WEBVTT - Pulling Rank 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:08.360 Before becoming a musician, I worked as a face painter, 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:12.640 sometimes dressed as a butterfly, sometimes wearing shiny red boots 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.160 and pigtails, decked out in holographic robbins. I did it 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:18.520 for roughly ten years. It was pretty good at it. 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.680 I paid well as a freelance gig, mostly company parties, 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:24.800 and being a face painter is like serving as an 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:28.400 embedded spy in the republic of childhood. Kids speak freely 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.280 around you, don't even register you're an adult. They're sweet, 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.400 they're weird, they're funny, they're mean, and even though they're 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:38.960 pint sized, they're already real sensitive to social status and hierarchy. 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:44.479 I remember this one kid, let's call him Charlemagne, pulling 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.680 ranked on another boy by explaining that his dad worked 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:50.680 in a corner office. And I kept painting. But it 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:52.960 occurred to me that this kid would have no idea 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.279 why a corner office was even desirable. He hadn't spent 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:58.960 any time in his sunless cubicle, yet he just heard 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.280 the boast at home and trotted it out. Here is 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:04.280 evidence that Charlemagne Sr. Was higher up on the corporate 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.039 ladder than this other kid, who was also waiting in 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.119 line for me to paint a glitter batman on his cheek. 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.480 I'm Dessa. This is deeply human, and we're talking about 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:23.920 social status, prestige, influence and dominance, and our personal lives 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:27.280 and our work lives and our societies at large. Why 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:31.720 do we form social hierarchies. We're born into the many 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.120 hierarchy of our homes. We're parents of the de facto bosses. 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.840 And as a little kid myself, I was very eager 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.720 to level the family organizational chart, constantly campaigning my mom 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:46.200 for an equal vote in domestic policy decisions. Let's all 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.160 just are your case and trust the best plans will 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:51.880 rise to the top. And I cannot tell you how 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:55.720 much I hated her reply, I'm your mother, not your friend. 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:59.480 I hate that now. I hate saying that now. But 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:01.880 when I was five and a half years old, Maxie 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:10.160 was born, promoting me to middle management halfway around the world. 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.280 A few years later, a little girl named Shenyang was 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:17.000 born into a very different family, and when she was 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:20.320 about five, she spent a night wrapped in her grandfather's 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:26.040 coat hiding from a government raid. They came at night, 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.480 and I was really scared because my Grandpa took me 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.200 to the top of the roof and we were hiding there, 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.120 and that was one of the horrible scenes in my childhood. 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.080 They flipped to my grandparents bed. They flipped it because 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.239 they thought I were hiding underneath the bed. Of course 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:45.360 they don't know my dame. They're just saying, where's the kid? 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:47.600 Where's the kid? When you hear a kid, of course 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.680 you are scared. Okay, let's get the context that led 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:55.520 to that scene on the roof. Can I ask you 0:02:55.560 --> 0:03:00.200 where year you were born? January the one I was 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:04.359 born in Shandong, Jining, a small city, And if somebody 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:07.359 was picturing China on a map, it's in B two 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:10.960 in Beijing and Shanghai. And did you have siblings when 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:17.760 you grew up? Uh? That's usually an innocent, getting to 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:20.600 know you kind of question, But for Shen Young, it's 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.800 complicated because legally she was not allowed to have siblings. 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.800 By the mid eighties, China had a strict one child policy. 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:31.760 Each couple was permitted only one kid and would face 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.800 serious fines for any additional births. But Chanyang was the 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:39.320 second of four girls. My grandma used to say, Guanti 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:43.880 and Guandi guan. You control the heaven, you control the earth. 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.920 You cannot control people's belly. But the government did try 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:52.520 to control pregnancies. It launched huge propaganda campaigns to dissuade 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.160 couples from having what we're called excess birth children. And 0:03:56.160 --> 0:04:00.600 the slogans were really really intense. One x as birth 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:04.200 and the whole village gets their tubs tied. They're not 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:09.440 just threatening, they're really taking people to get their tubes tied. Literally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.920 some villages really did that. Girls were more likely to 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:17.240 be aborted, abandoned, or given away during those years. Boys 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.640 who could carry on the family line recorded higher status. 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.480 Boys have to have all the privileges. They are like 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:28.000 the spoilt light of the family. At dinner table, boys 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.640 always get to eat chicken legs, so you know, the 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.160 meat the boy gets to eat first. There are many 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:40.599 families in the countryside that the sisters sacrifice themselves not 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:43.320 to go to school, but they go to work so 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:47.720 they can pay the tuition for the brother. To enforce 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:51.520 the one child rule, government officials raided homes if they 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:54.520 found an excess birth child. They could demolish the house, 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:58.200 take the family's furniture, food, or even the baby itself. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.440 Chan Yang's parents, who kept trying for a boy after 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.600 she was born, sent her to live in a village 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.880 with her grandparents to hide. They didn't file any paperwork 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.839 to register her birth, but as we've heard, the authorities 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.760 found her grandparents house and they came looking for her. 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.599 To evade them, n Young was then sent to an aunt, 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:21.719 far away from any family that she knew. She was 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.920 scrappy and strong willed, but she was essentially a five 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.479 year old fugitive in hiding and undocumented in her own country. 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:34.480 People used to call me latle black child. Yes, we 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:38.039 also have black children. It means we illegal children, and 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:40.720 they mobbed me for all. She's the little black girl 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.839 from Shandong Province. The term black children wasn't associated with 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:47.760 skin color. It was a comment about Shen Yan's position 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.280 in the social hierarchy. She wasn't only perceived as inferior 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.280 like there wasn't even a proper wrong for her. She 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.320 wasn't supposed to exist at all. We were like the 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.840 invisible generation, the ghost child. But like many other excess 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.320 birth children, Shen Young found a way to hack back 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:08.120 onto the grid and reinserting herself into the social order 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:15.400 would involve assuming a new identity. Shen young story will 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.479 provide a dramatic example of how status and leverage and 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:21.479 authority can affect a human life. But all of us 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:24.799 are sensitive even to the minor differences in power dynamics 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:30.120 that surround us within the first ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:33.920 Like people already know what is the status situation in 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:38.240 this room. That's Dr Joey Cheng, sociologist at RK University 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:41.599 in Toronto, Canada. When we first enter a room, were 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.159 likely to rely on demographic shorthand guessing who's in control 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.880 based on age and race and gender. Then you start 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:52.000 paying attention right as people speak, to their body language, 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.200 to their non verbal cues. So you know, is this 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.839 person sitting up right? Are they expanded? Do they look 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:01.040 like they're taking up a lot of space? Being extroverted 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:05.880 is big, especially in North American culture. So there's even 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:10.160 this thing called the Babbler effect where the person who 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:14.480 speaks the most is the one who's likely to be 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:17.040 a leader in a room. Joey worked on a study 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:19.920 that also found we tend to spend more time looking 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:22.760 at the high status individuals in a group, but we 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:24.920 may have read our gaze if they look directly back 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.960 at us in a subtle sign of submission. We take 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.040 note of how others speak as well. Are they lowering 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.440 the pitch of their voice as they speak? Then studies 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:37.960 we find that when you measure the pitch of people's 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:42.360 voice when they first speak compared to how it changes 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:47.040 over time, the people who lower their voice they actually 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.760 get seen as more dominant and they end up having 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.960 more influence over a group. So when you think about, 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.880 you know, when we're in trouble, right, how do people 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.800 call our names? This stuff am to more than just 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:06.000 academic trivia. Judicial researchers have investigated why some jurors seem 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:10.640 to hold outsized influence on jury deliberations. Former British Prime 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.480 Minister Margaret Thatcher hired a speech coach to help her 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.960 lower her pitch to create a more authoritative presence, and 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.640 Joey herself notes that when hierarchical cues are built into 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.760 the language, they might even affect our intimate relationships. So 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:28.280 I think of the informal too in Spanish versus the formal. 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:33.160 THID languages like Thai and Japanese have many complicated levels 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:39.040 of deference and respect. Apparently even for Japanese speakers, like 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.439 kids growing up in Japan, that is a tricky thing 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:44.440 they have to learn to as they grow up. Is 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.160 like okay for this person, is this a context where 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:52.400 I use that hierarchical language or is this not? And 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.719 also it gets complicated after people get married. They kind 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:57.560 of the figure out like all right, do I start 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:01.680 using cago, which that hiwardic language with my in laws 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:05.439 or do I drop it? Like it's tricky. You contributed 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.720 a chapter to this book called Towards a Unified Science 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.600 of Hierarchy, and essentially you wrote that having an organizational 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:19.520 structure in a hierarchical form was a tool to resolve conflict. 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.200 Whereas I think right now in the modern world, we 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.080 imagine like hierarchies as the source of a lot of conflict. 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:31.000 Can you explain when you show submission that is a 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:36.160 way to prevent conflict in the absence of that hierarchy 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:40.520 while figuring out somebody's going to get hurt. So think 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:45.719 about like in a workplace meetings. Right when your assistant, 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:49.559 for instance, knows they're your assistant, you're not going to 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.000 be butting heads with them. It's like if you had 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:56.800 to remind them that they're your assistant because they've somehow forgotten, 0:09:57.160 --> 0:10:01.840 then that's where you might have issues. Why and how 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.520 does some people land higher than others in the social hierarchy. 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:09.960 Scholars like Joey identify two classic strategies to achieve or 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:15.200 maintain a high status position. The first is dominance. Dominance 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:20.120 refers to the use of threat and intimidation to gain 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:24.520 influence over others, typically by instilling fear. Does it have 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.880 to be physical? It doesn't. So when your boss says 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:30.600 to you, you're not getting that raise next time, if 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:33.280 you're not going to work extra hours this weekend, or 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.959 you might even think of parents who you know when 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:38.240 you're threatening your kid that you're going to ground them. 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:42.160 So the implied threat often in humans that tends to 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:45.120 be verbal, right, but that is nevertheless still a form 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:49.360 of dominance. The second strategy to achieve status is prestige. 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.240 That's where you earn respect and influence based on your 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:56.520 skills and talents. So when my mom was sternly reminding 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.400 me I'm your mother, not your friend, she was flexing eminence. 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:04.040 Whereas when I proposed that we discussed the bedtime protocols. 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:06.880 I was hoping to be judged on my merit and 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:13.520 awarded some prestige. All human communities form hierarchies, and on 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:17.280 this we turned to Dr Zach Garfield, behavioral scientist and 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:20.800 evolutionary anthropologist at the Institute for Advanced Study and to 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:24.479 Lose France. He says that even in hunter gatherers societies 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:28.200 that might not have fixed rules like chieftain people don't 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.920 live together as complete equals, there are still leaders still 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.839 varying levels of status. The hierarchy is just more dynamic. 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.560 Social influence might be more often based on just individual 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.960 capacities and the context. So what are we doing now? 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:45.280 Are we trying to clear feel? Are we trying to hunt? 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:47.080 Do we have a problem that needs to be resolved? 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.760 Who can best coordinate this collective action dilemma? And whoever 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:52.360 it kind of is there and can get the job 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.320 done might be chosen as a leader. Every culture operates 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.760 by its own rules, but there are some patterns to 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:02.360 how societies organize themselves. Cultures that developed in environments where 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:06.160 food and resources are plentiful tend to form more rigid 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.760 and stratified hierarchies. This trend can be seen, for example, 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.439 in some of the Native American societies of the Pacific Northwest. 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.280 The classic example is the northwest coast of North America, 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:21.200 where you have salmon runs. Many populations in the Northwest 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:27.360 coast did practice institutionalized slavery both before and after European colonization. 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:31.319 Some native tribes enslaved people and forced them into lives 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:38.199 of labor. Some form of lightered social order is observable 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.040 in every human society, and in non human ones too. 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.199 The term pecking order, for example, This coined just over 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:47.800 a hundred years ago by a Norwegian researcher studying chickens. 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.360 He noted, there are no two individual birds of any 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.120 given species which, when living together, did not know which 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:58.360 of the two has precedents and which is subordinate. I 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:00.640 have a shape in my head for high archy, like 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:04.160 I'm imagining like a pyramid. Is that what you imagine 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:06.000 or do you have like a totally different shape. I 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.199 think the pyramid is not a bad way to conceptualize. 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.280 It's just that there's going to be many pyramids, all 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.079 inside of each other at the same time, along different axis. Right, 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.600 It's like a rubics cut pyramid in your head. Yeah, 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.040 it's like a erubics creup pyramid. Yeah, and I've just 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:22.520 got a child's drawing of a triangle on a white 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:27.600 sheet of paper. Hierarchies can overlap their complex and though 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.360 they can sometimes be oppressive, they also help us get 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:34.400 a ton of stuff done. One clear advantage of hierarchies 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.120 is they help us coordinate as a group to achieve 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.440 some what we often call collective action. And humans, like 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:42.800 many other social species, Like all social species, we need 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:44.480 to live in a group. We can't survive on our own. 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:46.800 We can't consume enough calories on our own, we can't 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:49.520 raise our children on our own. We generally can't be 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:51.600 happy on our own. So we were bound to this 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:56.200 group living physiologically and psychologically. Lots of evidence suggests that 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.920 social hierarchies allow us to coordinate groups have been the 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:15.400 angels with non completely overlapping interests in a more effective way. 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.400 Hierarchies are clutched when a bunch of us try to 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.720 pull off something big. Listening to Zach reminded me of 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.880 a filmmaker friend, Lucian, who directed a music video for 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.560 one of my singles, and it was like this last minute, 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:30.240 little budget thing elusion wrote in a couple of film 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.360 friends to crew and their girlfriends generously agreed to help, 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.000 and we plan to like right around shopping carts at 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.160 a parking lot while lipstick totally goofy. But as soon 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:43.480 as the cameras started speeding, Lucian stops using people's names, 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:45.600 Like when he needs something, he just tails them by 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.400 their role on set p A or I see or gather, 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.720 and to them, this is clearly totally normal. When I 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.560 asked him about it later, he laughed and said he 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.160 forgot how weird that might look from the outside, but 0:14:57.240 --> 0:14:59.960 that the rigid structure was actually part of what attracted 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.320 at him to film in the first place. It provides 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:06.200 order to this big community of freelance artists and technicians 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:10.280 that need to perform their jobs essentially interchangeably, and film 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.680 is a relatively new medium, he reminded me, so that 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:16.200 strict hierarchy just sort of emerged to make it all possible. 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:18.520 But yes, it was funny when he thought about it, 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.320 that he was shouting PA to get the attention of 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.000 the woman that he'd be going home with later. On 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.360 a proper movie set, people might be hoping to be 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.160 recognized for their skills and then promoted on the next 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.320 shoot the assistant director with an eye on the director's chair. 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:36.240 All individuals compete for status, pursue some social influence or 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.280 some social rank. We all can't strive to be the 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.400 next Lebron James. We know we all can't strive to 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:44.960 be the next nuclear physicist. But everyone can find some 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:46.920 domain in which they can compete for status. And I 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:48.880 think that is a universal feature of who we are. 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.680 Why just built in, like, what is this appetite for status? 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.240 So by finding some domain in which we can develop 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.440 some expertise, it makes you a valuable social partner. I'm 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.440 just gonna allow you to develop that social capital. And 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:04.240 if you can do that, then you'll be more likely 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:08.520 to survive, have greater well being survived, and reproduce. So 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:12.240 I think that's part of it. The motive to form 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.600 hierarchies maybe universal, but as we've heard, the resultant structures 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:19.560 look really different around the world. One of the most 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:25.239 formalized institutional versions of social stratification is the cast system 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:33.200 of South Asia. I'm aside that many economists and Ashoka University. 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:36.120 When you meet someone on the street, can you tell 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:40.120 immediately what cast that prison is from. No, you cannot. 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:42.880 For example, in urban India, you get into the metro 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:45.520 commuter train and you would not be able to tell 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:48.880 looking at people which costs they belong to. Absolutely not. 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:54.200 A Shweeny lives in Delhi and she wrote a book 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:58.440 called The Grammar of Cast. There isn't a straightforward counterpart 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:01.400 for cast in the West. It's not quite like race 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.600 or class, though there are overlaps. Cast is something you're 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:07.639 born into, something that can't be changed, even if your 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.680 circumstances do like blood type. And there are thousands of 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:16.120 jetty or individual cast designations, and historically each was linked 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:20.800 to a particular vocation priest or warrior, builder, farmer. The 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.480 system is ancient, but it's very much survived in modern India, 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:26.960 even if it functions less visibly than it used to. 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.720 A lot of contemporary modern occupations have no cost counterpart. 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:34.840 There is no cost of dentists or rocket scientists or 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.240 nuclear scientists, graphic designers, so if you want to encountered 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:41.640 a graphic designer, you wouldn't know what costs they belonged to. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.200 But it still matters. Families aim to marry within their 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:48.400 own cast, and when people apply for jobs, private employers 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:51.080 try to suss out the cast of the applicants. The 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.359 system is culturally pervasive in South Asia. Some Muslim and 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:57.680 Christian communities and that part of the world have cast structures. 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.639 But the philosophical roots of the system connect to the 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.480 religious concept of reincarnation. And so what you are today 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.840 it must be because you're either being rewarded for being 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:09.640 good in the past life of you are being punished 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:11.440 for being bad in the past life. It's got my 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:14.879 basically in that world view, it would then follow that 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.679 the people born into the most empoverished and disrespected casts 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:25.080 somehow deserve it. The most severe consequences of the system 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:28.560 are born by those that were historically regarded as untouchable. 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:34.400 Untouchability is a set of practices that deems any interaction 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.399 with a certain group of people polluting. If they had 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:40.320 to cross the street in the village, they would have 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.600 to take their shoes off if they were wearing any 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:47.120 shoes at all, so that their footwear doesn't pollute the grounds, etcetera, etcetera. 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.399 So it was the most degrading experience of living. What 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.040 is the source of that? It's the occupations that these 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:58.800 groups were doing so basically everything that deals with dead 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:03.560 animals or per sins or excreta of any bodily fluid 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.920 things that are literally dirty. All of those occupations were 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:13.800 considered untouchable because these occupations were considered impure. But India's 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:19.000 Constitution of nineteen change that untouchability has been deemed illegal 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:24.520 in independent India. Well on paper itegal, but many, many 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:30.200 people still practice untouchability. Discrimination is rampant, unapologetic, and totally 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.359 over it. A teacher might send an untouchable boy to 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:36.600 sit behind in the class and say, what are you 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:38.320 doing here? You know you're going to grow up and 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:40.200 become a sweeper. Why do you need to get educated? 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:45.760 There is documentary evidence where students who belong to untouchable groups, 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.280 boys and girls, are made to clean toilets, a job 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.879 that janitors in school should be doing, not children. Members 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.440 of casts that were considered untouchable often call themselves dallets, 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:59.760 which means oppressed, and it's a term of pride. But 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.960 evidence of the continued depression is everywhere. Often on roadside 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.480 stalls that sell t you will see that there are 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:11.920 two kinds of tumblers kept there. There are some inferior tumblers, 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:16.040 and everybody knows that these tumblers are for the formerly 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:20.960 untouchable groups, and someone breaking the unstated codes risks violence. 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:25.320 He could just get beaten up. It happens literally every day. 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:31.280 So cast based violence is all pervasive for forgetting your 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:35.879 place in society, and sexual violence against the women by 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.840 upper cast men is also a way of showing the 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:44.280 lists where they belong. You better not forget your position, 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:49.200 otherwise will humiliate your women. Today, dalets are organizing campaigning 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:51.919 for fair treatment, building a dalt middle class, which of 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:56.600 course comes with its own resentments and complications. Do you 0:20:56.640 --> 0:21:01.160 think the caste system reveals something about out human nature, 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.560 not just about India or South Asia. Yeah, many of 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:10.120 us benefit from inequality, and whether we are consciously aware 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:15.080 of that or not, we wouldn't be desperate to change 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:19.040 the system that would take away many of our benefits. 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:23.760 It may not happen in my lifetime, but hopefully, you know, 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:30.280 we will see strives to us day equality. Back to Chenyang, 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:32.960 the second or four daughters who grew up hidden from 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:36.560 the authorities, big changes would in fact happen in her lifetime, 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:39.800 but will rejoin her story where we left it when 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:42.959 shen Yang was a little girl, so in my family 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:48.360 household registration, I don't exist. To attend school, however, children 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:51.600 needed a household registration document, so the aunt and uncle 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.080 that chen Yang was living with I bought the document 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:58.200 from a distant relative named wun Ying, as she herself 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:01.240 was buying someone else's a document that would register her 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:03.760 in a big city, which would give her more opportunities 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:08.200 in her own education. To use wun Yang's papers, shen 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.640 Yang had to pretend the details written on it were 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:14.480 her own, including her age and birthday. They changed my 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:19.119 birthday to night four, so by law and miss Huang's 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:24.040 niece and I don't have parents, shen Yan's teachers called 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:26.200 her by the other girl's name in school. When she 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:28.280 got a driver's license, it was printed with the other 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:31.000 girl's name, and when she was married, the other girl's 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.920 birthday was read out loud at the wedding. And Shenyong 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:36.360 started to write a book about what her life has 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.320 been like as an excess child. And none of us 0:22:39.320 --> 0:22:42.640 tell our own life stories with academic terms like elevated 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:46.280 social rank. But shen Yang's position in the social hierarchy 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:49.359 does look different now. There were people who used to 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:51.720 look down upon me. You want to publish a book? 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:57.240 Who do you think you are? Status is so often 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:02.879 informed by old forces and actors ideas about class, race, gender. 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.760 But this strange rule that's so defined Shen Young's position 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:09.840 in society was enacted only a few years before she 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:16.159 was born, and then it evaporated in the government started 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:20.240 to relax the one child policy, and then last year 0:23:20.280 --> 0:23:23.600 two thousand twenty one, on May the thirty one, the 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:26.639 government released the New Potter City allow every couple to 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:30.320 have three children. How is your status different now the 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:33.040 one child policy is over. You live in a big city. 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:36.320 You have published a super rad book that has been 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:39.840 translated into at least one other language. People think, oh, 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:42.760 she's a writer now, because before I was nobody. I 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.399 don't want to be famous. I just want to tell 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:49.560 a story that is worth teddy. But of course, no 0:23:49.640 --> 0:23:53.480 shift in policy can retroactively revise a childhood and a 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:58.000 comment she read online particularly resonated with Chenille. Once the 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:02.200 New Potter says out the sky I off Guangjo has 0:24:02.280 --> 0:24:05.679 stuned our som immediately, and it's really havin It's the 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:16.320 tears of the eighties and Manetes generation. Human hierarchies help 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:19.119 us collaborate on goals we'd never be able to achieve 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:22.760 on our own. They can also minimize conflict by establishing 0:24:22.800 --> 0:24:27.040 clear roles and expectations, and of course, sometimes they can 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:29.639 simply help people in powers stay that way at the 0:24:29.680 --> 0:24:32.320 expense of those without the means to topple the pyramid. 0:24:33.440 --> 0:24:37.960 Our hierarchical rules are sometimes codified boss versus assistant, mother 0:24:38.119 --> 0:24:42.399 versus friend, and sometimes they're fluid. The homie whom majored 0:24:42.400 --> 0:24:44.680