This was a long one at fifty pages. The good news is that while there are a lot of words, not that much was really important. A lot of back story and setup was going on. That kind of reminds me of year end. There is a lot going on but none of it is important. We spend a lot of time reflecting on the year that was but all those things already happened.
Shortages begin. Jim gloats to Dabny about his acquisition of d’Anconia Copper but all of the sudden the mines are blown up, presumably Djanneskjold. Emma Chalmers (aka Kip’s Ma) is promoting Soy Beans over the traditional grain crop of wheat. For that reason, the rail schedule is being manipulated by Cuffy Meigs to favor getting soy beans to market rather than wheat. Trains are not staged and the wheat crop is ruined.
This series of events begins an entire chapter of civil unrest. Murder, succession, riots and all the things that go along with shortage of basic food stuffs and supplies. There are multiple incidents of mechanical failure which are the triggers to such events and it is implied that the cause is the shortage of copper wire.
Sometimes a national diet is the result of a necessity and sometimes it is a result of a decision that someone else makes. Take for instance ancient China. Diets consisted of vegetables, local protein and rice in the more southern region. Cultures that grew to a large population had a large agrarian component for obvious reasons. A society needed a huge amount of calories to sustain growth. Those calories largely came as a result of carbohydrates.
Contrast these relatively huge population numbers in Asia against protein oriented cultures such as Mongols, Germanic barbarians or prairie native Americans. Those populations were tiny in comparison. Part of the reason is that animals contain a large number of calories compared to carbohydrates by the acre but they also have a degree of chance related to procuring food. It was not practically possible for these societies to grow to such a large size given their efforts to survive.
Something quite transformational happens when a society becomes agrarian. They also become docile and weak. No longer is freedom valued over security. The individualistic characteristic starts to become an identity of a collective. This is not an exhaustive treatise on the types of societies or their diets per se but an argument with the generalities of such.
It is sort of ironic that the American stereotype of a farmer is a hard scrabble, protagonist of sorts. When in reality, they have silently become the serf in the collective machine. They are the foundation of big food which is the fuel tank of the imperialistic regime. Not only do they feed the world but they are the first advocates of the patriotic propaganda. Talk about the slaves proud of their chains.
Lest you think that I am picking on farmers, I am simply saying that they are the enablers to the agrarian society. It’s not that I don’t think they work hard, they sure do. If I had a choice to hang out with the red, white and blue crowd or the high earning liberals you can guess who I would choose. The real problem for me is that I don’t belong to either.
So, where does this leave us? I believe that the soy bean reference is an homage to the versatility of the legume as a food source and the Asian origin a hotbed of communism in the 1950s. At least the classical definition of communism contained a 100% planned economy and society which included a diet steeped in classical diet. I don’t know for sure, but I would be willing to guess that North Koreans have limited choices when planning meals.
It is the sociopath that want’s to rule others. And by ruling others doesn’t just mean creating the laws from a legal standpoint but also how big their house has to be, how much rent is too much rent to charge, how fast you can drive, what is too big to fail and let us not forget what to not eat. The way the new world order is going, meat is on the out just like surcharging portion size. We literally have the ‘food plate’ to guide us on a diet that leads straight to obesity and diabetes.
I am speaking off the cuff and I should do the research rather than speak in speculation but I don’t have the time at the moment. Soy has been linked to phytoestrogen and the feminization of America. We colloquially call them ‘man boobs’ but it is much more than that. An increase in allergies and obesity and heart disease for a high soy diet which ironically we have with a highly processed diet.
Here is one to whet the appetite because I felt bad about just speaking in platitudes.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soybean-fertility-hormone-isoflavones-genistein/
All that being said, I am relatively sure that if you ate soy beans every day there would be no real consequences. But that is not how we use them in our diet. More on that another day.
End Your Programming Routine: Dangerous speech filtration is now protecting us from seeing the truth or even lies. While we can still read whatever books we want, we are a society that is becoming too lazy to bother. On my recent flight to Indianapolis, not a single reading light was on, including mine which was broken. Maybe they all were but I estimate one in thirty lights on a typical flight. Everyone is on a device or built in screen on the plane. The longer we live with portable electronics, the less reading lights are on during flights.
Reading is not the solution, but the indicator of critical thinking. TV is called programing for a reason. It is entertainment not stimulation. I think fiction is a healthy part of being well rounded but too much fiction becomes fantasy. And, when we live in fantasy, we forget to question whether a soy based diet is the right choice or even a proper choice.
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