[saimiam]

I don’t see it the same way.

Indian society - not the country because that’s a new creation - has been around for a few thousand years. It hasn’t devolved into anarchy, neither is it totalitarian in the way you are using the word.

They (well, “we” since I’m Indian) figured out that imposing self-censoring through the caste system would lead to social stability. People were born into a certain way of life and they’d die inside it.

From within the straitjacket of caste came inventions like 0, astronomical analyses, religions, Kama sutra, literature, languages, and engineering achievements.

I don’t glorify caste. It’s wrong.

But, a society between the two extremes you posited exists today and it exists because caste based social engineering worked.

[Dracophoenix]

This sounds like the justification for the society featured in Huxley's Brave New World. It may not totalitarian by the dictionary definition, but it's definitely authoritarian.

[saimiam]

Then the definition of both totalitarian and authoritarian needs to be expanded and made inclusive. There’s no central figure/politburo telling a believer in caste that they have to believe in it for the greater good. It’s Vaclav Havel’s description of communism - everyone’s playing along with the caste charade because their neighbor’s are.

It has suffused society to the extent that Indian Muslims will sometimes complain that a Muslim tanner (considered low caste because they work with carcasses) wanted to marry into an upper caste Muslim family. Islam rejects caste per se so this caste based thinking is endemic to Indian society, not religion.

Edit - I am not justifying caste. I’m just pointing out that the previous commenters above me were needlessly limiting the types of societies to anarchy and totalitarian. They should include fatalist societies too.

[ruined]

i would consider a caste system, and the social engineering necessary to create and maintain it, to be control technology.

it's possible the only reason we aren't at an "extreme" now because we're still tipping between steady states. there was no structured society for, effectively, forever. pretty stable, long enough that it is hard to consider the current world a normal situation.

we've had a few thousand years of confusing buildup, as we maybe transition to a total structure, lasting who knows how long, but i can't see something like that being short-lived.

yes the society between extremes exists and we're in it. but none of this around me looks stable or capable of withstanding what the future holds. and the longer-lived examples, though impressive on an individual timescale, are still a sudden late flash in the deep and mostly unknown timeline of all human history.