Soup

Thought about this last night... Imagine a world and society based on Soup.  Everything revolves around and involves in one form or another, Soup.  Value is determined by the amount of Soup you possess.  There are some who are rolling in it or have Soup to burn whilst others can barely scrape two small cans together.

You would think that if Soup is so important to everyone and vital to their existence that they would all learn as much about Soup, its history, how its created etc. as they can and that they would want to become experts on everything Soup & Consommé related.  Schools and parents would teach their children and special universities would exist to ensure everyone knew all there is to know about the world of Soup.

However, with a little more thought it is obvious that the controllers of Soup, those few elite families that own and protect the Soup lakes and know the secret locations of the Soup mines would do everything in their (considerable) power to make sure that the opposite is true.  These elites would also own all the Soup kitchens between themselves and governments around the world would have to visit these cup in hand, to ask for a Soup allowance.

The vast majoirty of people would be completetly ignorant of where Soup comes from and how it's created.  They would simply slave away day after day for their Soup rations, saving up if they 'can' any spare Soup into the local Soup kitchens, perhaps borrowing more Soup than they can really afford to take on getting themselves into a right pickle.