That post about fibers got some attention - well, 2 likes and 2 reblogs, which is 2/2 more than I expected, so not being one to pass up an opportunity to draw structural connections between things in the format of a story that makes my life sound more interesting than spending so much time on the internet would imply, let\u2019s expand on it.
I went to Maui a few years back to celebrate my mom\u2019s not, after years of treatment, having cancer anymore. She was born on the Big Island as a Navy brat, went back after college as a secretary in a TV station for a few years, so she\u2019s got some history in the area. She was even given a Hawaiian name, which was kind of funny because then she couldn\u2019t find any of those \u201cif this is your real name, this would be your Hawaiian name\u201d keychains at the souvenier stores.
Maui was kind of the boring island; my dad booked the trip (through an honest to god travel agent) and only seems to know how to book golf vacations. I hear it\u2019s a nice golf island.
Things about Hawaii I noticed: even the Haole use native Hawaiian words a lot - not just \u201caloha\u201d but the top 40 radio in talking about some community event would mention \u201c\u2026and plenty of games and rides for the keiki\u201d, men’s/women’s bathroom signs would be “kane/wahine”. For a while I wondered if this was actual culture or just a schtick everyone agreed to pull, but on thinking of it I guess actual culture is a schtick everyone agrees to pull.
There was plenty of constant road repair and resurfacing, with larger work crews than I\u2019ve ever seen, even though the roads were by any standard perfectly fine to begin with - I guess that\u2019s what happens when you hardly have any roads but still have two senators to claim your share of highway appropriations.
Bunch of Samoans on the island. I\u2019d heard those guys were built big and solid, but holy shit.
Lot of hitchhikers. Apparently land prices and rents are insane anywhere near the centers of the tourist trade, so people commute from hella far out, and car/gas prices are absurd too. Not many bikes though, which is maybe because \u201chella far out\u201d tends to mean \u201chalfway up a mountain\u201d.
A lot of native/secessionary flags, handpainted signs, etc. in front yards.
A lot of rocks - like, maybe half a car-sized rocks but not otherwise very distinguished - roped off in the middle of, like, someone\u2019s yard with a plaque being all “this is a sacred rock with a proper name, people might come around to hold cultural events here every now and then, but otherwise don\u2019t mess with the rock”.
OK, so this tour. It was an ecotourism/ziplining thing, because why not, because I was getting kind of tired of sitting around on the beach with my parents. We went up a hill and the guides, natives all, pointed out things about the region. Saw a pineapple farm, they talked about how you\u2019d have to harvest them in like, multiple layers of heavy clothing in the hot as fuck sun, because a pineapple farm is basically a field of goddamn razors with fruit in the middle.
I could see why people would grow marijuana on Hawaii, because the whole place was verdant as fuck, full of ridges and hollows, full of native plants that didn\u2019t really look that far off from cannabis from the air, or even up close, to begin with.
Oh and also the plant I mentioned, which grew near the base of these trees near the top of the mountain, had these brown, downy fibers, softest thing I\u2019ve ever felt, the guides said that the locals used to use them to stuff pillows with, but that the government protected them and kept people from exporting or farming them. Which, on the way out of the airport, yeah you passed through 3 different inspections checking your stuff for native plants.
Now that\u2019s nominally about environmental contamination and invasive species, but I was sure there was an economic protection angle and on looking it up, apparently yes, there\u2019s a big thing of industrial espionage agents sneaking into forests and smuggling plants out. But that\u2019s how it\u2019s always been in the tropics - spices, rubber, tea in China, whatever. You want to keep a monopoly on that shit.
I mean it\u2019s not like the Americans are developing that industry, but I guess the idea is to prevent anyone else from developing it instead. Like, we don\u2019t think about it much now but economically speaking fiber is fucking critical. Making clothing is the most fundamental thing distinguishing humans from other animals, textile production has always been the first step of industrialization, and development of a new and better fiber source will FUCK SHIT UP.
Like, China figured out silk production, and it was like \u201coh, great, now we get to dominate half the fucking world for a millennia or two\u201d, just the act of moving it from place to place completely dominates the history of western Asia.
Like the British developed a wool industry and it was like \u201coh great, now we get to dominate half the fucking world for a few centuries, first we just need to take all these people in Scotland and northern England, kick them off their farmholds, and turn them into a pathetic wreck of a population working in hellish conditions 14 hours a day, wracked by disease, homelesness, addiction, and violence\u201d.
Like, the Americans figured out the cotton gin and were like \u201coh great, now we can establish a massive feudal slave empire, and kickstart a development process that will end up with us dominating half the fucking world for a century at least\u201d.
And then the British, in order to hold on to their existing half-the-world empire were like \u201coh fuck, better conquer Egypt and India and place a few hundred million people under the lash to compete\u201d.
Fiber will FUCK SHIT UP, don\u2019t you forget that.