This is an excellent excerpt from Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire about the efforts of European rulers to encourage the cultivation of potatoes instead of grains among their population. From page 201:
In Germany, Frederick the Great had to force peasants to plant potatoes; so did Catherine the Great in Russia. Louis XVI took a subtler tack, reasoning that if he could just lend the humble spud a measure of royal prestige, peasants would experiment with it and discover its virtue. So Marie Antoinette took to wearing potato flowers in her hair, and Louis hatched an ingenious promotional scheme. He ordered his most elite guard to protect the crop during the day. He sent the guards home at midnight, however, and in due course the local peasants, suddenly convinced of the crop’s value, made off in the night with the royal tubers.
He goes on to say that the transition from grains to potatoes eventually made these nations powerful, helped end malnutrition and periodic famine, and allowed for an increase in population (elsewhere he covers the Irish potato famine in great detail). In any event, ever since hearing this story, I have been wondering what its modern parallels must be today. What would our equivalent be today? What do the “nobles” guard but only loosely so that our curiousity will be peaked enough to steal it from them?
Also, could this be an explanation for the Garden of Eden stories? God created man to be curious and to have Free Will. But as long as man was satisfied, God realized man wouldn’t exercise those most important faculties. So, understanding his subjects just as well as Louis XVI, God made them promise not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge - which of course made us want to taste its fruit all the more… In this reading of Biblical myth, God actually precipitated our Fall so that history might occur…
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3 Comments
what is guarded loosely? money, welfare cheques. tax loopholes. internet access………freedom of information requests……………..
I’d say pornography, it seems like it is a cat and mouse game with so called conservatives owning many of the organs of distribution. Huxley said something along the lines in BNW, societies that are less free have a more surface so called freedom of sexuality.
Whatever you views, I think everyone agrees pornography for the majority of people is a subsitute for real experiences or attachments. By making it readily available but supposedly not sanctioned, people think they are getting away with something, but really their limiting their experience.
Very interesting! I have come to agree with this more and more lately. Good topic in itself!