The Castes

I often think, partly prompted by what I teach, about the Indian caste system as a possible alternative social structure to our own. Indian society is in fact divided into four castes, according to the individual's social function, plus those outside the caste system. Starting from the bottom we have the Shudra (manual labourers, servants), the Vaishya (merchants, craftsmen, farmers), the Kshatriya (warriors) and the Brahmins (priests, scholars, teachers). Recently, thanks to my friend Ans, I discovered the existence of a Tripartite ideology of the Indo-Europeans, which suggests that all ancient societies had a pyramidal social structure and a division into castes, even if with differences from one to another. As a youngster, thanks to my democratic education (now I would call it manipulation), I saw castes as a barbarism that had been left behind. Today, as with so many other things, my eyes have changed.

The first episode that made me think was a conversation I had in India with a Brahmin, who pointed out to me that their marriages, arranged by the parents according to caste, do no worse than our marriages "for love". But beyond the more superficial details, what made me change my mind is the simple observation of nature. Nature is not democratic, and it has not created living beings, even within the same species, all equal and all with the same potential. Every natural community is pyramidal.

Then I look at the society I live in, with a disproportionate number of lawyers, psychologists and doctors (among whose ranks there are countless incompetents), while plumbers, maintenance workers and so on are lacking. Wouldn't a vertical society, with the most capable and deserving at the top, work better? Wouldn't it be more useful to have an education that pushes people to find their own role in society according to their inclinations, rather than one that tells us everyone can be a doctor and that being a notary is preferable to being a bricklayer?

As I have said, though, in other posts too, at the top of society there should not be a priest or a warrior but a divergent (see the film Divergent), that is, a Nietzschean "superman" who has all the abilities and characteristics of every caste: practical sense, the ability to mediate and, above all, who is a philosopher (as Plato wanted), a warrior (Plato would always agree) and a monk.

While the others are divided into functions linked to the mind, the body and the spirit, the person at the summit must have them all.

Is this an anti-democratic and extremist view? Certainly anti-democratic, but extremist only in the way that Plato, Tibetan Buddhism, every ancient civilisation and nature itself are extremist.

m.m.