I have always understood this idea. Come to America and make a bunch of money. Enough to stick in your ears, stick your tongue out at the world and flip em all the bird. "Enough money to make Solomon blush" is a fitting quote. I don't think I had a full perspective of the idea however. While in Bali we hired a taksi driver for the entire day. No, I did not misspell that. It's how the Balinese spell it. Come to think of it I didn't see one "x" while in Bali. Most likely because you can make the same sound using "ks", and that's exactly what they do. Works for me. In any case, he drove us all over the island for about 6 hours. He took us to all the cool art places we would have never known of or been able to find. So in a way it's HIS FAULT that we had to buy another suit case to get home damn it. I thanked him for it generously. While driving around we talked quite a bit about the local culture. The ceremony, all the offerings (side note: the word offering is pronounced ov-ring, chop the"v" sound short and roll the "r") It took me several attempts to understand
what he was saying.) and just how many times a day offerings were made and for what reasons. It's a boat load trust me. He told us about the coming new years celebration and the day of silence that will follow. This is different than the US Jan 1st day of silence. Ours in generated by mass hangovers and theirs is to honor the gods. You don't drive, you don't use electricity, you don't open shop, you don't speak, you don't do anything. Hell I don't even know if it's O.K. to fart. We were told about Galungan. This is the Bali version of Christmas/Thanksgiving in a way. They give gifts, the put up a Penjor and they slaughter thousands of pigs for offerings and food. They have dancing parades in the streets with Barong going from house to house, shop to shop. Obviously this is the short version of the holidays, but you get the general picture. We talked with our driver about quite a bit, including the caste system. This system has four levels as we understand it. From what I can gather it used to have five but I have yet to see the fifth written about. You have level one and two who argue about who is what. The rulers and warriors (Ksatriya
) say "Hey, we protect every one and keep t
his place rolling smoothly. We are number one. The Priest (Brahmana) don't agree. "Hey, we chill with the gods and keep them happy. It is we who lead the people to the light. We are number one." I think the priest said "dude" at one point and the Warrior was like "Nu uhhh" but I can't remember. Anyway. They both do there respective jobs well. Then we have the third cast. These are the merchants (Wesyas). Everything from shop owners to artists as I understand it. And last we have the fourth cast, the peasants (Sudras who make up 90% of the Balinese people) . Our driver listed himself in this cast. Effectively this is farmers and those who serve others directly. Fishermen, drivers, cleaners, etc... Just to take it one step further, each caste has a different
naming system as well. If your of the Sudras caste you will be named Wayan, Made, Nyoman or Ketut.
(see the link for full details) The names for the First, second, third and forth born child (in that order). While if you are of the Ksatriya caste your name would be a totally different system. As
we talked with him more about the idea of the caste system he seemed ok with it all. "That it was good because the higher caste took care of the lower caste and kept them safe. They provided service to the higher caste and that makes them important as well. In short, everyone has their place and the people seem to be cool with that. It's how Bali works. Take away one of the caste and Bali doesn't work any more. However, if your some crazy whack job who grows up wanting something different.... tooooo bad. Silly man, you dare to dream? You can not even marry up the scale. You can marry down and fall a notch however. I do understand that this caste system is not as strict as it once was, but still. It makes me understand better the idea of moving to another country so you can have a different life. I got it before, at least intellectually, however, talking to someone who lived it just made it really sink in. Looking into the face of someone so humble and accepting made it hit home. They are trapped. They may not understand it as being trapped or think of it that way. They may not mind it. They may even like the position they are in. I have no clue as I didn't have the balls to ask if he was happy about it all. For the general masses it's no big deal. It's all they know. Now I do know of one exception. I have no idea how many more exceptions there might be. I assume very very few. I will guess this is because those who have changed there position did so by
going to another country and came home. Most of the Sudras can't afford to get to the airport, much less the ticket to get on the plane. Forget the cost of anything once you get where your going. As I said, I didn't ask if they really cared or not. They did not seem to be unhappy people at all. My best guess is that if no one ever told you that life would be better if you had dump trucks full of cash you might actually find happiness without it. Funny that, huh?
I have always understood this idea. Come to America and make a bunch of money. Enough to stick in your ears, stick your tongue out at the world and flip em all the bird. "Enough money to make Solomon blush" is a fitting quote. I don't think I had a full perspective of the idea however. While in Bali we hired a taksi driver for the entire day. No, I did not misspell that. It's how the Balinese spell it. Come to think of it I didn't see one "x" while in Bali. Most likely because you can make the same sound using "ks", and that's exactly what they do. Works for me. In any case, he drove us all over the island for about 6 hours. He took us to all the cool art places we would have never known of or been able to find. So in a way it's HIS FAULT that we had to buy another suit case to get home damn it. I thanked him for it generously. While driving around we talked quite a bit about the local culture. The ceremony, all the offerings (side note: the word offering is pronounced ov-ring, chop the"v" sound short and roll the "r") It took me several attempts to understand
what he was saying.) and just how many times a day offerings were made and for what reasons. It's a boat load trust me. He told us about the coming new years celebration and the day of silence that will follow. This is different than the US Jan 1st day of silence. Ours in generated by mass hangovers and theirs is to honor the gods. You don't drive, you don't use electricity, you don't open shop, you don't speak, you don't do anything. Hell I don't even know if it's O.K. to fart. We were told about Galungan. This is the Bali version of Christmas/Thanksgiving in a way. They give gifts, the put up a Penjor and they slaughter thousands of pigs for offerings and food. They have dancing parades in the streets with Barong going from house to house, shop to shop. Obviously this is the short version of the holidays, but you get the general picture. We talked with our driver about quite a bit, including the caste system. This system has four levels as we understand it. From what I can gather it used to have five but I have yet to see the fifth written about. You have level one and two who argue about who is what. The rulers and warriors (Ksatriya) say "Hey, we protect every one and keep t
his place rolling smoothly. We are number one. The Priest (Brahmana) don't agree. "Hey, we chill with the gods and keep them happy. It is we who lead the people to the light. We are number one." I think the priest said "dude" at one point and the Warrior was like "Nu uhhh" but I can't remember. Anyway. They both do there respective jobs well. Then we have the third cast. These are the merchants (Wesyas). Everything from shop owners to artists as I understand it. And last we have the fourth cast, the peasants (Sudras who make up 90% of the Balinese people) . Our driver listed himself in this cast. Effectively this is farmers and those who serve others directly. Fishermen, drivers, cleaners, etc... Just to take it one step further, each caste has a different naming system as well. If your of the Sudras caste you will be named Wayan, Made, Nyoman or Ketut. (see the link for full details) The names for the First, second, third and forth born child (in that order). While if you are of the Ksatriya caste your name would be a totally different system. As
we talked with him more about the idea of the caste system he seemed ok with it all. "That it was good because the higher caste took care of the lower caste and kept them safe. They provided service to the higher caste and that makes them important as well. In short, everyone has their place and the people seem to be cool with that. It's how Bali works. Take away one of the caste and Bali doesn't work any more. However, if your some crazy whack job who grows up wanting something different.... tooooo bad. Silly man, you dare to dream? You can not even marry up the scale. You can marry down and fall a notch however. I do understand that this caste system is not as strict as it once was, but still. It makes me understand better the idea of moving to another country so you can have a different life. I got it before, at least intellectually, however, talking to someone who lived it just made it really sink in. Looking into the face of someone so humble and accepting made it hit home. They are trapped. They may not understand it as being trapped or think of it that way. They may not mind it. They may even like the position they are in. I have no clue as I didn't have the balls to ask if he was happy about it all. For the general masses it's no big deal. It's all they know. Now I do know of one exception. I have no idea how many more exceptions there might be. I assume very very few. I will guess this is because those who have changed there position did so by 
going to another country and came home. Most of the Sudras can't afford to get to the airport, much less the ticket to get on the plane. Forget the cost of anything once you get where your going. As I said, I didn't ask if they really cared or not. They did not seem to be unhappy people at all. My best guess is that if no one ever told you that life would be better if you had dump trucks full of cash you might actually find happiness without it. Funny that, huh?
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