9/17 The slave castes of modern California, exerpts from my writing;
the concept of a caste system feels so ancient until you actually meet someone and realize like wow this person is in a different caste than me. Like there is a caste system dividing us and like they don’t seem to know it. Literally nothing I can do to be equal with them, or sometimes it’s the other way around. Honestly such a scary realization to have and so existentially uncomfortable
if you’ve grown up in California you know about the modern caste system. I think if you’re in a more rural area like the American south the discrimination is sort of a different thing, for any fortune or misfortune of individuals you’re all ultimately a lower caste beneath the ruling metropolitans, so there isn’t really a caste difference between the fortunate and unfortunate country dwellers. If you live in an urban and/or surrounding suburban area you are extremely aware of the caste system. For all of California’s supposed progressive values I would say for sure that people are assigned caste loosely based on race.
#I think I intuitively knew this from an extremely young age even though I lacked the words to describe it #My parents raised me in a town where all the other kids were at least one caste above me
the thing about the modern caste system practiced by Californians is that they manage to do it effectively without even recognizing it as a caste system. They don’t think of someone as being from a lower caste than them, they don’t think of the classes of society at all, it’s not a concept that exists to them, they genuinely believe that is no such thing as different classes in modern society but that they always just make a personal choice about their relationship to an individual which happens to be the same choice of every other member of their caste.
imagine a taxi driver, maybe they’re an immigrant from Pakistan or something like that, it doesn’t really matter how earnestly they socialize with a suburbanite, by some “personal choice” of the suburbanite to never stoop to them, they will always be relegated to being a lower caste who only services the higher caste and never the other way around and especially never gets to know them personally outside of work. Just as a suburbanite will think “You’re just a poor cashier, please just make small talk and don’t try to be real friends with me”. You trust certain poor people in your affluent town not because you see them as equals but because they’re the type who know how to stay in their lane.
The caste is determined mostly by the direction of service, intellectual labor is the “middle class” and is a large vaguely mutual class because anyone can be the consumer or provider of services equally, but stray lower into providing more one-directional services to higher castes, or stray the other way into the business students and such who always have intellectual laborers beneath them, and the classes are divided. The most successful engineer ever is still a slightly lower caste than the business major they work with.
Even some of the most progressive people in California don’t like to admit that there is nothing a Mexican can ever do to be the same caste as them.
even minorities are afraid of showing empathy downwards, for losing their own status and chance to be middle class
Wherever it seems there is some exception of someone who sees eye to eye because they can talk to anyone it turns out on closer inspection they are just closer in caste, surely a foreign taxi driver is not considered the same caste -but here’s someone to prove that wrong! that sometimes the customer can see them as an equal as if there was no caste separation, maybe some average white guy- on closer inspection he goes to community college and so risks no status with this interaction, he’s not aware he’s part of a caste system, and doesn’t think about his interactions reflecting on him. This is how social phenomena like people forming solidarity in the southern states works, they’re actually already grouped into a single lower caste together by an exterior ruling class (metropolitans), you don’t see the same sense of “solidarity” among progressive Californians and any oppressed group. A business major from the suburbs? They would never befriend a lowly ethnic restaurant owner, they would never befriend someone struggling. “nothing to do with thinking they’re worse than me” they justify, “I just have to make good connections, that’s part of my career”.
Parents would never imagine themselves as enforcing something so archaic or dystopian, but if they’re middle class or upper middle class they get at least a little concerned about their kid befriending a family in poverty, “no I don’t want to discriminate, this isn’t some kind of caste system- I just want to give my kids to have a good future with people like themselves”.
It would be too awkward to cut their kids off from their friends once they’re already made, so parents find it really important to give their kids the right community to make connections in. Parents want other families to be pre-screened. This is what private schools truly promise, not magically better teachers really, there are some real benefits to for profit schools, but mainly they promise to maintain the nobility of a family’s caste.
Going to a fast food place? taking the kids to the arcade for a Saturday? maybe going to the playground? Could be poor families there, if you see your kid playing with someone else on the playground talk to the other kids parents, screen them to make sure they’re safe to let into your caste, not that the kid themself is so dangerous, you can tell from the way they play together they would make good friends, but what if the parents are poor and forever gravitate the path of your kids life away from success? Your kid could be happy with their friend but they could be happy with a different, less poor, friend instead, right?
the affluent Californians who are progressive in their associations aren’t as much angry that there is a caste system separating someone they care about into the inferior castes of society, but rather want to show off how progressive they are for being in touch with their inferiors.
It was honestly such a world shattering experience on certain occasions to have someone from a higher caste let me in on their plans as if I was a normal friend like they would make within their own caste. It’s like I didn’t even realize there was castes until the moment I left my caste without anyone noticing and then I was terrified of being caught.
Feeling that extreme terror i felt confusion and realizing I was somehow terrified and yet didn’t even know why is how I suddenly realized I entered a different caste. I was terrified so subconsciously, so by instinct, that I could have reflexed my way out of the situation and never notice it ever happened, like how people usually do (and hence how the system works).
On the rare occasion where some affluent white kid was excited to invite me to something personal I was like wow this never occurred to me I could infiltrate into their lives, and then it occurred to me… infiltrate in what? That’s when I realized the caste system that was being practiced around me.
Nobody from the affluent town I grew up in would have invited a foreign man from a low paying job to their daughter’s birthday party. It was so obvious that it doesn’t even cross you mind that someone like that could be there, and so the reason for absence of certain types of people never bothers you. But I couldn’t help but feel whenever allowed in that my physical self which was completely out of my own control was an impassable barrier just like that. If I looked too different then the idea of being invited to something with another kid from high school or something felt just exactly that out of place. For the circumstances of birth, which are completely out of control, you are relegated to forever be eternally impossible to coexist with certain things in life and no matter what choices you make you can never change this. This is the essence of caste.
It is so insane how California has such a powerful caste system like this.
9/22
as i get older it makes more and more sense why (fully)white people never befriended me growing up despite living in a 99% white town which was like 40% blond hair too. the one exeption being a ukranian kid who was a grade younger than me(so i never threatened his social circle) and was like a half-friend for two years before he moved to another school. I had a white-passing mexican freind, a peruvian friend, and a visably ethnically jewish friend who was arguably white but just like with me it's not really the same as "real" white like everyone around us.
maybe it's not completely accurate to call it a caste, there is some element of meritocracy, my sister got very good grades and managed to get into a liberal private school with some ethnic diversity, so it's more of just a "class" system than a caste system. Though even in her school, there is a strong sense of affluence and superiority to balance their liberal empathy, at the end of the day the students were the most unimaginably wealthy people of california. By coincidence none of whom inherited any kind of genetic flaw or deviance from beauty standards from their parents. And even most of the ethnic diversity came from east asians, who are the model citizens of california, almost exceeding whiteness, and aside from that many of the students are desi, that is pakistani, or indian, bangladeshi, maybe sri lankan. It's not something anyone would ever ask, not that most of these second or third generation children likely even know anymore, but i suspect these ultra affluent ethnically indian families are not exactly descendants from the dalit, shruda, or likely even the vaishya caste. Sure california has racial equality... if youre all the same level of affluent.
it wasn't until i moved away to oregon for college where i started to befriend white people, which for me really confirms my beliefs about califonia's castes. For all of oregon's history of discrimination and it's right wing populations and very homogenous white demographic (it was a shockingly active state for the klan during it's development) there doesnt seems to be any caste seperation between people. Oregon was founded by fishermen and lumberjacks and men in similar types of work, and that's something that you can still see today in the hyper-casual and utilitarian fashion of the pacific northwest, there's practically no fashion difference between the homeless and anyone else. I noticed a similar thing visting ireland, which is also comparable in it's history of work, the place might be subconsciously opposed to class indication, for it's history of being contrarian to the pretentiousness of the english classism (hey, wait a second, who was it that assimilated into and ran india's castes?). It's almost a detrement to dress too fashionably, i avoided putting on my flashy winter clothes i bought in california, my designer leather boots and trenchcoat and such, despite their usefulness in rainy weather, in favor of an old second-hand synthetic jacket from my grandfather (my expensive trenchcoat is made by a london brand, isn't that funny?). All this to say that the caste situation is well refected in the way people are dressed, too.
i was talking to my mom, about how she and my dad had visited india, sometime in the 90's before i was born. One of the things she said is to the effect of "I never noticed before the social, uh.. differences between people... The only thing i think i can compare it to is like being a hollywood celebrity to them" I didnt provoke her to mention social caste, but it's just that it was so unavoidable as a tourist for her, and i also never mentioned california, which is why i think it's especially telling that she could only compare it to the social stratification in los angeles. I cant remember exactly but she had made the same sort of comparison earlier in the same conversation too, about the upper class of california. what is especially ironic is that my mom emigratted to california from an empire which no longer exists, where her grandfather was quite literally a feudal lord. For someone like her to only be able to compare india's latent caste system to califonia, well there's nothing that could be more dammning.
9/1 as the world becomes more life California, California becomes more like hell.
It is ironically because of the institutions of California that the outer world is replacing it, thanks to the dematerialization of production and consumption, anywhere can be the next Silicon Valley, the tech revolution has started to make the tech revolutionaries irrelevant. Does it matter where you are? -it’s already on its way to being the next California.
It is thanks to the total control that was held in changing society’s relationship to technology by a few people that in the future they and nobody else will ever have the chance to change our relationship to technology because it is now a competition to reinforce the technological status quo among everyone. In other words, with no need for any form of central power in the tech movement there is nobody who can be challenged if the movement is wrong, nobody is leading anyone else, and this lack of central authority in the course of revolution of industries is made possible due to the very industry’s original control(by a few central figures)! Thanks to a few central figures in the tech revolution, the future will never have central figures who are able to control society again. The techlological age is beyond human control now, the market and government and populist action are pure algorithm, humans are an anachronism left behind to obey the machine because they were handed just enough power to fend off anyone taking their spot, but these people too will never be able to control or change anything.
It is even more ironic that it is perhaps the motivation to not be part of California that is making all places become the next California.
(10/6 add) the fact that california's tech revolution has changed the world and reigns over the future means that anyone who does not compete with california will become the subject of it. But in the end, wont this cancerous newest tech revolution win no matter what?
9/1 ever since it’s very beginning, California has not been a real place. From the gold towns built in a day with two-story facades that were abandoned in a year because the golden streets were a myth, to the golden age of Hollywood and a cultural blur between movie set and real life, to the birth of of silicon valley, where the streets were once again paved with gold and nothing need be real.
California is scarce and difficult to experience outside of its commercial habitats. It is this environment which cultivates the conspiracy of immateriality, in opposition to the relatively forgiving and temperate climates of much of the whole rest of the world during most of the year as compared to the local population centers of said area. People historically lived in a place where it was possible to experience nature because there was simply no choice not to, if you couldnt "experience nature" in a place then that was because it was literally uninhabitable except for a few nomads, but what is called California, that is, the state of california, has never known a time before the Industrial Revolution, not only that, it was ONLY because of the Industrial Revolution that California came to be, and so for the first time in history no harmony with nature or even reality itself was required. It is far from the solid stone institutions which created it from across the country by telegram wire. And on this scarce land nothing of brick could be built without fear of earthquakes, almost nothing was allowed to remain of the brief period where it was attempted to truly build California in stone.
No place so immaterial can be created without some real, legitimate, government somewhere. washington DC began with a powerful premise, it's archetecture is respectable and impressive, but once such an immaterial place like the west coast is created it can take over as the true power of a society. If not for the silent replacement of immaterial authority, the insanity of politics would certainly have afforded us some effective protests by now. The capitol archetecture is now a last decorative gesture of authority behind what is the almost entirely technologically-backed authority of the government. The impossibly advanced state of central inteligence, survailence, digital currency, social credit, and so forth, negates most concerns authority might have with if it's law is legitimate and democratic and reasonably enforcable and coheres to the reality of people. A person is not needed to confront and control reality manually, the enforcement of law can be automated with technological control, that feels no personal concern or vulnerability with what it might have to enforce.
9/9 Through illiteracy, the lower class is delineated from the “human class” of society. In the post-human age, now that the lower class must be literate to fulfill the bureaucratic demands of post-industrial society, true literacy is reduced to impossibility by society which influences its language for profit motive alone. Even if it were not for the decline in literacy just from the perspective of the legal census, even in a society that is literate by technical definition, where all classes can read, reading comprehension is destroyed uniformly, as language can no longer serve as a class indicator to distinguish the human class, the human class must distinguish itself in other ways, and no longer cares about language as appendage of culture and culture of the human mind. practical comprehension becomes impossible through cultural entropy. the human class has done away with the mode of humanization , but society has not done away with separate castes. The society cannot preform complex psychological control without literacy. To advance as a post industrial society into immateriality, the society needs to have immaterial modes of control. Sure, anyone can read now… but we promise the books won’t mean anything anymore.
10/7 the books dont even need to be burned anymore, they mean nothing to us.
The power with which our cultural context reigns over our ability to know truth is not to be underestimated. it stops us from caring in the first place, if all else fails the most subversive extremist literature of all of history is commodified, the cover of the book is abstract and evokes only the emotion that the consumer wants to externalize, of holding a book for it's aesthetic value, and reading it for the same reason, the cover, like all other cultural contexts around a work, will not evoke something profound.
even to librarians and english teachers and professors the literature is just something to consume backwards, with the text being reality and reality being a place of consumption to congradulate themselves for noticing references to their literature.