We all live in a society. And the society has its peking order. That’s what we have all seen in our lives. And that’s how we behave mostly!

This weekend, as I finally finished watching ‘Rome’, a series covering the history of the Roman empire during the times of Julius Ceasar and Octavion Ceasar, I grappled with these thoughts in my mind. While I always enjoy history and the stories that it tells us, it was most interesting to study the intricacies captured in the series related to different social levels, ranging from the nobles to the senators to the plebs (common people).

As I thought through, I realised that the same structure has been theorised in all the ancient cultures, whether it is Indian (recall Shabri in Ramayan or Karna in Mahabharat) or others (circa Rome). It is as if all through our history, people have always been divided into social levels based on who does what or who owns what.

And that’s been a cause for strife. Whether the fights that have happened through the ancient history centered on religion, or the wars and battles in the medieval history emerging from the fight for ownership, or the revolutions in the modern history focused on rights, all have one thing in common. The oppressed and the downtrodden have risen and revolted against those who are in power or are better off, to take back what they think is rightfully theirs.

Now it’s not in my domain to comment on what or who is right or wrong. People have fought and continue to do so because we humans can’t live with each other for long before disagreeing.

But what I realised is that before all of this, when we were still evolving and had to survive in the wild jungles, there surely wouldn’t have been so called ‘social levels’. Yes, there would have been a leader of the pack (assuming animal behaviours that I know of), but otherwise it would just have been an equal footing for everyone. All working together to fend off danger and survive to the best of their abilities.

As an analogy in our current world, often when we are faced with a danger, we group together and fight it, forgetting if the others are of the same social level or not. People who aren’t likely to sit together, help each other in crises like a terror attack, a flood, a famine etc. But go back to normalcy, and the camaraderie also goes away…

These social levels permeate our behaviour in many ways. Whether its deciding where to live or what to do and how, we all try and abide by the societal norms of our level and aspire to grow to the next level. Be it in our kid’s education, or the company we wish to keep, or the way we change our conduct as we start progressing in life. Even when it comes to marriages, we solicit a match for our sons/daughters based on our social level and seek someone higher up if possible.

This psyche unfortunately divides us into splinter groups as a society. And creates fissures. The servant or maid who works for us doesn’t get the same opportunities for his/her family and while serves us faithfully (?), despises us and secretly wishes to rise up and show us some day that s/he is an equal. Or the people who assume an air of superiority and try and showcase their “upper class”, leaving some of us jealous of their success and ready to do anything to reach the same status.

Does it really help us as an individual or family? I don’t know. It probably is a very superfluous mirage to hold.

What it definitely does is create a sort of dissatisfaction within us about why we are not at the next level yet. And that’s troubling. Because, that takes away our happiness and the beauty of our lives in the present…