Gerald Kuiken lectured in the fields of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics. Then, for some reason, he started writing nonsense about the Bhagavad Gita.
The discussion of “The Class-Caste System with Its Genomic Evidence” shows that the caste system in India was introduced in the last centuries BCE.
This is exceedingly unlikely. In other similar countries, there was a four fold division between a hereditary Aristocracy, a hereditary Priesthood, a respectable class and a slave/metic class. At the top end of Society, there is a constant winnowing whereby less successful people fall out of the caste their grandparents were born into while the reverse happens at the bottom. In India, as elsewhere, when the age of marriage fell, for reasons Dante mentions, endogamy proved a superior solution to the 'stable marriage problem' under conditions of relatively free exit and entry to Tiebout models. This gave a different trajectory to some, not other, 'jatis' on the basis of greater reproductive success, which persists to this very day, for three different reasons
1) better risk-pooling, more 'high trust' internal transactions, and higher mobility thanks to quicker 'discovery' of geographical and occupational opportunities.
2) Tardean mimetics displaces miscegenation. You don't marry your daughter to an athlete to get those athletic genes. You get your sons to imitate the training of the athlete.
3) Jatis form alliances to gain countervailing power over the Stationary Bandit or Autocrat.
Economic forces predominate over a large territory with free entry and exit and competing Tiebout models. At the top, there may be some cosmetic similarity in terms of legitimating ideology and rituals because models have models. But competition between mechanisms winnows out the degenerate hypertrophy of modelling's 'Speigelman monsters'. That's why political science is shit. Only mechanisms matter though, no doubt, Tardean mimetics, nor Marxian shite, is the correct transmission mechanism.
Kuiken, it seems, believes in the magic power of Brahmins. Though the Shraman Religions were flourishing- indeed, smart Brahmins were thronging to such Sects- the Purohits could brainwash the whole country because...urm...Brahmins have a super-special gene right? No doubt, there are some cunts with names like mine who want to believe this about themselves. But they are as stupid as shit. Indeed, we have always been proud of our stupidity. A low I.Q is an advantage, not a handicap, in living a very materially impoverished but extremely pious life. That's cool if all you care about is God. But, it is not a 'regret minimizing' strategy. Thus the history of any given jati shows a propensity to 'hedge bets' by grabbing secular opportunities. Equally, other castes will invest a little in sacerdotal paideia and will cultivate a hereditary spiritual cultus. At the 'Varna' level, jatis may rise or fall. Currently, some 'backward' jatis want 'Vaishya' status. A hundred years ago, they claimed 'Kshatriya' status. But we also know that some recent Pariah castes first became 'afternoon Pariahs' and now are accepted as Brahmins because they provide a necessary service for a very modest cost. But such mobility is predicated on endogamy as the solution for the stable marriage problem. In other words, a notional 'Varna' system has been facilitated by an endogamous jati system which was not envisaged by the putative 'Manus' or primordial 'Law Makers'. Brahmins were equally subject to the norms enforced by this new application of the Price equation. Kin-selective altruism meant being beastly to the miscegenated, unless they pretend to be no such thing, so as to promote higher reproductive success thanks to a curb on 'wasteful competition' for reproductive resources.
Kuiken, misled by textual availability cascades, prefers to stick with the old 'Brahmins have super-powers' (but if Brahmins, why not Jews? Why stop there? Read David Icke and denounce all elites as shape shifting lizards from Planet X who are trying to get us to wear face masks by inventing a story about a Coronavirus so that they themselves can retain their lizard like mouths with which they routinely bite the faces off innocent people like us.)
It is suggested that it was introduced by the brahmins for political rather than spiritual reasons. In Vedic times admixture was the norm, where one chose one’s own partner, as is confirmed by recently found genomic data.
Rape may have been the norm. There is evidence that women are less likely to put up resistance to assault in societies where there are low or no punishments for illegitimacy. Men may prefer not to punish a type of offense which threatens their own coalition stability. Murasaki Shibuku describes a Heian Court where no woman was safe- even an Empress. There can be no secure 'oikos' or 'oikeosis' where endogamy isn't normative. This in turn depends on whether countervailing power can be gained on the basis of economics, which itself depends on the ease of exit and entry and the power of Hirschman 'Voice'.
The Mahabharata, as we have had it for over a thousand years, is explicitly Game theoretic. 'Artha', meaning, has always been related to economia, not akreibia. Of course, by backward induction, the two can always be reconciled. But the Gita does this by embracing Occasionalism and Ontological dysphoria of a florid type. That's fine for eusebia. But economic mechanisms are what matter. Thus Hindu Law is merely 'Samskar'. We say 'the Heavens will fall if we deviate by one iota from what is prescribed'. Then a tipping point is passed and we all say 'What is prescribed is completely different from what was going down. It must have been the Turks or the Brits or the Lizard People who temporarily brainwashed us into thinking otherwise'.
This is perfectly rational. The Schelling focal point for the underlying economic coordination game has changed discontinuously. But this does not affect other mechanisms- e.g. endogamy as solving the stable marriage problem. What is important is to understand why jati based 'arranged marriage' was, and remains, so much more demographically successful. But this isn't difficult at all. It is something all Indians, who have grown-up kids of marriageable age, understand but can't be bothered casting into the game theoretic language of Economics.
Kuiken, who comes from a very different culture with very different sexual mores, understands nothing about Indian Hinduism or Indian Society. Why should he? There may be a Dutch Hinduism which my own descendants will convert to. For all I know, it may be superior in its reproductive outcomes. But, extrapolating present trends, only for declasse losers. 'Artha' is unequivocal. Only Mechanisms matter. Models are misleading.
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