{"id":36714,"date":"2016-12-21T03:00:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36714"},"modified":"2021-05-27T09:12:20","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T13:12:20","slug":"mapping-the-new-western-caste-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/21\/mapping-the-new-western-caste-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping the new western caste system"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting re-map of India’s caste system<\/a> to modern day western society:<\/p>\n

I move professionally in circles where lib-left \u201cvirtue signaling\u201d is taken for granted, especially inside the US. (Academia outside the US, while no less in the grip of a collective moral superiority complex, at least tolerates dissenters to some degree.)<\/p>\n

As I was perusing Trump\u2019s cabinet list in the Times<\/em> of London the other day, I was struck not so much by the names \u2014 some \u2018feck yeah!\u2019, some \u2018well, OK\u2019, some \u2018meh\u2019 \u2014 as by what wasn\u2019t there. The \u2018Brahmandarins<\/em>\u2122\u2019 had been left behind, as it were. Allow me to expand.<\/p>\n

Traditional society in India has myriad little jatis <\/em>(\u201cbirths\u201d, freely: castes), but they ultimately derive from four (plus one) major varnas <\/em>(\u201ccolors\u201d, freely: classes). While caste membership and profession are more fluid than generally assumed by Westerners, these five major groupings do exist to the present day, and are mostly endogamous. From top to bottom, the varnas are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Brahmins <\/em>(scholars)<\/li>\n
  2. Kshatryas <\/em>(warriors, rulers, administrators)<\/li>\n
  3. Vaishyas <\/em>(merchants, artisans, and farmers)<\/li>\n
  4. Shudras <\/em>(laborers)<\/li>\n
  5. Finally, the Dalit <\/em>(downtrodden, outcasts \u2014 the term \u201cpariah\u201d is considered so offensive it has become \u201cthe p-word\u201d) are traditionally considered beneath the varna system altogether, as are other \u201cScheduled Castes\u201d (a legal term in present-day India, referring to eligibility for affirmative action).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The upper three varnas bear some resemblance to the three Estates of the French ancien r\u00e9gime<\/em>: clergy, nobility, and the bourgeoisie (le tiers \u00e9tat<\/em>, the Third Estate). American society used to be a byword for social mobility (\u201cthe American dream\u201d) \u2014 but a stratification has set in, and it takes little imagination to identify strata of Dalit, Shudras, and Vaishyas in modern American society. The numerically small subculture of military families could be identified as America\u2019s Kshatryas. So where are the Brahmins? (No, I\u2019m not referring to the old money Boston elite.) And why am I using the portmanteau \u201cBrahmandarins\u201d for our New Class?<\/p>\n

    In India one was, of course, born into the Brahmin varna, and they actually delegated the messy business of governance to the varna below them. In China\u2019s Middle Kingdom, on the other hand, not only was the scholarly Mandarin caste actually the backbone of governance, but in principle anyone who passed the civil service exams could become a Mandarin.<\/p>\n

    Originally, these exams were meant to foster a meritocracy. Predictably, over time, they evolved to select for conformity over ability, being more concerned with literary style and knowledge of the classics than with any relevant technical expertise.<\/p>\n

    Hmm, sounds familiar? Consider America\u2019s \u201cNew Class\u201d: academia, journalism, \u201chelping\u201d professions, nonprofits, community organizers, trustafarian artists,\u2026 Talent for something immediately verifiable (be it playing the piano, designing an airplane, or buying-and-selling,\u2026 ) or a track record of tangible achievements are much less important than credentials \u2014 degrees from the right places, praise from the right press organs,\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An interesting re-map of India’s caste system to modern day western society: I move professionally in circles where lib-left \u201cvirtue signaling\u201d is taken for granted, especially inside the US. (Academia outside the US, while no less in the grip of a collective moral superiority complex, at least tolerates dissenters to some degree.) As I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,53,13],"tags":[1088,1420,262,907,764,1238],"class_list":["post-36714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-politics","category-usa","tag-castesystem","tag-classism","tag-culture","tag-snobbery","tag-university","tag-virtuesignalling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9ya","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65992,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36714\/revisions\/65992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}