I was at the Bat Mitzvah of a girl I have an obscure relation to the other day, and the Rabbi brought up a topic I thought fit to bring to this fine table that is Jalenack. The topic was that of the class-based society that we live in, and have lived in since civilization started. Humans have a natural tendency to fall into different levels of social ranking, even though this system has been hated by everyone not in the top rank since the first time someone said, “I rule.”
God’s deal is that he created everyone equal. He created everyone out of the same mud, so no man should ever look at himself in a more appriciative way than he looks at the next man. Unfortunately, God sprinkled a little too much human nature onto us, so we immediately have to say, “I’m better than you, so I get to boss you around.”
So even though God kept telling people to give everyone equal shares of the harvest, or equal portions of land, people kept saying, “I did more work than he did, I should get more stuff.” So God decided there would be this celebration every fifty years that all the Jews were supposed to go to, and the deal was, after that celebration, everyone started at zero again. No one got any more than the next man. And over the next fifty years, God would let men decide who should get to sit in the throne all day making the decisions, and who had to tend all the fields all day, because it was their nature. For fifty years men could scrape their way to the top, but it would never amount to anything after this celebration.
The Rabbi gave an example of how notorious we are for falling into these classes. A few weeks ago in New York City, three people had heart attacks on the same day. One was a man of the upper middle class, one was a middle class man, and the other was a woman of the working class. The upper class man was immediately rushed to a hospital, and after two days he was let out fully recovered. The middle class man went to a hospital with a slightly worse reputation, was hospitalized for a week, and then let out with a good chance of a full recovery. The working class woman did not want to call a hospital at first for fear of not being able to pay the bill. When she finally did, she was taken to three different hospitals before she could be operated on. She’s still in the hospital today, and has only a slight chance of recovery.
The Rabbi was saying that it may be just that the people who are of the upper class get to enjoy more luxuries than those of lower classes, like have nicer cars, bigger houses, even more vacation time, but it cannot be God’s will that people of the higher class recieve better healthcare. Everyone must have the same shot at life. It’s completely inhuman to have some assembly line worker waiting out in the hall while the CEO of Genentech gets a triple-bipass surgery.
Andrew’s Utopia project featured a country that was a rigidly class-based society, which is one of the reasons I decided to post about this. I’m not exactly sure where I stand here. I agree that people who work hard should definitely come out with more than the people who sit around watching TV all day, but how can you measure who’s worked harder than another person? It’s the fact that the people who sit around watching TV all day are almost always upper or middle class that really gets me about our society. What do you guys think? Class based society, yeh or nay?
There've been 10 whole comments
6:08 pm on 5/24/2005 1. Eric
Yeh all the way.
The problem with communism or socialism, or other idealist societies is that human nature cannot be over ridden. It’s a natural instinct to want to feel like you’re better than someone else.
If I were to work a 10 hour day I would be mad as hell if the guy who sat on his porch watching me work made just as much as me. If he was the one paying me to work, I’d have no problem. But social classes sort of keep people in check. If I was lower class I’d want to work harder to become of a higher class. I think a social class system creates some work ethic in our lazy-assed world.
8:17 pm on 5/25/2005 2. Arty
I suppose, but there are still “lazy assed” people in the world, if social classes create incentives, why aren’t they biting the carrot? Another point is that although social classes can make people work harder, they also support people who don’t work hard, and are just heirs to huge fortunes that their grandparents made. Do you think that’s fair, cause i don’t.
4:33 pm on 5/26/2005 3. SuperDave
If I had inherited a vast sum of money (were talkin’ 6+ digits here)from a relative, it would be great, but I probably would feel guilty for just allowing all that cash (CHa-Ching) to plop in my lap just for being born. It just seems wrong to become fabulously wealthy (≤$15,000,000) without doing a days work.
Now if I became filthy rich, I wouldn’t give my kids squat. I’d take it all with me to the grave. Bwah hah haha. SUCKERS!
8:44 pm on 5/27/2005 4. Eric
Sean, your speeches are always so inspirational
10:17 pm on 5/31/2005 5. Nella
Okay, I’ve made my decision. The class-based society stays. Even though it separates human beings from each other, pitting them against each other in a manner that one might associate with the food chain, it is unchangeable human nature to want some benefit for your actions.
Even inheritance is cool with me. We are genetically hardwired to want to make our offspring as successful as possible, right? If I get rich, I don’t want to pay all my extra money to the government when I die, I want it to go to my blood heir, the last remaining manifestation of me! If there were ever a species that didn’t care feather nor fig about their offspring, they’d be extinct in a second, ‘cuz when they’re getting food for themselves, their babies are meanwhile being eaten by wolves or something.
Class-based society is completely ethical. No question.
There is a much greater sin that our society is the notorious perpetrator of that we must comes to grips with.
Consider who the upper-class of America are. The Creme de la creme. The multi-billion dollar men. The CEOs of our “beloved” corporations. Think about what their job entails. Most of their day consists of sitting in a board room meeting with their eyes half closed, paying no attention to the matter at hand, and instead thinking about who won the baseball game this afternoon. These are the people who we value the absolute most. These are the people who we pay billions and billions of dollars just to decide which company they’re going to buy next.
The problem of our society is not that of the class-based nature itself, but of where we have chosen to put our values, which of course is what is deciding who gets to enter the esteemed “upper” class. Our society works now in this matter: The laborers, at their long assembly lines, the only ones really who are doing any work, the only ones who are pouring their sweat and blood into the ten hour work days for a bear minimum wage, get to be our lower class. We have decided not to value people like this, because it turns out they are a dime a dozen. Us, the nefarious consumers, get to be the middle-class. We buy the wonderful products that our inferiors have made for us. We work at jobs that our society has put middling value on. And of course, it is the corporate giants that get to be our exalted upper class. They are the ones who get the giant Beverly Hills homes with large families that they forget the names of. These are the people we have chosen to get the power of our wonderful nation.
Let’s take a look at this, shall we? These laborers break their backs to make these goods, but technically it’s the corporations that own the goods, since they own the company. They then proceed to sell them to the millions upon millions of consumers (us). Look at this equation. It goes from Laborers to Marketers to Consumers. WHAT IS THE ONLY PART OF THAT EQUATION THAT IS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY?!?!?!?
The trouble with our society is the enormous value we put on marketing. When you buy something from one of these corporations, I’ll bet about ten percent of the money goes to whoever actually manufactured it, ten goes to the distributer, and the other eighty goes to the CEO of that corporation. Who even needs it? Why aren’t the laborers just selling it directly to the consumers? Well, they tried that, but… The company bought the laborers. Wonder if they’ve ever heard of a thing called ethics?
This is why society is so blatantly butt-fucked. Class-based societies are fine if you have value put in the right people. What happened to the good old days when the peddlers were a poor, powerless class of people who wondered from town to town buying and selling goods? When did they become the huge nation-wide power that they are now? Capitalism blows me.
Big companies do not have to be all bad. What if they didn’t care about money, and they were only interested in delivering us with a quality product? Wouldn’t that be swell? Golly, gee willikers that would be just dandy.
Did it ever occur to anyone to do something for the good of mankind? No? Oh, well, sorry, just curious.
11:14 pm on 5/31/2005 6. Andrew
Hot mama, let’s duke it out. First of all, compliments to your idiocy…
Here I go, in defense of capitalism…Ian, are you saying that we should put out values instead into the people of the lower class, the “unintelligent” and “untrained” class? We should all aspire to be of the working class, not the upper class.
I think you underestimate the value of the upper class. You say they do no nothing, just sit on their asses and profit from their exploitation of the little guys. But really, they do their bit. Where would we be without their marketing? Technology would move so slowly, because no one would be up on the cutting edge. No one would know if someone made something better.
Okay that is total BS. Sure there may have been companies in the past with the values you suggest. But where have they gone? The shitter…because more aggressive companies delivering similar products beat them to all the customers. If a company were to spend all of their time on R&D, and none of their time on marketing and selling the product, they would make no money. And even if they made the most fabulous product in the world, it wouldn’t be delivered.
Let’s see, what’s next:
I think you missed something. Product development. Who dreams up the goods? Certainly not the dumby laborers. Again, it’s the upper, highly-educated class with the brains to innovate.
And I also differ on your views about CEOs. Have you ever actually met one? Do you know how hard that job is? Having thousands of workers under your control, with thousands of stockholders breathing down your neck and a company board ready to fire you at your first mistake. I don’t think they have it easy. Plenty of them do, though.
And to echo someone from my shoutbox, how did these vast, corrupt corporations rise to power? By delivering a quality product. But now that they’ve made it to the top, they are going to do everything in their power to lobby politicians, squash little companies, and keep themselves at #1. Here’s where we go wrong…
7:28 am on 6/1/2005 7. SuperDave
I think ian summed it up quite well right here:
or how about:
5:59 pm on 6/7/2005 8. Sam
Sean, thank you for so thoroughly analyzing the underlying message of Ian’s comment. I never would have figured out what he was trying to say.
2:51 am on 11/15/2005 9. rocker
i agree.. beep
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