Creative efflorescence itself is muted for centuries at a time. Such conservative, bland periods of culture are presumably meant to serve some purpose, like a sort of fallow period between crops. But it looks falsely imposed, unnaturally extended and applied with aggression, a famine as deliberately engineered as those of Lytton, Stalin and the World Bank. It seems a lot to do with fear, and not a justifiable fear – a shame because it wastes years of people’s lives.
