I had a misconception about starch. I used to think that starch makes people stupid. It's a long story that started in my childhood. I grew up in a somewhat stagnant society in which people do not mind committing little sins for a little profit. Or just to stay alive. (It's not as bad as I'm making it perhaps.)
Schools were (and probably still are) popular places for snack sellers to open their "mobile" stalls. The reason was hundreds of kids running out to buy snacks 3 times a day (during the 2 breaks and at the end of school). As tasty as these snacks used to be, sellers substituted expensive ingredients with cheaper ones. For example, meatballs no longer contained meat but mostly starch and some compound that simulate the bouncy/chewy texture; more starch added to make "syrup candies" more "syrupy"; and especially colourful food colouring was added to make snacks look more attractive.
My parents told me not to buy these snacks. They cited the reason above: cheap ingredients were added to substitute costly ones partly or even completely, with starch being mentioned as a prime example. These snacks made me stupid, so I was told. Somehow, I made the connection that this means starch made me (and people in general) stupid.
Now I understand that it is the lack of protein (because starch substitutes meat) is the real culprit.
Another misconception is related to this snack seller example. Food hawkers on side streets also did this substitution trick. Note that such business was usually handed down from parents to their children. Inflation and globalization only made things worse. In short, ingredients were getting more expensive but sellers needed to keep the price low to be affordable. And there was more competition from Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's.
I can understand that the hawkers were more or less forced to substitute costly ingredients, give less sauce, and other tricks to keep cost low in order to survive. The price was that with each trick, the taste inevitably degrades. Many such stalls finally stopped selling because customers no longer come because the food was no longer nice.
Somehow, I made another link of reasoning and concluded that things only got worse as generations pass. All talks about "good old days" only reinforced this conclusion. How my city used to have vast paddy fields when my Dad was in elementary school. How the temperature used to be much cooler. How the roads used to be much more peaceful with few motored vehicles.
Thank goodness for writers like
David Brin, who wrote novel I am currently reading,
Glory Season. His writing is one major influence in freeing my mind from these misconceptions. That human can get better. That we should look to the future, think about what we can do, instead of fretting about the good old days, the lost golden age in the past.
A novel cannot be interesting without a central character. She was Maia, a
varling (see explanation below) like all of us. She was born in a maternal society in which human could breed via sexual mating and self-cloning (apparently organisms as complex as insects and even lizards are blessed with this ability). What is more, self-cloning was preferred to form clans. Children born from mating were called varlings and automatically became second class citizens. Thus, Maia's story easily attracts my sympathy.
One theme (among so many in the novel) that strikes me at this particular stage of my life is, quoting the afterword, "no plan, no system or stereotype, can suppress an individual who is boldly determined to be different."
Back to misconceptions, on our eyes it is obvious that isolated society into which Maia is born cannot be sustained for long. Sooner or later people will want openness. To Maia and other women in this society though, this concept is far from obvious. It is almost heretical.
It pushes me more than I like (or comfortable with) to re-evaluating what I learned from my parents. It is an obvious necessity to other people, but it is almost heretical to me.
Other novels by David Brin that I enjoyed reading are
Kiln People and
Earth.
You can check his official website here: http://www.davidbrin.com
(Edited on 5 March 2015)
