Blog Archives
IS COLLECTIVE CONTROL TAKING OVER?
Brush turkeys are asocial, at the opposite end of a spectrum from Bees, whose roles are controlled by the group. Human control is changing towards collective control but it is not always wanted. The novel Turkeys Not Bees explores some trends in control and how they are being resisted. Chance is a physicist who overcomes epistemic injustice from working for employers who keep him on ‘treadmills’, unable to be creative. His experiences are explained by the philosophers Nietzsche and De Beauvoir. He quits and goes back to university to investigate the metaphysics of flow, a psychological condition observed by performers. He meets Megan, an elite athlete and he helps her to train to compete in flow by self-coached analysis of her phenomenon, by the method of philosopher Heidegger. She suffers gaslighting by officials and competitors who accuse her of unfair advantage and try to ban her training methods. She has to struggle to assert her individuality, against regulations imposed by ‘levellers’ who want athletes to have equal success. They act for a ‘nanny state’, which embraces collectivism to control sport, universities, schools, arts, healthcare and employment. Society is under the influence of The Spectacle (Debord 1967) with mass events controlled by industries and governments, for profits from consumption and for votes. Chance and Megan are in love and fight authorities to control her training for the Olympics. When they are quarantined in a pandemic, they lead a campaign which resists mandatory vaccination. Will their campaign of civil disobedience restore to them their traditional rights to train, compete and protect themselves? This is an exciting story set in Brisbane Australia, 2032, with conflict between individualism and collectivism. Turkeys Not Bees is available on Amazon. Reviews see martinknox.com
INDIVIDUALISM TODAY
Individualism began with the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. He gave the people liberty of personal rights, without religion. Expounded eloquently by Ayn Rand, it is regarded today as extreme.
It became unfashionable when the social philosophies of Rousseau, Marx and Bentham were promulgated. They invoked equality and attended to the welfare of communities. Today they underwrite communal approaches that solve climate change, prevent pandemics and supply cheap energy.
Nevertheless, most human endeavour strives to remain under individual control. Family, home, education, employment and recreation are pursued for individual interest, resisting the incursions of corporations and governments, whose intents are to exploit it, for their own benefit.
Turkeys Not Bees traces the lives and philosophical bearings of two young people whose journey together makes a stand for their own individual interests. The fiction story is exciting, exalting individual achievement, responding positively to forced engagement with collectivism.
Available on Amazon. Reviewed at martinknox.com
COACHING PHENOMENOLOGY AND FLOW
Megan is a future champion at pole vaulting but her further improvement is limited because her coaches cannot stand in her shoes and know what she is experiencing. They make and interpret observations through the prism of their own earlier experiences, which are irrelevant. Applying the phenomenology of philosopher Martin Heidegger, she refocusses, recording, analysing and modelling her lived experience. She self-coaches, helped with biomechanics and psychology by Chance, her physicist boyfriend who researches risk taking and flow.
Turkeys Not Bees tells their personal philosophical journeys, becoming opposed by new regulations of the athletics and Covid authorities. They are leaders in a campaign, with non-violent civil disobedience, against takeover by a Spectacle, created by media, capitalism and nanny states, of overreach in sport, health, academia and employment. This an exciting story of individual fulfilment that achieves excellence.
The latest of my six novels on Amazon, it is reviewed on my blog: martinknox.com
IS SOCIALITY PROMOTED BY THE SPECTACLE?
I am releasing my new fiction novel: Turkeys Not Bees. It explores a near future of capitalism and totalitarianism controlling human evolution.
The story tells how two young people take on the establishment when their sport and then their health are threatened by emerging totalitarian control.
Chance wants to apply his physics training in his job and resists being coerced to run in the hamster wheel of meaningless work and futile consumption. Analogous to Nietzsche’s camel, lion and child, he wants autonomy. Returning to university he meets a champion athlete also doing a PhD, in psychology. He encourages her to coach herself and with Heidegger’s phenomenology she investigates her lived experience of pole vaulting. She improves using Mihaly’s ‘flow’, a psychological condition of optimal achievement.
The Athletics Association, pursuing a policy of levelling outcomes for profit, ban her from using flow. The couple resist.
At the Olympic Games they both catch Covid. The subsequent restrictions on them are oppressive and they join with others in a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience.
Reviewed by
David P Jones – Philosophy Student
August 12th 2022
My blog: martinknox.com
