The Caste System: A Point of View

I made a presentation about this a few months ago where I basically explained what I think about caste system. It has been bothered me for a long time. However, as much as I am interested in history, I am in no way an expert or eligible enough to claim truth of what I am saying. Nevertheless though, I am a Hindu, have been affected by caste system, and do think a lot about it, so I guess I know what I am saying.

Let’s just ignore what happened in the society and history and just focus on what is dictated by the Vedas. The caste system the way people think it is was never mentioned; we do have Catur Varna though, which is division of people based on their duty in society. There were four groups people can fall into (think about it like Hogwarts houses): Brahman (scholars, teachers; intelligent people the bearer of knowledge), Kshatriya (warriors, soldiers, people in the government, ministers; basically brave people who fight for the country), Vaishya (businessman, vendors, traders; people with business skills and responsible for the economy), and Shudra (the rest; farmer, artists, sculptor, and other miscellaneous).  

It was long ago, so we can imagine that the society were pretty simple that every person can be roughly put into one of these categories. Since it was based solely on skills, it was not rigid at all. Vedas suggested this, and even without referencing to that, the existence of some important people definitely shows it.  The composer of Ramayana, Valmiki, was from a lower caste. Siddharta Gautama was also a Kshatriya (he was a prince) before became a wandering monk later in his life (Brahmin). Some mythological characters also exhibit the permissive nature of Varna system. Ravana was born to a Brahmin father before becoming a King of Srilanka, as well as Parashurama. On the contrary, Visvamitra was born a prince but became a Brahmin. If the so-called caste system was supposed to be that rigid, these stories would be prohibited to be told. 

As we all know, religion can say whatever, but how people apply it and what happens in society can be a whole other case. Yes, I am looking at you, all religions in the world. Just like the caste system; how come these divisions become a hierarchy then?  It was The British. The widely proven and accepted argument by modern scholars and historian is that the division started to grow in rigidity during the time of British colonial. The British were there to rule almost 1 billion of indigenous people, what’s better way to keep them in control other than not letting them have a sense of unity? What’s better way to destroy a nation for their benefit other than favoring one group while oppressing the other? They would not mess up with the Brahmin who was looked up to by a lot of people, and they also give a special treatment to the Kshatriya and Vaishya with whom they cooperate to exploit India. The rest is the Shudras; easy slaves and rough labor, right there. The British knew they can use the system for their benefit, and they made sure to keep it that way. 

Same thing happened in Indonesia, with the Dutch colony and their devide et impera policy. Well, it was more of putting one influential persona against the other, but a lot of tension also happened (a.k.a. created and exploited by the Dutch) between the patrician and plebeian. 

Well, that was the widely accepted theory, but I also have my argument. First of all, I present you the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

It is “a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ in Psychological Review” (shameless Wikipedia copy-pasteing). This hierarchy is represented as a pyramid. The four bottom and biggest layers are the basic and fundamental needs, while the top layer is the need for self-actualization. Accordingly, the shape of the pyramid depicts how our basic needs are the ones that we have to fulfill first, most frequently and with the biggest amount, before we can even think about fulfilling the top ones.

In my opinion, this explain a lot of people’s behavior; from a student who can’t do her homework while hungry to a person in a third-world country who can’t give a damn about climate change with their children tailing them crying for food; from a feminist and animal right activist in Germany to a street vendor putting borax in his meatball in Indonesia. That also explains why arguments about climate change and gay rights are practically useless in Indonesia. I actually read a facebook comment using word ‘heteronormative’ one day and seriously I want to strangle that person; get your elitist argument out of Indonesia, our broken economy and starving street children ain’t got no time for that. 

Oh, and me, of course. I cannot think and write about statistical literacy if I don’t have caffeine in my system (IT IS BASIC NEED I SWEAR). 

But I pretty massively digress. Back to the point at hand, I strongly believe this is the root of the hierarchy. Religion, culture, tribes and nation may emerge and vanished only to re-emerge again throughout the history, but one thing that stays is our basic instinct as a human. I think what happened is that people simply had needs and they went a little overboard trying fulfill it, that is all. People liked being respected, being treated as special, being above others. When one a group of people being on the top part of the society and benefit from it, they will try to keep it that way. Similarly, people on the bottom may not like it, but if they are hungry or cold or unsafe, they do not care about that. I think that was what happen between the upper and lower caste back then; well, frankly speaking, that was happen between the upper and lower class of society everywhere and every period of time.

It was even worse because the Vedas and most of other scred text are not accessible to every people, only to the Brahmin, so it was really easy for them to twist the knowledge to satisfy their needs. It became really problematic because it happened on such a gigantic scale through decades that the faulty system became really solid and gradually was accepted as the correct one. And there, we have the caste system.

Seems familiar? Yes, because like I said before, it is human basic needs. Hierarchy happens everywhere, in every society, in every period of history - it is not only in India. India just have really fancy name of it called 'the caste system', so it is really easy for people to single that out. Our basic needs as a human, unfortunately, does not care about religion, regions, race, language – whatever (see Babel). Religion is the result of culture; it is the result of the higher levels of the hierarchy of needs (so many people are going to slap me for this). Unfortunately not all people are on this level of self-actualization, hence they ignore or modify it because they are still struggling with more basic needs, or even if they do follow it, they do it out of fear, which is the need for safety or reward, which is again, a basic need. 

What the hell, this is so philosophical I want to vomit.

Regardless though, this whole case of ‘religion can say whatever, but what happens in society is another case’ thing do happen across time and space as far as religion exist.  The oppression of women in Muslim countries, for example, which think is just the Arab culture, not the religion. Also the terrorism, gendercide, sexism, war, slavery – I can keep going on, but I think my point is clear. It is not about religion, guys, but more like social and historical phenomenon.  So if you want to attack Hinduism, leave out the caste system because it has nothing to do with it. Also, times change. Sudras are even richer than the Brahmin right now, and a lot of people can’t even be classified into only four groups so no one really care. And guess what, another hierarchy emerge, but it is based on clans instead of caste. Like I said, it is the basic needs; it is unavoidable, and it will keep happening. Just be sure to self-actualize yourself enough to not get caught in it.

"OMG Stop Being So Negative!!1"

The problem with negativity is you often do not realize how bad it is, or at least that how it is in my experience. I used to be so depressive, pessimist and hopeless about life. I had this very fucked up view on what I think I deserve and I don’t deserve; I let people underestimate me and look down on me because I think I deserve it, and I never tried to get (or be) the best simply because I don’t think I deserve it. From an outsider point of view, I probably look like a psycho masochist or something, but for me it was normal. Depressing yet normal. It was my mind, it was how I perceive world and how I understand the world works. Trust me, if I can burn the content of my brain into a DVD and play it for you, you will feel like you are watching Requiem for a Dream or something.

Negativity is something that I identify with myself strongly, especially when I was younger. After I distanced myself from my supposed source of depression and grew a much, much better and positive new mindset, I looked back and realized how awful my mental state was, mainly because it did not have to happen. I was not a war or child trafficking victim – it is not like I was subjected to a prolonged inescapable torture or something. But negative perception to the world does not only happen to victims of these serious situations – it can happen to everyone. 

Example: Dan Howell.

I've been watching loads of his videos lately, and I can assure you he is the poshest, most articulate youtuber out there, so it is a good influence to your English speaking ability (not the swearing though). I reccomend it if you are sick of watching TedxTalk and want something lighter. Dan, who started youtubing at the age 18, mainly vlogs about his social awkwardness, procrastination and negativity, wrapped in sarcastic, witty humor. I think it mostly started as a passive-aggressive way to deal with things he hates about himself (‘yeah whatever this is me you wanna laugh go ahead’), but it turns out to be what distinguishes him from other youtubers and he is known for the most.  Now he is currently one of the most famous Youtuber on the planet, has a successful career as radio presenter, and widely acknowledged as a walking wet dream. And you know what; those negative traits are still there. He still has existential crisis every two weeks and in videos when he has to unexpectedly interact with other human beings, I can almost feel the awkwardness emanating through the screen. 

 See? Negativity is not a matter of what happens to you, but how you react to those situations.

NEGATIVITY IS NOT A CHOICE

 

People usually blame depressive and negative people for their hopelessness. “Be positive!,” “Get over it!,” or “Just forget about it already!.” Woah, isn't that an awesome, informative, ground-breaking suggestion. I did not know that what I have to do it is just to get over it. 

That was sarcasm, in case you did not know.

There is a psychological attribute that prevents you from getting out of negativity even though you are able to. It is called explanatory style.  Remember that question ‘Is the glass half-empty or half-full?’. Yup, that more or less is what this is about. Explanatory style is ‘one’s tendency to offer similar sorts of explanation for different events’ (Peterson, Buchanan & Seligman, 1995). It is the way people explain good or bad thing that happens involving themselves along three dimensions. The first is internal (they blame it on themselves) vs external (they blame it on somebody else). The second is stable (they view it as something permanent) vs unstable (they view it as something temporary). The last is global (they think of it as a life-determining event that defines them as a person) vs specific (they think of it as it is). People who have internal, stable and global explanatory style are said to have a pessimistic explanatory style, while people who have external, unstable and specific is called optimistic. 

The question is, what are the determining factors? What makes a person optimistic and other pessimistic? Eisner (1995) reviewed the studies in this area and reported four different determinants of explanatory style. The first is feedback from teacher, parents or other influential figure, especially in young children. The second is modeling, which means that children develop their explanatory style by adopting or mimicking the style of their significant others or primary caregivers (i.e. parents). The third is genetic, a conclusion after the difference in result of experiment involving monozygotic and dizygotic twins. And the last, is learned helplessness effect. 

We learned about this in class actually, which is the reason why I wrote this. Learned helplessness effect is a condition in which an organism forced to endure pain or similar unpleasant stimuli, is unwilling or unable to avoid those stimuli even if they are provided a way to escape it, presumably because they have learned that they have no control over it and whatever they do will end up futile. Ovemier and Seligman (1967) did an experiment during which they found out that dogs exposed to inescapable and unpredictable electric shock in one situation later failed to escape shock in different situation where escape is possible. Basically there are 2 groups of dogs; the first group which has been trained a way to escape the pain show normal response and recovered after a while, while the second groups, whose pain subjected to them seemed to start and end at random, after a while shows a kind of ‘giving up’ behavior and stop trying to escape the pain, even though a way of release was provided later on. This result contradicts the predictions by B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism theory, which is by the way the leading psychological theory at the time. 

THE EFFECTS

People who are exposed to the feeling of helplessness on a regular basis will most likely to develop a pessimistic explanatory style (‘It is because I’m stupid’, ‘Fuck my life’, ‘My life is useless’, etc.). On the contrary, pessimistic explanatory style can worsen the feeling of helplessness as well. Together these make a never ending chain of misery that sucks you in and never let go. 

These are the source of all those negativity, and it broadly affect a person’s life. Learned self-helplessness and pessimistic explanatory style have been linked to depression, poor motivation and lack of social effort. Children who are constantly exposed to miserability (is that even a word?) they cannot control can develop pessimistic explanatory style that last until their adulthood and in turn determine how they react to everything that happens in their life. People may neglect medication, diet or hygiene simply because they are conditioned to think that it is useless. Abused or neglected children will very likely to choose a partner who also treats them that way. It is impossible for them just look past the dark shadow engulfing their mind at whim – it can be done, but it is not easy. There are therapy designed for that, I forgot what it is called though. 

Basically, everything that happen in our life programmed us to think in certain way and to act out of what you are programmed to be is not an easy thing to do. Just like how a conceited, overly optimistic person is very difficult to accept criticism or admit fault. Therefore, next time you met a depressive person, try not to judge them. We know we have to be grateful, positive, all smiling and crap, but try to go to that from where we come from is hard, okay? Give us time.

Sources :

Seligman, M.E.P.; Maier, S.F. (1967). "Failure to escape traumatic shock". Journal of Experimental Psychology 74: 1–9.

Peterson, C., et.al. (1995). “Explanatory Style: History and Evolution of the Field”. Explanatory Style: 1-20.

Eisner, J.P. (1995). “The Origins of Explanatory Style: Trust as a Determinant of Pessimism and Optimism.” Explanatory Style:49-56.