This is only an analogy, one that I feel fits in really well. Only read if you are going to read it all through.
All professional work fields are different religions. Each with their own beliefs, each with their own focus on a specific task (karm). Each with their own hierarchy (varna). Now where do I see caste in this?
Not sure about the other fields but I believe it must be there as well. It’s how you do the work, something that is inherently you, that defines you doing the work. Let me elaborate. As a professional in tech, I code. Everyone here codes. But why someone hires me? for the way I code, how I code along with everything else. Not only for profession, the idea I want to focus on today is about builders and businessmen. These are the two castes I want to ponder about.
There are people who want to build products, and then there are people who want to build businesses. No, I don’t believe you can do both. You do one, or you convert. But forget about what I believe for a sec. Just yesterday, I heard this phrase ‘retire at your peak’ or ‘kill it at the peak’. wow, that’s something. There are founders who are building products, selling them at their first satisfactory peak, go on to build another product. Then there are others who stick long enough to get that product to become the root of a multi-million-dollar-company.
But again here comes the dunning-kruger effect
From builders to businesses
Okay digi, all this is fine but what’s all this about caste and religion.
So my point is you belong to a caste, whether you like it or not. It comes uniquely to you how from you were raised, you inherent ambitions and other factors, but after some years, you will know about it yourself. And there are general traits about each caste that you’ll get to know when you meet like minded individuals. Now suppose you are of this builder caste, you can easily take a company to it’s first peak. Builders build great products. But to conquer the valley of despair, you need to convert your caste. Now, that is the difficult part. It’s a (mostly) one time process in your life and it’s also very difficult. It involves changing what you like most, doing things completely different ways and thinking from a different perspective. It’s not impossible, you know Mark Zuckerberg. Basically take the founders of all the most successful companies and read about their lives. They changed, a lot in themselves from when they were building to when they focused on the business. Then there’s people like Time Cook who were of the business caste from the beginning. For people like them, to achieve their ambition they tag along with the best of builders (our beloved Steve Wozniak) [i know i’m sounding like it’s a bad thing but NO! it’s how businesses work and I’m not against them]
Just as a additional food for thought, changing religion is also possible. There are brilliant legends like John Carmack, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But you know, I feel changing religions is a teeny bit easier than changing caste. Starting from scratch is not as difficult as it sounds, compared to changing your fundamental principles in the stuff you already love a lot.
That’s all I have to say about this for now, but if you read it till here, I think you get what I mean. I’m a builder by the way. For now, at-least.