Recreating (and advancing) pk’s censored domains:
Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / Social Epistemology /
| Civil War: | Industry | vs. | Agriculture? |
Or:
| Industrial Industry | versus | Agricultural Industry? |
The impression of much of my life that the Civil War reflected a struggle between the industrial north and the agricultural south was an error I was coached in by the culture. But what did the south grow? Cotton! Tobacco!
Milo Minderbinder tries to feed cotton — chocolate covered — to Yossarian in Catch-22, but Yossarian didn’t enjoy it much: received little nourishment. When was the last time you tried to feed yourself or your family on cotton? Or tobacco?
chocolate covered cotton
thanx frequency
No. Southerners’ investment in capital, labor, slavery … was to serve English cotton mills (though I don’t doubt that they’d sell to any cotton mills). Cotton was a cash crop. The point was money, not food. (Am I wrong that the concept “agriculture” suggests foodstuffs? Or does it just mean growing something? If so, then many a lab should be reclassified under agriculture.)
In the north too the point wasn’t food but money.
This is of a piece with the European history of the Americas. Spain didn’t fund Columbus for living-room; no: the funding was an investment in treasure! Gold! Wealth. Glory. Insubstantials. Fantasies.
Freedom, blah, blah, blah? Camouflage. Masks. Carrots on sticks.
more later
2005 08 13 Large populations require big mansions with many rooms. Billions of humans need a gross of nations; nations need states, provinces; provinces need counties, cities … Cities have neighborhoods; neighborhoods have families; families have their own sorting systems. Many rooms require their own sorting system: Lobby, Mezzanine, First Floor … I can’t navigate a folder with more than four hundred files in it and retain much sanity. Sub-folders with their own sub-folders too will drive me crazy, but I’m gambling that they’ll drive me less crazy. So what sub-folder do I put this module into? It concerns uncertainties of classification, so I put it in Teaching / Society / Social Epistemology: problems of perception, of knowing, of deciding …
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