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INDIVIDUALISM ON THE ROPES
Are you uneasy about nanny state overreach and becoming encultured with ambiguous meanings, like George Orwell’s Newspeak in his totalitarian satire ‘1984’: oldthink; ungood; goodthink; doublethink; thoughtcrime; unperson? In 2022, individualism is under threat. That is the theme of the satire ‘Turkeys Not Bees’. Chance is an ambitious young physicist who, in frustration, quits a good job and goes back to university. His career is interpreted by the philosophies of Simone de Beauvoir and Nietzsche. His girlfriend Megan becomes an Olympic athlete, self-coached with philosopher Heidegger’s phenomenology and Mihaly’s flow. When the two are threatened with Covid vaccination, they adulate the solitary independent lifestyle of the brush turkey and reject collectivism. They campaign by non-violent civil disobedience to stop the profit-driven sport, health, employment and government industries from taking over. It’s not too late.
Book available from Amazon. Reviewed at martinknox.com
IMMUNITY WITHOUT VACCINES, VICTIMS OR VECTORS?
Immune responses are strengthened by diet, exercise and sleep. Underlying conditions such as pneumonia, cancer and diabetes can weaken them. They are deactivated by emotional problems such as stress, anxiety, anger and depression. Poor lifestyle, ill health and emotional difficulties reduce longevity, prevent happiness and cause premature death. Without the will to live, death is how people obtain peace.
It is a harsh call on anyone, a cynical and pessimistic outlook, to observe that many people succumb to various illnesses and death as withdrawal, when their life has become intolerable. Seligman in ‘Learned Optimism’ measured how absence of choice and control increased longevity of residents in retirement accommodation. The mechanism theorised was deactivation of their immune systems by psychological learned helplessness.
Immunity from good physical and emotional health, together with psychological control, could be critical for resisting an infection like COVID-19, without risking becoming a victim or waiting for a vaccine.
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