The Silk House Book Club Questions
Toney Talbot
Australian history teacher Thea Rust arrives at an exclusive boarding school in the British countryside only to find that she is to look after the first intake of girls in its 150-year history. She is to stay with them in Silk House, a building with a long and troubled past, where the shadows hide more mysteries than she could ever imagine.
In the late 1700s, Rowan Caswell leaves her village to work in the home of an English silk merchant. She is thrust into a new and dangerous world where her talent for herbs and healing soon attracts attention.
In London, Mary-Louise Stephenson lives amid the clatter of the weaving trade and dreams of becoming a silk designer, a job that is the domain of men. Arriving in the market town of Oxleigh, she brings with her a length of fabric woven with a pattern of deadly plants that will have far-reaching consequences for all who dwell in the silk house.
To be honest I thought that there was probably more that could have been used in the story. Instead the uncomfortableness around this kind of change was only really touched on, and even then it was in relation to the other teachers and staff in the school and not so much with the students.
In London, Mary-Louise Stephenson lives amid the clatter of the weaving trade and dreams of becoming a silk designer, a job that is the domain of men. Arriving in the market town of Oxleigh, she brings with her a length of fabric woven with a pattern of deadly plants that will have far-reaching consequences for all who dwell in the silk house.
Early in the growth of the Silk Road, which was a hidden place on the internet where you could buy anything you wanted, and I mean aaaaanything imaginable, a debate emerged about the outer limit of products that would be allowed on the site.
I just finished reading a book telling the tale of Silk Road, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, written by Nick Bilton. Have had that book on my wish list for some time.
This five-part series will be published at both Nonprofit Update and Outrun Change. Posting at the Nonprofit site is because of the spiritual dimension, and at the Outrun Change site since I have a lot of other articles there describing Silk Road. People of faith will quickly figure out the spiritual and theological implications of these posts.
Well, Ross Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, also known as DPR, had no moral framework other than what he felt like at the moment. As a result, his decision was to allow all of the drug and weapon vendors to sell whatever they wanted on the website. Everyone was welcome. For more details jump in at page 123 of the book.
His girlfriend came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior later in the book, well after they broke up. (Based on a few ways that the description of her conversion and faith are described, I will make a wild guess the author of the book is not a believer).
At one point when they got back together for a while, his girlfriend persuaded him to attend worship at what appears to be a charismatic congregation that operated without a formal pastoral leadership structure.
Ultimately there were thousands of different drugs available on the website along with the equipment and supplies needed to cook any kind of dope you wanted to manufacture. Later on (see page 168) Dread Pirate Roberts allow the sale of poison, including cyanide.
According to the book, human body parts, such as livers or kidneys or bone marrow, were allowed for sale with no questions as to the source. Kidneys from China were heavily discounted from prices charged by vendors elsewhere on the planet (page 167). If you want to explore how far this be-your-own-god thing can go, ponder that, and then ponder the mindset that would allow such sales, no questions asked or explanations needed.
An undercover fed pretending to be a big time drug dealer was in contact with DPR. So during their conversations, DPR happened to complain that someone had ripped him off. This undercover cop offered to send some of his goons over to rough up the guy. DPR agreed to have his correspondent get some of his guys over there to work over the double-crosser.
Oh, the two feds were yelling and screaming at this poor sap demanding he identify where he hid the money that DPR said he stole. The reality was that during the interrogation, one of the agents knew that he, the USSS agent, not this unlucky guy was the thief.
To make a longer story shorter, Carl Force and Shaun Bridges separately either stole or scammed a lot of money out of Silk Road. DPR logically blamed the immediate theft on this poor sap (who was actually in custody, getting dunked in the bathtub, with his computer under the control of the DEA and USSS agents). While the DEA guy continued the dunking, the USSS guy took the laptop out of the room and stole even more money.
The point is DPR believed the presumed scammers had pull off the several jobs and he paid them for their services. The book says the trial judge stated at sentencing that Mr. Ulbricht received photos which asserted to document the killings.
The frightening power of rationalization is clearly on display in the story of Ross Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, as he developed the Silk Road website where you could buy anything you wanted. The story is told in American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, written by Nick Bilton. This is the fourth part of a series. You may enjoy reading parts one, two, and three.
How did Dread Pirate Roberts get to the point where he allowed the sale of every imaginable drug, various explosives, and a range of body parts on the site he created and ran? How did he get to the place of hiring and paying for five assassinations?
I am not a libertarian, but have along the way a few details of what libertarians generally believe. Some of the economists I read and enjoy are coming from a libertarian perspective on economic issues.
I can wrap my brain around the concept and I can even understand how that led DPR to allow the sale of absolutely any kind of drug that someone wanted to sell. After all, if buyers wants to put something into their body (so the thinking goes), that ought to be a decision they can make as they wish.
When it gets to the point of selling human organs, the thought process is outlined on page 167 of the book. The idea was that if the provider of the organ consents to the transaction, then it is fine to sell the organ in a free market.
That do-what-feels-good-for-you concept carries over to allowing sale of any drugs, including synthetics which are described as being 100 times more powerful than heroin. If you want to use such a drug to get high or wasted or destroy yourself, that would be your choice.
This is the second of two posts describing the frightening power of rationalization on display in the story of Ross Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, as he developed the Silk Road website where you could buy anything you wanted. The story is told in American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, written by Nick Bilton. This is the fifth post in a series. You may enjoy reading parts one, two, and three.
When DPR incorrectly concluded that a site moderator had run off with a pound of cocaine and stole $350,000, DPR had to decide what to do. If word got out that you could steal that much money and get away with it, the site would be vulnerable to every single employee who wanted an early retirement.
How does beating someone up, including maybe giving him some broken fingers (like DPR imagined would be needed), fit with the self-defense concept described earlier? Seems to be seriously out of proportion.
People like that were a serious threat to what DPR had accomplished. If not addressed, it could destroy all of his property. It could destroy his legacy of ending the prohibition on drug sales (yes, that was his lofty aspirational goal).
Having the supposed thief executed was no different from the President of the United States authorizing a drone strike on a specific house in Afghanistan or Iraq. The people soon to die, which could easily include innocent bystanders, need to be killed to protect the US and its allies.
The book says (which given the structure of the book I believe reflects a discussion between DPR and one of his staff) there have been dozens of Chinese workers who killed themselves by jumping to their deaths because the working conditions while making iPhones were so horrible. (I have no idea if the starting point of this rationalization is even true. The scary point is that like the fulfillment of the five contract killings, DPR believed it to be true.)
Those alleged suicides of iPhone workers are merely the price paid to change the world. Just like the price DPR had to pay when he was forcedto order the assassination of one of his workers. DPR just had to do that in order to make the world a better place through massive sales of drugs and weapons and body parts.
So as a result of running the drug bazaar called Silk Road, where did Ross Ulbricht wind up with his efforts to forcibly legalize drugs and simultaneously remove God from His throne and take over the throne for himself?
According to the book, the exercise area has steel bars across the top, partially blocking the sun and view. This is to prevent things like his compatriot Vanity Jones from swooping in with a helicopter for a dramatic rescue and pulling him off the room.
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