What is wrong with castes?

I’m a nice democratic secularist. I believe in equal opportunity for all and accept axiomatically that all should have equal opportunity to succeed and to fail. But. I do question even my most basic assumptions and would like some help answering some of my own objections. Could all actually be happier with a strict class system where we all know our place in the world presuming that all had basic needs met?

The argument goes like this:

I was perfectly content as an impoverished student barely making ends meet. My little hovel of an apartment was just fine. I was happy.

I got married and graduated from med school. Now I have a nice big house, a computer, and so on. Quantitatively I have much more than I had back then. But I don’t feel it. It is my normative state. I’m happy now, but no more than before. I’d feel deprived if they were taken away.

Same with cars. I was perfectly happy rolling down my windows by hand. Now I’m used to power windows and I’d feel deprived if they were taken away.

Getting more doesn’t ever really change my level of happiness for other than a short time. It just becomes my new normative state. I’m content to have what I have at each step, but once I have more its removal is adversive, even if it is just putting me back to where I was before and was perfectly happy at. That sense of deprivation would be long lasting. I think that this is fairly typical human nature.

So in strict class system, I’d be born into knowing what my place was. Presuming that I had my basic needs met I’d have no hunger for “something better”. I would not experience that transitory happiness provoked by increasing my status or by gaining more, but neither would I be subject to the longer lasting sense of deprivation by incurred by losing that which I once had. The balance would be positive.

I do not like this conclusion because I believe in my axioms. Please argue me out of it.

This does not follow from the rest of your post.

Try this: Get a time machine. Go back in time and find your happy, poor, non-power-windows-having self. Tell him your idea for a caste system. I think he’ll do a pretty good job of arguing you out of it.

Cua… (what’s the derivation of that moniker?),

What would I say to me?

Izzy,

How so? If I lived in a society where I knew my place, it would be my expectation to stay there, would it not? Did butlers in Victorian England covet their Lord’s position or stuff?

Are we collectively happier or more content in our current society than say people were in ancient India (especially if you add in that bit about basic needs met)?

Again, I believe in equal oppotunity as a statement of faith, as a deeply held basic assumption about what is “right”, but if the goal is to have the greatest number of individuals as content as possible then I have a hard time convincing myself that the loss of losing what you have isn’t felt greater and more persistently than the pleasure of getting more, and that everyone stating where they are status-wise wouldn’t be a better option.

Here are two major points.

  1. You are very wrong if you think that people with no hope of moving upwards do not still desire that move upwards. There is a reason that Buddhism first caught on with the Pariah class in India. Fact is, many people (especially the young) really want to do better in life. Sometimes they want more farmland or a better yield, sometimes for money, sometimes to get a good wife and have a lot of children. But you aren’t going to make yourself happier by being blocked from advancement.
    Witness China: for years following the Communists there was no way for ordinary people to advance except by being in the party (or the military, which was about the only way to get into the Party if you weren’t related to a Party member). This did nt make people happy. In fact, it made them despairing because they had no hope to satisfy their desires.

  2. I think you confuse happiness with satisfaction. Havign something may bring a temporary satisfaction, but if you want to be happy, you’ll need to orient yourself to non-material things, no matter how rich of poor you are. Basically, one fundamental tenet of economics applies: people have unlimited wants. If you weren’t focusing on getting more, you’d be dissatisfied with what you had. Find the things that you like and hold onto them. Work on making the important things in life good - like having good friends, a good spouse, and a good family.

It is the nature of some folks to crap on other folks. This is generally regarded as bad, both morally and reflexively by them what is crapped upon.

A caste system provides an acceptable excuse for one person to crap on another one, and facilitates the process.

Hell with THAT.

  1. A caste economy is not efficient. It can’t react as quickly to changes in demand since there are fixed numbers of any particualr type of worker. Our non-caste economy is so successful because of the high mobility of jobs.

  2. Why does everyone assume they wouldn’t be born into the caste that cleans shit for a living?

People don’t generally covet things that are completely out of their reach. But things that are just a bit better than they have it now are very much coveted.

In your case, you were happy at the time that you were an impoverished medical student, but you certainly aspired to a better life, which you were working towards in your training. Had someone told you that you were doomed to remain in your exact station for the rest of your life you might not have been nearly so happy.

I suppose you could argue that under a caste system, the idea of moving up to even a slightly better caste position is so unattainable so as to be the equivalent of a butler becoming a lord. I don’t know.

I don’t know anything about how happy people were in ancient India, so I couldn’t answer that one. But I think in general that happiness in more dependent on personality than on physical satisfaction.

Smiling,

Can you explain how Buddhism offered those in lower classes the option to move up?

Do you know that Chinese peasants despaired because they had no chance to move up in status or is that just pulled out of the ether? My understanding is that many were very content with the system and that the despair was more caused by the upheaval and change in status associated with the Cultural Revolution and all the dumbass anti-intellectual decisions that went along with it. And it is unclear if Chinese Communism represented strict classes or classlessness or a substitution of a strict class system for one in which class status was changed to one based on Party status.

msmith,

Good points for the society as a whole competing with other socieites but not for the overall satisfaction of its members. And one presumes one keeps one normative state when making this kind of thought experiment.

Also, being in a caste means you don’t always make best use of your skills. Lets say you’re born to the “jewelrymakers caste”…that’s your job for your entire life. You’re terrible at it. You just don’t have the physical dexterity to make decent jewelry. Now, you’re a great singer. You sing so well, Pavarotti would take lessons from you.

Tough. You’re not in the singing caste…you’re a jewelrymaker till you die.

I agree with smiling bandit. Happiness is not the same thing as “acceptance”. For instance, for a year or so I accepted that my primary mode of transportation was a bicycle. But that didn’t mean I didn’t long for something faster and that I was unappreciative of the car I eventually got.

If castes were isolated from one another and it wasn’t possible to compare your status with someone else’s, then you would have a point. I’d argue that poor people in a land of wealth (like the US) are much more unhappy than poor people in a land of poverty. It’s constantly being reminded of your inferiority that makes you unhappy.

Furthermore, caste systems only work by developing explanations and justifications for the apparently unfair rules, i.e., you were “bad” in a previous life or your ancestors did something “bad”. Believing that you are being punished for something is not generally conducive for happiness.

Also, you’re talking about the difference between manual and automatic windows. The difference between these two are practically nil in the grand scheme of things.

As a person of “caste” from India, I somehow feel a little qualified to talk about this.

One of the aspects of the “normative state” irrespective of economic status is the idea of humaneness (not sure if that is a real word - but captures what I want to say). Regardless of your penuriousness or riches you would expect to be treated respectfully by a fellow human being and have a fair shot at anything that you could have a shot at.

Let me illustrate that. In villages in India, there were separate wells for the upper castes and the lower castes. The lower class people obviously could not draw water from the other wells, drought or no drought.

Again the lower castes had no access to places of worship, education etc. This does interfere with your normative state. This is why there was a tremendous backlash against the caste system as it was then (exists in pockets till today).

In many ways this was completely anlogous to the racial segregation policies in the US for many years. The presumption that your basic needs are met, is a big one in a caste system; this is the one that brings massive changes in casteist societies.

In fact affirmative actions in some states in India have now gone so far that “open” opportunities have been reduced to 30% in some cases with 70% being reserved for the “backward castes” (this is for admission into colleges, government jobs etc)

Cheers

DSeid: Do you mean “What would the DSeid of yesterday say to the DSeid of today?” I don’t know, because I didn’t know you then nor do I know you now, but I think it would be harder for a person who has “made it” to see what’s wrong with a caste system than it is for a person who hasn’t yet and has some hope of doing so. If someone had told you back then that your social and economic status was “frozen” at that point, and you’d never be able to change it, I’d think you’d have had more of a problem with it than you would today, when you have more.

Although that is because our system is based on the idea of social mobility. We kind of expect people to contribute to society in return for status elevation. That’s why you have all those student loans. You worked real hard and spent a lot of money to become a productive member of society, and now your rewards are many: the respect and admiration of peons like me, power windows on your fine European automobile, expensive brandy, etc. (I realize I’m making a lot of assumptions about you, just humor me.)

In a caste system, there has to be a different mechanism to give people incentive to make contributions to society. Even if you contribute a lot, your personal rewards are limited to what can be achieved by members of your class. And there’s little to deter you from taking, taking, taking and never giving anything back either, since you’ll only fall as far as your social designation allows.

So, what is that mechanism? I don’t know, I’m really asking. Do any of you know? Is it something to to with belief in reincarnation or rewards in the afterlife?

Anyway, DSeid, any judgement about what makes one system inherently better than another has to depend on one’s perspective. If that’s what you were trying to say all along, then you have a point. From my perspective, I think a system with some kind of social mobility is a lot more just than one where you’re stuck in one caste your whole life. Not as just as a system where everyone gets a lifetime supply of everything they need or want just for being born, but that won’t be realistic until they invent those Star Trek-style replicators, unfortunately.

Well yes I meant the me of yesterday speaking to the me of today because you said that the former me would be able to convince the current me. I doubt it. I’ve never been too articulate. :wink: And I was pretty idealistic in my youth: I wasn’t after personal gain; I wanted to do good for society. I would’ve stayed in the Business school (where I started college) to make money.

Anyway, ashtayk’s point is very valid. As with communism there is a naive presumption made that human nature would not lead to excessive greed. Real class systems are always at risk for abuse. And of course the societal advantage of equal opportunity leading to the best qualified in the best position to benefit society as a whole and self motivated for personal interest to do so, is clear.

And of course there is the fact I still believe that equal opportunity is a right just because I believe it no matter what the logic. Sometimes faith needs no logic.

I’m all in favor of a caste system…assuming that I am born into the ruling aristocratic leasure class.

Fortunately, not everyone is, or has been, as selfish. Ghandi and the man most commonly identified in the West as Buddha are probably the most prominent opponents of hereditary caste as far as the West is concerned. And they were both Kshatriya. As the ruling and warrior class, they were amongst the upper strata of their societies. The popular concept of blind self-interest was not shared by them.

Though much of the caste system has centered on preserving power and denying a large section of people basic human rights, the fundamental idea could be traced to a Hindu concept: “do your work with devotion whatever it is; you will achieve salvation”.

Unfortunately most people are. That’s the problem with castes.

Well, they’re expensive and time-consuming to build, impractical to heat, and having a drawbridge and moat is a huge insurance liability.

Oh, wait, you said castes. No ‘L’. Sorry.

The major problem I see with caste systems is the restrictions in the type of work a person is allowed to do. I’m going to school to be a massage therapist. Judging from the feedback I’ve gotten from instructors, co-students I’ve practiced on and clients in clinic, I’ll make a damn good massage therapist.

If I were living in a caste system such as in India, which happily seems to be dissolving, I would be severely limited in my practice because belonging to the Wal-Mart Cashiers caste, I would be regarded as unclean by most of the folks who would have the money to be able to pay me for my services, and therefore forbidden to touch them. So my clientele would be of people in my own caste or lower, which would make it very difficult for me to earn a living, since realistically I would only be able to charge pocket change for a massage, and would probably end up giving a lot of free massages because, being the kind of person that I am, if I see someone who appears to be in pain, I instinctively want to pounce on them and try to make them feel better irrespective of whether they can afford to pay me.

In a non-caste society, I would be free to charge my wealthier clients oodles of money, reduce my fees for lower income clients who were in pain but couldn’t afford to pay eighty bucks an hour (which is the going rate in Vegas), and provide a certain percentage of my service free to the very, very poor. Thus I could give the maximum benefit to the maximum number of people and still keep myself comfortably fed, clothed, and sheltered. Then I could very happily follow that Hindu concept of “do your work with devotion…”

Having said that, in America, there seems to be a prevailing attitude, at least among the wealthy, that poverty is a character flaw. I think it grows out of the Calvinist belief that having wealth is a sign that you are one of God’s Elect. But the idea is, “If someone is wealthy, it’s because they worked hard for their money, and shouldn’t have to share their wealth with those lazy poor people. If the poor people worked hard, they would be rich too.” Meanwhile, the poor come home from working long shifts doing hard manual labor, try to work the kinks out of those tired aching muscles, and resent their rich employers who seem unwilling to give them more than a pittance in exchange for manufacturing the products or providing the services that makes most of that money the employers are “earning”.

I the East, from what I understand, poverty is regarded as an unfortunate circumstance, and not as a character flaw. The poor are looked on with more pity than contempt.