Caste in India 2 Mar 2010 3 Quarks Daily has an excellent essay on the evolution (cultural, of course) of the Varna and Jati system in India. This is often referred to by westerners as “the” caste system. Politics Religion Social dominance Social evolution
Censorship On fear and risk 31 Jan 2010 I haven’t had a rant/sermon in a while. My parents’ generation went through the second world war, fighting tyrants and ideologies that sought to control our everyday lives; for which reason they are sometimes called “the best generation”. Their parents’ generation fought world war one and went through the Depression…. Read More
Freedom Good faith, bad faith and no faith in reasoning 7 Oct 201823 Nov 2018 We are hearing a lot of calls for there to be public debates with climate deniers, the alt-right (that is, modern fascists), creationists and antivaxxers, and this has led to people marking the so-called “paradox of tolerance” named by Karl Popper in his epochal 1945 Open Society and its Enemies: Read More
Evolution Fun in Guelph 27 Jan 2009 If you happen to be near the University of Guelph, then not only is Massimo Pigliucci giving a talk there, but there’s this event by my friend and former colleague, Stefan Linquist: Read More
Its rather nice. Hierarchy when it is flexable does resolve problems and tension. Perhaps why it has been around for so long. When it becomes rigid it cannot fuction effectivly. Social tension increases, the lines become even more rigidly drawn between competitive social groups. Culture that is shared particularly material artifacts that may be used by all members of an ethnos will be made to look distinct. At times of tension they will start to bare ethnic markers and symbols. Diffrence has a high value under such circumstances. But it is in part I think an understanding of ethnicity and how it is used to negotiate and change identity that is playing out in modern India. As it certainly is in other parts of the world as understanding and cultures evolve. Just as it has always done. As the subject of ethnology did in the mid. 19th cen. when it found it’s methodology and first spoke in the ethnological socities of London and Paris into a sea of considerable noise. Some shamless flag waving for ethnology but it is an important subject I think.
The Indo-Aryan Theory has been quite rigorously disproven with genetic evidence. They occupants of the Indian sub-continent are all from the same original source. The Indo-Aryan theory is just another product of racist Europeans deciding that White people had to have started all great civilizations. It’s no different from the theories that used to propose that the ruins in Africa where from ancient European colonists and not native ancestors. It’s just Nazi science, pure and simple.