Comment on I would rather live in a "class system" than a "caste system"
Augustiner@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not saying caste system is better, both are terrible. We should strive to abolish both.
But to your point about class mobility: You can always move down in class, up is neigh impossible. Thinking that money will help you move up is only a carrot that the upper class dangles in front of the poor. Class is not only determined by wealth, it is determined by capital. Capital encompasses not only financial and economic capital, but also social capital, intellectual capital, cultural capital, etc. To move up in class you will have to acquire enough of all of these, just money isn’t enough. If you don’t have the same manners, vocabulary, friends, status symbols and don’t consume the the same media you will never be accepted and only be considered a nouveau rich and a gaudy buffoon. Your lifestyle will be better than that of the rest of your class, but the higher class will never accept you as one of their own. Your kids might be able to move up, if you put them in the right school so they can absorb some of that social capital and learn the language, squire the correct manners and make the right friends. But you will very likely be forever stuck in the same class that you were born in, unless you move down.
There is a Philosopher called Hanno Sauer who wrote a book about this. I don’t agree with all of it, but he has some very interesting observations.
Paragone@lemmy.world 1 day ago
There are at-least 2 dimensions of class:
1 is actual working, ie trades vs beaurocracy,
& the other is identity-nation based validity within one’s class.
The actual working classes are real: there’s no point in pretending that somebody who knows all sorts of beaurocratic rules as their career is competent on a construction-site the way a working tradesperson can be, & vice versa.
The problem isn’t that.
The problem is the exclusivity-presumption, the “us vs them” presumption, the identity/nation prejudice, instead-of-collaborating toward our common good, through our different capabilities.
The identity-nation based validity is the crystallization of the problem/prejudice.
I’m saying that as an underclass person: worthless human garbage, a person who’s racked-up 7+y as an outright homeless person, & don’t ever bother pretending that the middle-class & upper-middle-class could EVER consider an inferior to be “valid” in THEIR class’s validity: I’ve experienced that prejudice enough to know the condescension & contempt are indestructible.
( I was born into upper-middle-class, & life taught me just how prejudiced that class is. Karmically correcting. )
Paul Fussell’s books on the North American class-system gave me some leverage/understanding years ago, & have been working on bettering that, ever since.
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Augustiner@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If I understand what you’re saying correctly we are largely on the same page about this… class mobility upward is hard and 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 drunk 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.
Paragone@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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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