Blog Archives
COMPETITION COULD BE LIMITED
According to philosopher De Bord (1967), sport, entertainment and arts have audiences on media that are part of the Spectacle, profiting investors and governments, moulding performances for profit. Remuneration of performers is probably exploitative, possibly controlling who will win. Performance venues have been levelled, but not for equal competition.
Turkeys Not Bees is the story of two fictional individualists whose career prospects in athletics and academia are threatened by government over-reach, preventing them from competing equally with others.
Chance and Megan are PhD students. She is a champion pole vaulter and he researches the condition ‘flow’, enabling timeless optimal achievement.
When they meet, he encourages her to vault ‘in flow’ and the two soon become a couple. He helps her self-coach using phenomenology, developed by philosopher Heidegger. She improves but when she wins consistently using ‘flow’, a psychological technique, she is opposed by the athletics authority. Megan’s performances are controlled by anti-elite rule changes and levelling of competition by collectivists and governments.
Chance and Megan resist other government controls, with non-violent civil disobedience to mandatory Covid restrictions.
Turkeys Not Bees is a philosophical tale of two individuals who strive for freedom and respect.
Will their campaign to assert their rights to walk in the streets of the City succeed? The story presages a future where individual rights of the many could be limited by the few.
On Amazon. Reviews see martinknox.com
FROM INDIVIDUALISM TO COLLECTIVISM AND BACK
This novel story of Chance’s personal journey commences in his 20s, when he suffers within the corporate morass of a job where competition is constrained by wokeism. Failing to conform, he quits the capitalist treadmill and goes back to university for a PhD to investigate risk-taking behaviour. He meets Megan, a champion athlete, who is researching motivation in employment-seekers.
Together they become absorbed in Heidegger’s phenomenology, which enables Megan to self-coach to success with elite performances. But the ‘Spectacle’, described by Debord (1967) takes control in many fields, including sport, with competition transformed into profit-making and to gain political control by the nanny state. Chance and Megan resist, opposing mandatory vaccination during the Covid pandemic and ending with non-violent civil disobedience. Their examples advertise individualism based on the thinking of some famous philosophers.
The novel Turkeys Not Bees is available on Amazon. Reviews are at martinknox.com
CAN TWO INDIVIDUALS UNIFY?
When an individualistic man and an individualistic woman combine talents as postgraduates, they are very successful until nanny state ‘levellers’ force them into competition with ordinary folk. They become reality entertainers, earning media profits and gaining obedience for government pandemic restrictions. Will they and the elite be able to resist, with non-violent civil disobedience? Turkeys Not Bees is an action-packed story, in which Megan and Chance discover each other and philosophies that shape their lives together.
Book available on Amazon. Reviews are on blog: martinknox.com
TWO COACHING PHILOSOPHIES
Time Is Gold has a story of an endurance runner, Maxi who becomes a champion with psychology, biomechanics, neuroscience, zen and physics advice from her coaching team. Their dualist philosophies equip her to expand the limits of her endurance. Her mind and her body improve by traditional didactic coaching.
In Turkeys Not Bees, Megan becomes a world champion pole vaulter, by exploring her technique with phenomenology and self-coaching. With the help of her physicist boyfriend, she develops a kinaesthetic numerical model that she uses to improve, focussing on her lived experience without a coach.
These stories by Martin Knox apply academic theories to top athletes’ training and performances in elite competition, in romantic settings. Both women learn to train and compete in flow. Maxi relies on advice from experts whereas Megan analyses her performance herself.
Both are available on Amazon. Reviews: martinknox.com
