Social stratification is a term often used by social scientists and anthropologists to
describe the phenomenon where people are placed into discrete categories based on factors
such as wealth, income, social status, occupation, kinship, and power.
Sometimes theses categories are completely arbitrary such as the caste system used in
India.
In this system, if you are born into the labouring class, you will die a labourer.
Analogy of the Antelope
Let’s imagine a herd of antelope (pick your favourite species) grazing in an African savannah.
They keep together for protection, but otherwise feed freely on the grasses and plant-life
surrounding them.
Occasionally there is a scuffle between males to show the females who is more deserving
of their affection.
However, this is usually not fatal and is more for show than anything else.
Now imagine if one of the antelope of the herd decided to claim the grassland as his
own.
He lets the other antelope know that his area is off-limits, and anybody wishing to feed
there would have to gain his permission.
Now of course in real life, the other antelope would simply ignore him, or move a few metres
away and continue grazing.
What can he do?
He can’t attack us all, right?
But this self-proclaimed “Owner of the Grassland” is more cunning than the other antelope.
He starts spreading rumours that the grass will soon die off and that the herd need a
leader to ration the remaining grass effectively.
Not everyone agrees, but he notices that a few of the larger bucks are on his side.
He decides to make an agreement with them – If they help him defend the grassland
from layabouts, then they can eat as much grass as they like.
The large bucks quickly agree and are each granted the title of “Enforcer of the Grassland”.
From that day on, the new leader declares to the herd that he is in charge.
No longer can the other antelope graze freely on the grass, but instead they must perform
duties for the leader before they can eat.
If anybody tries to “steal” any grass, they will be attacked by one of the newly
promoted enforcers.
The antelope who are not employed as enforcers are either forced to be “breeders” (the
fertile females), or “workers”.
Workers are granted very little rights and are only allowed to feed if the leader or
enforcers say so.
Stratification in Human Society
The Analogy of the Antelope sounds ridiculous, right?
Why would antelope give up their feeding rights just to appease a single leader?
Of course, in reality, they wouldn’t.
No animal would allow other members of the same species to starve, or at least, they
wouldn’t have the power to enforce such a rule.
But in human society, that’s exactly what happens, even to this day.
For the majority of human history, we have been living in small hunter-gatherer tribes
that look after one another.
But as we formed larger groups, certain individuals started to put themselves into positions of
power.
They created arbitrary rules to dictate which people belonged to which class.
Stratification became rampant as agriculture took hold.
Due to agriculture, there was now an oversupply of food.
No longer did everybody have to work in food production or collection.
One would imagine that an oversupply of food would be a good thing, but the new leaders
saw it differently.
They saw an opportunity to become wealthy and to take advantage of the working class.
The further one was away from actual agricultural work, the more one was respected in society.
Labourers were seen as “lower class”, while scientists and musicians were seen as
belonging to “high culture”.
As the years went on, social stratification took hold.
During industrialisation, inequality became the norm.
Rich landowners and businessmen were freely abusing their workers and barely giving them
enough to support their families.
No longer could a person just go and eat when they were hungry.
They were forced to work long hours just to be able to afford the bare essentials in life.
All the while their rich masters were living it up in relative luxury at the expense of
the workers.
Modern day capitalism relies on exploitation and stratification.
The “upper class” often do very little to gain and maintain their wealth, often having
inherited vast sums of money or tracts of land.
They just have to choose a couple of wise investments, often decisions already made
by their parents, and the money continues rolling in.
Simply by pretending they’re interested in the common man, the media praise them for
being so “charitable” and “philanthropic”.
The rich are promoted to a level of benevolence and fame, when all the time they’ve used
the broken capitalist system to horde wealth from the lower class.
Poor individuals are forced to pay rent, or else get themselves into massive debt just
to have a roof over their head.
Land is not freely given to every member of society – one must either pay for it with
a lifetime of work, or be lucky enough to be born into a rich landowning family.
Rich capitalists like to falsely claim that we can all become rich, just like them – it
just takes a bit of determination and hard work.
But of course, it is all rubbish.
They just want to keep us onside so that we don’t come to our senses and realise that
we completely outnumber them.
If we banded together, we could easily overthrow them, distributing their wealth in a much
fairer manner.
The whole purpose of social stratification is control.
Just as the antelope can freely graze without another antelope forcing them to work for
their food, humans could do the same.
We have an over-abundance of food (Australia exports about 58% of its food product), so
why do we insist that only people with money can have any?
For those of you who are interested, here is a recent article about edible weeds that
are available across Australia.
I'll post the link below.
Our elite are constantly trying to take stuff away from us, but yet they happily indulge.
See the policies of the current Australian leadership.
The budget clearly favours the rich.
Money is taken away from those who need it the most, such as children with bad teeth.
If the government had their way, they would abolish Medicare and let the lower class live
in squalor, or die.
Let’s stop this stupidity and realise that we are all the same species just trying to
exist in harmony.
Let’s stop voting in people who only want to support the big end of town.
Let’s stop being a society of greed and instead be a society of caring and mutual
respect.
Let’s help those who need it, not just those with money in their pockets.
Let’s allow everybody to have the necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter – and
stop allowing the rich to horde wealth that doesn’t help anybody.
Who needs 47 Porsche cars?
Let’s stop this madness!