> After all King Canute levied a herring tax
> which was paid with catches from the Dogger bank in the North Sea.
>
My feeling is that you're envisioning a different level of cultural sophistication with all these 'common sense' arguments. In my view these people are far more 'primitive' than this. By primitive we could compare them with several RW cases where they are 'ignorant': the first white settlers in australia who almost failed to survive due to the peculiar condition(ignorant of the conditions) ; with children from those orphanages where they lack any affection and are deeply psychologically scarred as a result (ignorant of emotion), with 'wolf children' who are reared by wolves, with modern people with irrational phobias, with religions where there are food taboos.
These people survived the darkness but it was probably so horrifying that they dare not try anything other than what they did to survive. Perhaps they eat the meat of squirrels because they are the only beasts that did not poison them, perhaps they never saw fruit growing on trees before but only managed to survive by digging up grubs, chewing on roots, or cannibalism.
What I'm getting at is that these are not gung ho happy adventurers bravely eating a strange fruit from Tescos because it might be tasty, despite it's weird appearance, or building a boat even though they've never seen one to catch fish which they've never eaten, when the l;ast person to go near that river was eaten by a dragonsnail.
The lightbringers are teaching these people how to live again, rather than merely existing is misery. The darkness really was as bad as it could get without them all dying. They must have been tough, or good at hiding, and resilient, but they did not have the luxury of innovation, or nice food, or any sorts of real pleasures.
That's just my view.
One other point - sell by dates are useful, and valuable things. Without them the whole supply chain that provides us with fresh food easily and very conveniently would not work. How would one buy milk for example, or sell it, without knowing how old it was (ie without opening the bottle/carton).
Keith
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