The Brahman

Debating on the topic ‘Brahmins: The saviors or the culprits ’, I just got into thinking what is brahminism?
Lots of input have already come in the topic and much knowledge shared and created. Someone has also thrown some light on the difference between Brahmin and Brahman
(ब्रम्ह) (different English spelling) as featured in the Wikipedia. The former is a caste in Hindu varna system, while the latter is a quality of a person who was pastorally entitled to adopt this caste. In later days, the caste system became rigid and birth-defined.
My friend’s father tells us that the one knows ‘Brahman’ is a ‘Brahmin’ . So what would be this thing knowing which made the difference in earlier times? Here is what came to my mind—
Brahman purely is knowledge of self; the realization of influences upon own self by virtue of belonging to some environment; a struggle with own self to overcome own vices, prejudices, shortcoming, or in the least acknowledging their presence in the self.
Every man by nature would desire to live a happy life on this planet but which practically does not happen. Sometimes some odd men wake up to begin arguing and question themselves about the sufferings in the world. It is them they look for the causes of pain and suffering and begin to discover/unravel their own mind, thoughts, and grown up in their self knowledge. It is this compilation of such knowledge that was perhaps given the name Brahman.( ब्रम्ह) (different from Brahma, the god). However the knowledge they acquire does not remain applicable to self but also helps in understanding the others.
The essential elements I note in such an awakening of self is the realization of pain and suffering. Perhaps that is why practices like self-denial, abnegation, self- deprivation came into being. The idea might have been to subject own self to pain to understand how deep it could be, so that the soul may shiver up and awaken to begin finding answers to it. In the course of time the practice almost turned in a ritual just literally followed without achieving the intended motive. Plainly because he understands pain, such a person would be very humble and polite in addressing things, as also continuously mediating upon consequences of own words or action in invoking any sort of pain anywhere.
The other element is the highly emotional behaviour, which in my truest opinion (as also suggested through various knowledge-based television channels) is the root cause of intelligence in human beings. Emotions help in realizing the pain. Implicitly, a Brahmin should be expected to be an emotional and intelligent man; an intellectual man.
In modern times, people of high academic caliber should be most likely candidates for such a realization. Something like the IITians or the IIM’s . This is because they are required to undergo intense self-deprivation and self-control to acquire so much knowledge to be able to compete through these places. However others can also acquire it if the living environment by some means has created a similar situation around. The concepts of Emotional Intelligence (by Daniel Goleman) begin to apply.
Looking deeper into this precept, I would also think that the other consequences of realization of pain could also be characters like terrorist and hardened criminals. Sometimes they are reported to be polite, intense, intelligent, appealing etc. These positive qualities may just a product of progresses to the Brahman but with some distortions or fallacies somewhere in the arguments.