Recently I was introduced to the Indian caste system. No thanks. That is a designation you cannot escape as you are born into such a label for life. A label/status influencing every aspect of your life, from start to finish and beyond.
Sounds like slavery.
But you can elevate your class in the western world. Where class is measured largely by liquidity or wealth more generally.
I’ve lived in a society organized by class my entire life. And have come to learn there are many paths out of poverty (the so-called “lower class”) available to almost everyone.
Class systems are far from perfect. But if given a choice over being born into an upper caste family in India, or a lower class family in the western world, I’d go with Chicago over New Delhi any day.
If I understand what you’re saying correctly we are largely on the same page about this… class mobility upward is almost impossible. Classes are usually discriminatory against other classes (sometimes even towards higher classes). This makes actual class mobility very hard. People have to mask as having always belonged to a certain class by acquiring the correct signifiers.
What I am not sure I agree with, or maybe I just don’t understand it, is the point about dimensions of class. People are more than just the job they do. An aristocrat who is living off inheritance has about the same amount of actual working experience that a low class individual who can’t get a job has. They both don’t work, but since the aristocrat has a bunch of capital which the low class person doesn’t have they are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Idk why you were getting those downvotes. I’ll check out Fussel if I get the chance.
Sorry I didn’t realize you’d replied, so what I amended my previous-comment with, helps clarify… maybe see that…
the dimensions thing…
Experience is valid.
People who’ve never experienced working-class work, how can they viscerally understand how REAL it is?
How can a beaurocrat?
How can any upperclass one?
Same with knowledge-work.
1 time I had to talk someone through fixing a linux-installation, via the phone ( before cellphones ).
I was lucky to get it fixed before they bonked/hit-the-wall, & COULDN’T do any more strict-concentration.
One has to experience a KIND-of-work, enough … before one’s unconscious-mind can “respect” it, see?
It’s only after doing the more-physical stuff for years that I truly-understood/unconsciously-respected how REAL working-class work is, & that’s shameful.
Why did my unconscious take years ( part-time ) to get to that change?
I’m autistic: woodenheaded.
& dad’s culture was medical-researcher/doctor.
He taught me to think scientifically, when I was small.
I wrongly presumed I was of his culture, & ended-up homeless.
Did me good.
But the dimensions-of-class, though, social-programming/reactions/instinct/imprinting with that class’s “validity”-identity, is 1 dimension.
But the visceral-experience-induced-understanding that DOING it until one’s unconscious-mind understands & respects just how REAL that-KIND of work is, that is a completely-animal level of understanding.
Same as someone who’s operated an engine/machine-lathe: you get a bunch of beaurocrats in a machineshop, & they don’t understand.
You get someone who’s carved metal on one in there, & they move differently, because they bodily understand that kind of thing, see?
That dimension isn’t class-identity, that is one’s realm/doing/territory/capability: it is functional identity, not class-“status” identity.
It’s one’s capability’s identity, not one’s class-segregation identity.
lol … Go to an aviation gathering, & you’ll see aviation-class-system at work!
Go to a chess-event & you’ll see their class-system controlling their relative “validity”.
It takes some kind of breaking-the-unconscious-mind’s-status-programming to be able to treat other-categories-of-capability as equally-valid, & the only method I know-of which works, is what people call “cross-training”, but not in terms of muscle-groups, rather in terms of career-categories.
& as for people downvoting me all the time: that’s their right, & I’ve zero problem with people downvoting everything I write: their free-speech.
Couldn’t care less.
: )
I only put meaning in the world for the people who value it.
Everybody else can diss it all they want.
I’m underclass, & have-been for years.
Some of us change, through experiencing, into people who stand on our own intrinsic, not class, validity.
Self-conquering, to some degree.
I’m working on a level of self-conquering that White-medicine prohibits, but I’m Vajrayana, & wanting to axe-through my soul’s/continuum’s being-caught-in-this-CATEGORY-OF-incarnation/life.
Totally different frame-of-reference: White medicine holds that Abrahamic-religion framing’s valid, & Atheist-religion/assumption-river framing’s valid, but that my “universe recycles EVERYthing contained in it: EVEN MEANINGS & souls” paradigm is deemed by them to be delusion that needs obliterating.
No problem: they sow what karma they’re going to reap, & I do likewise, but at a totally-different angle.
It’s all good, eh?
( :
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PS: oh, I remove the auto-upvote, because sooo many downvote me, that I want to see the actual opinions, not the bandwagon-jumpers who upvote the upvoted.
Often I’ve forgotten, but went through my 1.4k-ish comments in lemmy.world last-night, removing all the auto-upvotes, to get a more-correct view.
Why should “imaginary internet-points” matter?
Truth’s truth: it stands on its own.
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