more prolonged pain teaches the young predator that violence hurts.
Heed the wisdom of our forefathers: "The negro is at your feet or at your throat."
I am not sure the caste system did anything but maintain the status quo in India. It held back the country from developing itself into a world class economic and technology power it became as the system weakened.
ReplyDeleteMy dad served there in WWII and was dismayed at how difficult it was to get anything done there. Not my caste, not my job . In China a thousand people would show up to build a road or airfield. In India the job never really got started until the Army said F-it and did it themselves.
India's complicated Jati caste system built up over thousands of years as multiple waves of conquerors took over and established themselves as the top monkeys, only to be conquered in turn.
ReplyDeleteAmerica used to work perfectly well with a five tier system: White, Christian, Anglophone Americans first and foremost; other people from civilized lands second; dogs, horses and Chinamen third; then blacks (as long as they behaved themselves); then the American Indians.