Because we need them, the pay is far higher, and the lifestyle far easier? Who is going to manage the AI boom? 1.7% isn't colonizing. The UK has had a very different relationship with its former co-realm — India was never a colony; it was the Empire of India, sharing a monarch with Great Britain — than the US, which had barely any until the recent diaspora that began in the 50s, I believe.
If you haven't experienced India, it's too difficult for me to convey the totality of what is; it's your Western reality through the looking-glass. Also bear in mind that it was a closed society up until the turn of this century, so it's just catching up. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty made many bad decisions, in line with the Soviet Union and China's. Take a look at where India is on the map and its surrounding countries; that's what they contend with, and it ain't Mexico and Canada.
Very excellent dive into a culture most of cannot begin to comprehend. Ignorance is not bliss and you pulled the curtain back, if only just a bit. However, it isn't American so it must be bad.
This was an increasingly rare eye-opening read for me. As an American living in Japan for nearly 42 years now, it has taken me awhile to begin seeing through the unspoken cultural conceit that many if not most Japanese have, until recently, seen themselves as part of a relatively egalitarian 'socialist' democratic society not so different from their former image of the Scandinavian countries.
In retrospect, pre-war, industrial Japan was never a worker's paradise, but a carefully propagandized Victorian-era facade created by a ruling class descended from pre-industrial feudal Japan ... and well, we know the Scandinavian 'progressive paradise' of society is now a controlled demolition falling apart before our eyes.
But until reading this article, I could only view the caste machinery through what I thought were the somewhat enlightened eyes of a working class American who had become black pilled at the faux meritocracy I had seen in my own country as mirroring what I was seeing here in Japan through many citizens' unspoken assumptions about Ryukyu islanders (Okinawans), Ainu, Zainichi (Korean heritage), burakumin, 'convenience store foreigners', half, and so on.
I was born in Germany to a German mom who still remembers the war, and an American dad ... but moved to the rural South of the U.S. at age 2, and still remember gasping at white robed klansmen as a youth ... and saw myself as the opposite of my overtly racist dad ... whose ancestry ironically came from Norwegian stock, as well as Irish ("the blacks of Europe").
On the recommendation of a Japanese friend, I had bought a kindle version of Isobel Wilkerson's "Caste", but am backlogged with so many other books, that I have not gotten around to it. Now that I have read your essay, I WILL read Wilkerson, but thanks to you, with a more critical eye than I would have.
Looking only at the 'developed' Western countries (and Japan), I still believe the hubris of a ruling class and their Cluster B / Dark-Triad conceits and tactics of walking the razor's edge of having it all will result in yet another fall of "Tower of Babel" proportions, and coupled with increasingly sophisticated weaponry and psychological - institutional means of control, may eventually lead to species extinction.
But more importantly, thanks to this read, I am going to have to return to the foundations of my understanding of what it means to be a human, a 'social' (family / small community) primate that through the blessing and curse of our capacity to rationalize, are also a "herding" primate, and sometimes a "swarming" one.
I will be reading this article again, probably several times ... looking for where I might disagree with your analysis, but I think I will more often be respectfully deferring to you. If I find myself twisting and squirming, I suspect it will be because of the gap between my ideals of the "should" of human nature bumping up against the historically and scientifically demonstrated "is" ... but even that will be at a superficial layer of the huge elephant in the room you've pointed to.
Upon reading your article, so much of what you say appears so obvious, and yet so much has been under my radar as to make me feel like a school child just learning the world is round. Thank you again for something that is going to tilt and spin a world that I had previously thought I'd figured out.
I am going to have to struggle to keep up with my regular chores because I want to go back and read this again and again. JMHO, but this deserves more than a book or two.
Much of that first phase of my India experience is planned for the third book of my memoirs. I go back for extended stretches in 8- to 10-year intervals. But I connect with my social swim there daily; it's central to my life.
Still new to reading you, I've got a lot of catching up to do.
Looking forward to it. Alas, other than scattered comments here and there, I am too busy just surviving my last years in Japan to chronical it. But I am a happy (sometimes) reader. 😂
After seeing the intelligent, well-constructed comments on this post, I hesitate to add mine. I know NOTHING about the caste system in India, but feel a little smarter after reading your article; also a little more confused. So many levels! Is there an easy guide somewhere, or maybe an “Indian Caste Systems for Dummies” for the newbies?
Thanks, my love. I'm finally expressing an issue I've always had with the omertà surrounding the caste system, this embarrassment from passive Western shaming for something so widely practiced, so integral to Indian culture. I know what I know through observing and from my friendships and romances. I wouldn't know where to point you other than dry academic speculation as to the history of it, and tedious lists/forums about subcaste origins and their individual traditions, foods, etc. I'm only glancing the surface of this.
I've run my ideas past ChatGPT, which is as knowledgable as anyone — it even corrects my Hindustani, the Hindi/Urdu/English mix that's spoken in the urban areas.
Because we need them, the pay is far higher, and the lifestyle far easier? Who is going to manage the AI boom? 1.7% isn't colonizing. The UK has had a very different relationship with its former co-realm — India was never a colony; it was the Empire of India, sharing a monarch with Great Britain — than the US, which had barely any until the recent diaspora that began in the 50s, I believe.
If you haven't experienced India, it's too difficult for me to convey the totality of what is; it's your Western reality through the looking-glass. Also bear in mind that it was a closed society up until the turn of this century, so it's just catching up. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty made many bad decisions, in line with the Soviet Union and China's. Take a look at where India is on the map and its surrounding countries; that's what they contend with, and it ain't Mexico and Canada.
I'm glad you brought up an important Western assumption about social dynamics, which I'll try to address in the final part. Thank you.
Very excellent dive into a culture most of cannot begin to comprehend. Ignorance is not bliss and you pulled the curtain back, if only just a bit. However, it isn't American so it must be bad.
I am extremely fortunate to have had these experiences and so many more.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Hello James,
This was an increasingly rare eye-opening read for me. As an American living in Japan for nearly 42 years now, it has taken me awhile to begin seeing through the unspoken cultural conceit that many if not most Japanese have, until recently, seen themselves as part of a relatively egalitarian 'socialist' democratic society not so different from their former image of the Scandinavian countries.
In retrospect, pre-war, industrial Japan was never a worker's paradise, but a carefully propagandized Victorian-era facade created by a ruling class descended from pre-industrial feudal Japan ... and well, we know the Scandinavian 'progressive paradise' of society is now a controlled demolition falling apart before our eyes.
But until reading this article, I could only view the caste machinery through what I thought were the somewhat enlightened eyes of a working class American who had become black pilled at the faux meritocracy I had seen in my own country as mirroring what I was seeing here in Japan through many citizens' unspoken assumptions about Ryukyu islanders (Okinawans), Ainu, Zainichi (Korean heritage), burakumin, 'convenience store foreigners', half, and so on.
I was born in Germany to a German mom who still remembers the war, and an American dad ... but moved to the rural South of the U.S. at age 2, and still remember gasping at white robed klansmen as a youth ... and saw myself as the opposite of my overtly racist dad ... whose ancestry ironically came from Norwegian stock, as well as Irish ("the blacks of Europe").
On the recommendation of a Japanese friend, I had bought a kindle version of Isobel Wilkerson's "Caste", but am backlogged with so many other books, that I have not gotten around to it. Now that I have read your essay, I WILL read Wilkerson, but thanks to you, with a more critical eye than I would have.
Looking only at the 'developed' Western countries (and Japan), I still believe the hubris of a ruling class and their Cluster B / Dark-Triad conceits and tactics of walking the razor's edge of having it all will result in yet another fall of "Tower of Babel" proportions, and coupled with increasingly sophisticated weaponry and psychological - institutional means of control, may eventually lead to species extinction.
But more importantly, thanks to this read, I am going to have to return to the foundations of my understanding of what it means to be a human, a 'social' (family / small community) primate that through the blessing and curse of our capacity to rationalize, are also a "herding" primate, and sometimes a "swarming" one.
I will be reading this article again, probably several times ... looking for where I might disagree with your analysis, but I think I will more often be respectfully deferring to you. If I find myself twisting and squirming, I suspect it will be because of the gap between my ideals of the "should" of human nature bumping up against the historically and scientifically demonstrated "is" ... but even that will be at a superficial layer of the huge elephant in the room you've pointed to.
Upon reading your article, so much of what you say appears so obvious, and yet so much has been under my radar as to make me feel like a school child just learning the world is round. Thank you again for something that is going to tilt and spin a world that I had previously thought I'd figured out.
Cheers from Japan,
Steve
I'm speechless, Steve. This comment is every reason I observe, cogitate and write. Thank you.
Thank YOU!
I am going to have to struggle to keep up with my regular chores because I want to go back and read this again and again. JMHO, but this deserves more than a book or two.
Cheers James!
Much of that first phase of my India experience is planned for the third book of my memoirs. I go back for extended stretches in 8- to 10-year intervals. But I connect with my social swim there daily; it's central to my life.
Still new to reading you, I've got a lot of catching up to do.
Looking forward to it. Alas, other than scattered comments here and there, I am too busy just surviving my last years in Japan to chronical it. But I am a happy (sometimes) reader. 😂
Cheers!
After seeing the intelligent, well-constructed comments on this post, I hesitate to add mine. I know NOTHING about the caste system in India, but feel a little smarter after reading your article; also a little more confused. So many levels! Is there an easy guide somewhere, or maybe an “Indian Caste Systems for Dummies” for the newbies?
Thanks, my love. I'm finally expressing an issue I've always had with the omertà surrounding the caste system, this embarrassment from passive Western shaming for something so widely practiced, so integral to Indian culture. I know what I know through observing and from my friendships and romances. I wouldn't know where to point you other than dry academic speculation as to the history of it, and tedious lists/forums about subcaste origins and their individual traditions, foods, etc. I'm only glancing the surface of this.
I've run my ideas past ChatGPT, which is as knowledgable as anyone — it even corrects my Hindustani, the Hindi/Urdu/English mix that's spoken in the urban areas.