How to Survive in the Roanoke Colony

People desire things that are rarer, nobler, and greater than what others have.

Common things cannot satisfy people.

People yearned for things that had become even rarer in this new world, this new country.

Here, Christian ethics, which had long been familiar to them or had shocked them anew, worked decisively.

They desired honor, and at the same time, yearned for salvation.

They revered frugality, aspired to diligence, and hoped to be of help to the community of the great angel.

"What is that person doing now?"

"O Angel, that person is now practicing an ascetic life, extremely reducing his food intake..."

"That would make it difficult to maintain health due to lack of strength. While it's his freedom to do so, what use is there besides physical suffering?"

"Pardon?"

Meanwhile, the angel leading the community did not seem to prefer "unnecessary" asceticism, so even among ascetic practices, it had to be more "necessary."

For example, making more things for others, of better quality, and cheaper.

The community quickly responded to Kin Issei's opinion. People realized what the angel they respected demanded.

He wants something that actually helps the world.

Not personal moral cultivation achieved by just staring at a wall. Silence, abstinence, restraint - perhaps these were not so meaningful.

Unless they served a greater good of helping their families, neighbors, and ultimately all of humanity.

Thus, industrial monastic orders were born.

It was the result of following human nature that prefers things rarer, nobler, and greater.

A religious enthusiasm and excitement about building the world together with the holy angel pervades the entire community. Gathering people for the monastic orders was quite easy.

However, most naturally, humans crave comfort.

If one can live abundantly without doing anything else, forcing such a person into laborious work is not so easy.

Currently, those directly or indirectly participating in the monastic order movement constitute about 30-40% of Virginia's population.

This might seem like a large number, but it also means that the remaining 60-70% are living idly on what the Agricultural Knight Order and the rest of the population earn.

They don't particularly prefer to contribute to the community beyond donating a small portion of their property to public works or doing occasional volunteer work. They don't feel the need to do so.

More bluntly, they find it bothersome.

The angel doesn't force or pressure them either, and since they remain faithful in their religious life, society simply leaves them to lead a comfortable life.

After all, the community is already sufficiently wealthy with the supplies produced by the current factories and monastic orders.

But from the perspective of individual factories and monastic orders, this was not so welcome.

Because it blocked their paramount goal of business expansion.

From their perspective, markets are expanding across various regions.

The Diocese of Florida has proven over the past few years that it can serve as a massive consumer market in itself.

Similarly, the Wabanaki Confederacy, which would have originally appeared in the late 17th century, was formed decades earlier, and at a much larger scale than in original history, to enjoy the benefits of joint membership.

At the same time, the Iroquois Confederacy and the Shawnee tribe, which joined the alliance alongside them, were also incorporated into the alliance's economic system with populations exceeding hundreds of thousands.

To bring well-plowed fields with tractors to all of them, to establish strongholds of the Knight Order and churches across that vast domain to incorporate them, tremendous resources and labor were needed.

In this situation, where tens or hundreds of thousands of people depended on products from the community, the factories and monastic orders couldn't help but feel that the currently idle workforce was being wasted.

They wanted more people to participate in labor.

It was economically desirable for everyone, and morally right as well.

They sought a way to attract the many who had quit working due to lack of manual dexterity or simply because they were content with the current state.

In the midst of this.

Kin Issei connected universities with factories.

The tractor factory and its monastic order were the first to move.

The next to move were the various subcontracting parts factories under them.

Next, various miscellaneous factories and monastic orders physically close to those parts factories participated.

"In the parts production process, here, the part where metal is cut away consumes too much time. As a result, the overall parts production volume is low, so please improve it."

Such direct orders regarding productivity could be interpreted like this, depending on the perspective:

"During parts production, the metal-cutting work requires too much skill, making it difficult to assign to others besides a few specialized monastics. Please make it easier and simpler."

Issues of 'accessibility' and 'expertise.'

In fact, since most factories and monastic orders were desperate to attract more personnel, it was inevitable that various problems converged to these two issues.

"For the metal-cutting problem, why not try imitating the 'lathe' that the Nameless One previously distributed to jewelers? Wouldn't that make the work somewhat easier?"

To this, the faculty of the 'university,' which had not yet properly established buildings, presented alternatives one by one.

Of course, many failed, and many were difficult to implement in the field. Even though professors were selected from among craftsmen, they couldn't be proficient in all fields.

But their research sometimes provided groundbreaking turning points.

There's a reason why technological development in pre-modern times was so slow. Humans live by inertia, and society is maintained with such inertia.

Technicians can make a living by working as they always have, and children can accept their parents' techniques without any changes and still get by. That's what pre-modern technicians are.

And rapid development both advances and destroys society. This is clear when considering why so many guilds thriving in the medieval period were so zealous in maintaining technical levels and controlling production quantities.

But the factories and monastic orders of the community had no society to protect.

It had been just a few years since the Continental Covenant was established, and not even a generation had passed since a proper government was established in Virginia.

They had only two principles to uphold:

'More goods, to more people.'

'Nobler labor, to more people.'

Besides these, they had nothing else to protect.