Blog Archives
IS TURKEY COMPETITION INDIVIDUAL?
Chance graduated from university as an engineer with too much ambition to wait for his company to promote him. He took risks, until he realised that to progress into management the higher ups had to trust and appreciate his work. As they learned to depend on him, his role expanded. Then he had the misfortune to begin a relationship with Georgina and married her.
She was an administration manager with ambitions of her own and opposed everything he wanted. Frustrated, he changed career path to a PhD at the university, in psychology, where he had more freedom. She moved out and they divorced.
He met Megan a fellow PhD student at the university. She was an elite pole vaulter and he wanted her to use a technique he was studying, phenomenology, to hone her skills. She coached herself using a digital vaulting model they developed. She adopted Heidegger’s phenomenological technique to focus on improvement. Chance helped her to articulate her vaulting experience and identify potential she could exploit. Under his tutelage, she performed in flow at the zenith of her ability, where time dilation was possible.
The novel tells the story of Megan who strives as a schoolgirl in local competitions and then after several years becomes an elite athlete touring international championships with her boyfriend Chance. Their individuality is tested when organisers seek to monetize pole vaulting by restricting her training techniques to result in closer competition and more earnings from this and similar events.
Would she succeed? Her training methods were opposed by rivals and also by less able athletes who couldn’t compete with her. Would the nanny state overreach into trying to limit her performances? Would their training methods be acceptable to the athletics authority at the Olympic Games? How would their work be affected by an outbreak of pandemic flu at the Olympics?
Megan’s training could be restricted by an outbreak of pandemic flu at the Olympics. They resist, because they are individualists and take part in a non-violent protest march through the city centre, which wins acceptance of individualism. It is a win for their campaign of individualism, like Australian scrub turkeys who live solitary lives, over bees who live in highly socialised groups.
There is strong pressure on Megan and Chance to conform and compromise their performances but competition is everything to them. Megan has reached a record height by arduous training without social goals.
Turkeys Not Bees is available on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/hwn74md2
Extracts and reviews are on the blog martinknox.com
CAN WINNING ATHLETES SHARE THE MEDAL?
My novel Turkeys Not Bees concludes humans are torn between wanting to see level competition that reveals individual competence and alternatively, generosity between winners.
Unlike how humans raise their young, Australian scrub turkeys abandon their chicks to live mainly solitary lives when they hatch. Scrub turkeys in cities have evolved to be more social, but in their rain forest habitat, after mating, they go separate ways, leading individual lives.
The turkeys are individualists.
Bees are social insects, with mating limited to a queen and drones, performing colony tasks nurtured by substances supplied by the queen. The worker bees lead social lives, performing their assigned tasks without reproducing.
The bees are collectivists.
Do most humans in important contexts compete like turkeys or collaborate like bees?
My book concludes I want humans to be more like turkeys and less like bees, in all except team endeavours. My reason for this choice of how humans should evolve is that individualism brings diversity and ecology that is more robust. Collective performance is moderated by group processes, such as leadership, politics and consensus which may not be reproducible nor contestable by others.
My book follows a champion pole vaulter who self-coaches by phenomenology, becoming highly individual.
Here is a recent example.
Two pole-vaulters, Katie Moon (USA) and Nina Kennedy (Australia), at the World Championships in Budapest on 23 August 2023, traded in their individuality by splitting the gold medal between them. They both cleared 4.90 on their third try and when their attempts at 4.95 m still couldn’t separate them, they were tied for the lead, registering one failure each at earlier bars.
A jump-off could have had another go at 4.95 m and then three more goes at 4.91 m, or whatever height they fancy, as long as it would be greater than they both have already cleared but less than the height they have repeatedly missed.
Their decision to forego the tiebreaker and split the medal was charged with emotion because they were friends. Literally split the medal? Record breakers and winners could possibly receive S100,000. Game theorists explain that they were better off, certainly getting half the prize than with a lower probability of getting half.
In most events the two would have been required to continue the competition, to find a single winner. Only pole vault and high jump allow medal splitting at the Olympics. Very few medals have been shared.
Three years earlier in Tokyo, high jumpers Barshim (Qatar) and Tamberi (Italy) agreed to share the gold after both cleared 2.37 m and failed at 2.39 m three times. They both wanted to forego a jump off. The difficulty with continuing to a single winner is that both will tire and their performance could fall off. Competitors with more attempts are rated inferior, supposing a winner has superior competitive ability when he succeeds more easily. Should having more failures earlier be counted against one who is now more tired?
In Olympic weight lifting, competitors can choose the weights they attempt. In 2018, a Papua New Guinean, Steven Kari, did not do any lifting until his opponents had lifted their utmost and failed. With one great lift, he took the gold, an outstanding individual performance. Levellers could be concerned that the others’ lifting had tired them. The result was biased towards a self-confident athlete, who competed as an individual. The pole vault and high-jump pairs were friends before they shared their medals. Perhaps their self-confidences were lower?
Levellers want to have competition conditions when any competitor can win, like in a horse handicap race. The rationale for equality is for amateur punters to have an equal chance of winning. The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord, 1967) is a theory that levelling can serve capitalist investment in many aspects of sport and performance. Events can potentially have several variables controlled to enrich investors, such as faked cliff-hanging scores in team sports.
The performances of athletes can be affected by many conditions of competition, not all of which can be controlled for fairness. In the women’s marathon event, the current ‘Women only’ record of 2.17.01 was set by Mary Keitany in 2017 in an elite women’s race at the London Marathon. In 2023 Tigst Assefa ran the Berlin Marathon in 2.11.53, the women’s record faster for a mixed gender race. Could levelling in a ‘Women only’ competition exclude women who have sped up when they ran with men?
Individual performance in athletics is a precious condition. My opinion is that sharing medals should not be allowed. Do you agree?
Turkeys Not Bees is available on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/hwn74md2
My other writing is on my blog at martinknox.com.au
DO PERFORMERS CREATE OR OBEY?
Megan is a champion pole vaulter who self-coaches using phenomenology to identify potential for improving her performances. She is held back by event organisers who want close finishes to sell tickets and media advertising. Athletes are constrained by regulations and industry hype to provide crowd-pleasing performances and camera shots with the appearance of fair competition. The sporting juggernaut rolls through a season with athletics, soccer, gymnastics, cricket, tennis, swimming, golf, cycling, rugby and horse racing. Only horse racing has handicapping to obtain closer finishes but other sports prevent innovations by athletes who are paid to entertain.
When an Australian national sporting body tries to prevent Megan using an effective new training technique, developed by her partner Chance, based on his PhD research, they are opposed by levellers who want all ability levels to be able to succeed in competitions. Megan is an individualist who is prevented from doing her best by collectivists who subscribe to a nanny state that is running amok. The ethos of affirmative action is spreading to education, employment and arts.
The restrictions on Megan become intolerable during an outbreak of Covid. Faced with mandatory vaccinations, they lead a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience. If they succeed, future society can be individual, like brush turkeys, who live independent lives. But if they fail, collective living could assign them to slave-like worker roles, like honey bees. Which human destiny do people want? What action can you take to mend society? Turkeys Not Bees is novel fiction by Martin Knox. Available on Amazon. Reviews at martinknox.com
ANIMAL FARM 2 RUSSIAN SEQUEL
George Orwell’s satire about farm animals who revolt, is updated by Martin Knox in his novel Animals Farm 2, about farm animals on a tropical island, reminiscent of Cuba, under Soviet control. The farm has a series of totalitarian leaders, all pigs, contemporaries of their Soviet and Russian counterparts. After the Revolution, pigs exploit the other animals terribly.
On the island, the animals’ work mining coal is stopped by climate alarm. The animals study climate science and discover false appearances of a climate ‘spectacle’.
The story plays out superpower geopolitics from the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs invasion and Perestroika, up to modern times, with Russian empire rebuilding and capitalist profiteering by the major powers.
Available on Amazon. Reviews on martinknox.com
