Category Archives: Ethnicity
UNKIND PUBLIC DEMONSTRATED
Disciplining a minority could be motivated to validate an authority.
Philosopher Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) in his book Discipline and Punish described punishment of offenders as changing from brutality done before a mob, which was both a deterrent and demonstration of tyrannical rule. Treatment of prisoners by brutal public spectacle was replaced by Bentham’s panopticon design (one was built at Port Arthur in 1858) which applied principles of surveillance, normalisation and evaluation to correction. Prisoners were subjected to silent, lonely psychological torture. Foucault’s thesis is that discipline methods reflected the wishes of the mob to be firmly ruled, but is that still true today?
Punishment has fewer adherents today and the public may be less vindictive. Is today’s treatment of prisoners sufficiently humane to discipline them for more positive roles? Hopefully suspended sentences, non-custodial detention, bonds, education, counselling, kindness and other methods are being used for more empathetic treatment. On the other hand, refusal by the majority to respect Indigenous people, by moving Australia Day from January 26th, also known as Invasion Day, to a less provocative day, could indicate little kindness in the general public. Disciplining of people humanely into the Australian culture may not be a reality for many years.
My novel The Grass is Always Browner is speculative fiction about Australia’s distant future.
Reviews: martinknox.com
FUTURE OF THE PASTORAL IDYLL
In 1995 Theodore Kaczynski wrote Industrial Society and Its Future in which he proposed overthrowing the economic and technological basis of the present society. His reasoning was that individuals had become over-socialised, pursued false goals and lacked autonomy. Scientists and technologists were culpable of pursuing surrogate goals and marched on blindly regardless of the welfare of the human race. His evidence of the failure of the industrial system is leftism, which he regards as a symptom of the disruption of the power process. His solution after revolution is to disperse technologies and organisations, with most people accepting hardships to live idyllically close to nature, feeding themselves as peasants, herdsmen, fishermen or hunters. His paper is available on the Internet.
My novel The Grass Is Always Browner (2011) tells a different epic fictional political thriller of several generations of a people, beginning in the year 2237, based on current technological trends, including climate change. Independently of the Kaczynski analysis, industrial society collapses after famine and coastal flooding, with the population dispersing from urban centres to grow their own food and self-sustain on acreages. Political organisation is led by a dynasty of Aboriginal people, who arbitrate in religious conflict between the descendants of European settlers and immigrants from Asian countries.
Both works forecast attempts by ordinary people to regain the idyllic state of nature idealised by the Romantic poets and later by hippies. To reach it, dystopian transition conditions could be necessary. However, lives could be improved by it and this story enables us to consider modifying the direction of technological development or even rejecting it.
The Grass Is Always Browner is on Amazon. Further information: https://martinknox.com

FUTURE OF THE PASTORAL IDYLL
In 1995 Theodore Kaczynski wrote Industrial Society and Its Future in which he proposed overthrowing the economic and technological basis of the present society. His reasoning was that individuals had become over-socialised, pursued false goals and lacked autonomy. Scientists and technologists were culpable of pursuing surrogate goals and marched on blindly regardless of the welfare of the human race. His evidence of the failure of the industrial system is leftism, which he regards as a symptom of the disruption of the power process. His solution after revolution is to disperse technologies and organisations, with most people accepting hardships to live idyllically close to nature, feeding themselves as peasants, herdsmen, fishermen or hunters. His paper is available on the Internet.
My novel The Grass Is Always Browner (2011) tells a different epic fictional political thriller of several generations of a people, beginning in the year 2237, based on current technological trends, including climate change. Independently of the Kaczynski analysis, industrial society collapses after famine and coastal flooding, with the population dispersing from urban centres to grow their own food and self-sustain on acreages. Political organisation is led by a dynasty of Aboriginal people, who arbitrate in religious conflict between the descendants of European settlers and immigrants from Asian countries.
Both works forecast attempts by ordinary people to regain the idyllic state of nature idealised by the Romantic poets and later by hippies. To reach it, dystopian transition conditions could be necessary. However, lives could be improved by it and this story enables us to consider modifying the direction of technological development or even rejecting it.
The Grass Is Always Browner is on Amazon. Further information: https://martinknox.com
