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Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy

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Surviving the Future is a story drawn from the fertile ground of the late David Fleming s extraordinary Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It. That hardback consists of four hundred and four interlinked dictionary entries, inviting readers to choose their own path through its radical vision.

Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure can be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has selected and edited one of these potential narratives to create Surviving the Future. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyable writing style remain Fleming's, but are presented here at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format.

The subtitle Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy hints at Fleming's vision. He believed that the market economy will not survive its inherent flaws beyond the early decades of this century, and that its failure will bring great challenges, but he did not dwell on this: We know what we need to do. We need to build the sequel, to draw on inspiration which has lain dormant, like the seed beneath the snow.

Surviving the Future lays out a compelling and powerfully different new economics for a post-growth world. One that relies not on taut competitiveness and eternally increasing productivity putting the grim into reality but on the play, humor, conversation, and reciprocal obligations of a rich culture.Building on a remarkable breadth of intellectual and cultural heritage from Keynes to Kumar, Homer to Huxley, Mumford to MacIntyre, Scruton to Shiva, Shakespeare to Schumacher Fleming describes a world in which, as he says, there will be time for music.

This is the world that many of us want to live in, yet we are told it is idealistic and unrealistic. With an evident mastery of both economic theory and historical precedent, Fleming shows that it is not only desirable, but actually the only system with a realistic claim to longevity. With friendliness, humor, and charm, Surviving the Future plucks this vision out of our daydreams and shows us how to make it real.

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 2016

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David Fleming

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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Profile Image for Randall Wallace.
681 reviews652 followers
January 15, 2020
After global economic collapse what can we expect? Full-time work will disappear and everyone will be part of informal localized cooperative economies based on trust. The future will also require permanency, people will return to living in one place, even those with Louis Vuitton luggage. In such a slow-moving environment, David says future decisions could well involve “how you and the dog want to spend the afternoon.” When a community has historically taken care of its own needs, that’s called resilience. There will be a “slack” economy also called “hyper-unemployment”. Over a few hundred years, the market economy shredded the networks of “cooperative responsibility” so essential for humanity’s collective future. “Lean economics is the means of maintaining the stability of an economy which does not grow.” In other words, a stationary (steady state) economy, but David won’t call it that, nor will he mention John Stuart Mill’s anticipation of exactly that, written in 1848.

The most important thing a post-carbon community can do is get together and share emotions together (but hopefully not those of nausea or revulsion). David believes strongly in the power of the Carnival. It’s a time of peace, where rank takes a backseat to humor. To give a community it’s life, you must start with a party. But how you logistically throw annual parties post-collapse, each family pushing lukewarm food down abandoned roads on beat up carts to some chosen field hours away by foot while some don’t know what day it is, is not explained. At these Carnivals, you will want to introduce rituals, annual events. Multiculturalism was fine around the world until the introduction of the market economy. For example, in India’s Ladakh region, Muslims and Hindus lived together just fine until the market hit there in the 70’s (read Helena Norberg-Hodge).

In Medieval England, you had 1/3 of the year off in leisure time. The French had more spare time than that, while the Spanish a whopping five months off a year. It’s hard to imagine Torquemada taking off a full five months a year during the Inquisition; we’d have to ask noted historian Mel Brooks. It is very hard to maintain a slack economy because some will cheat to gain advantage. Such cheating can put others more ethically minded out of business. And in a part-time economy how would brain surgeons stay in shape? Making egg salad? David also says tennis players but I personally can’t imagine international tennis teams post-collapse. How would time wardens in a slack economy drop-in on everyone in the remote community without transportation?

Our formal economy is in decline, whether we want it to be so or not. Our future is to be supported by our culture and not our opportunism looking for more $. The Puritans wrongly saw money as God’s blessing and look what happened to them; they are known in history to have had the worst sex ever. “Surviving the Future” is about how we must bind together as localized communities post-collapse through a making of community in the absence of a market economy. Martin Rees thinks when civilization collapses, population will crash as well. Plenty of time to make a few more of those violent CGI action movies that prepare no child for anything we will soon all have to face. William Stanton projects as oil declines (peak oil) world population will stabilize by 2050 at .5 to 1 billion people. Can you say “die-off”? James Lovelock believes we are headed to a burning hell of Earth where only a handful of people (and probably four scorched koalas) will survive. Good news though: Facebook trolls will finally be permanently out of work when the internet finally goes down.

Figuring that this book was a kind of Cliff Notes for Fleming’s previous massive “Lean Logic” book; I thought I’d read it. I had tried to read Lean Logic but found quite of bit of it a mélange of being both boring, and only obliquely connected to post-carbon, post-collapse living. David doesn’t mention how his Lean Economy sure looks a doppelganger to the rest of us for Herman Daly’s steady-state economy, the Post-Carbon Institute re-localization movement, and even Pat Murphy’s terrific “Plan C” book of 2008, so part of David’s deal is reinventing the wheel with his own different terms meaning the same thing. David sees with present capitalist critics that the end of our market economy is in sight; no wonder centrist democrats are flipping out on Facebook fearing Socialism and equitable distribution happening before the crash. The book ends with a strange simile of David’s: “…can have leverage like a baby monkey at the controls of a Ferrari.” Why say “leverage”? Why say “baby monkey”? A baby monkey is not going to drive your Ferrari away as David thinks, he will probably break off the turn signals and shit all over the front seat. And that’s no metaphor.
Profile Image for Lucas.
115 reviews
October 9, 2016
I found this both fascinating and bizarre. Some chapters that were so baffling and tangential that they seemed almost deranged, mixed with sudden insights that perfectly illuminate some issue.

For instance, there are sections that seem almost a screed against a multi-faith society, decrying its possibility and doubting its ability to produce anything of merit, while citing scripture from many religions and many factions within religious movements. There is a sort of strange mythology of how wonderful village life once was, and what a good idea it would be to embrace some sort of medieval revivals. Claims like these seem to me to be very dubious, and the argumentation did not convince me - hence the two star rating.

But equally, there were inflections of this argument that I appreciated the force of, and will no doubt find useful. Fleming's writing was enjoyable and readable, and frequently very witty. But, as I think about it, this was not enough to bump up the rating for me. I look forward, however, to perusing Lean Logic in the future.
32 reviews
April 30, 2020
David Fleming's genius and Shaun Chamberlin's talent in bringing Lean Logic out to the world with this book is priceless. We know market economy will collapse but we don't need to (indeed we mustn't) wait for it to come to figure out what we gotta do. In pandemic times it is even more relevant, we gotta figure out how to interact with each other, how much we need community and how we get it. Food, mental health and clean air&water are things we understand now that we need and all these come with a resilient community. This book comes with soooo many intelligent and holistic insights into how we lived, live and can live. Plus very well written with poems, pieces from ancient texts and surprises. Clarity hits you: it won't be easy but there won't be any other choices than a lean economy and society.
Profile Image for Adam Johnson.
75 reviews5 followers
May 8, 2020
I really enjoyed this book, but it's not an easy book to listen to. I feel that, with its density and breadth of coverage, it deserves to be slowly read and re-read in hard copy.

The central discussion is around how to rearrange an economy so that it is not forever focused on growth. It turns out that this is not as easy as simply deciding not to grow, but instead requires a consideration of what to do with surplus production. And that is a big, big question.

A worthwhile read.
2,103 reviews61 followers
May 11, 2018
Covers how groups of people can adjust to post-market economies.
I agree with most of what Fleming says, but was hoping for more recommendations for individuals.
I did learn about transition towns (see http://transitionus.org/initiatives-map) which was nice
Profile Image for Jason.
340 reviews14 followers
October 21, 2020

Fantastic and thought provoking book. It is a bit of a ranged thought experiment on how we need to think about confronting the challenges of climate change and resource depletion (assuming that our governments will continue to fail to take any of these situations seriously).

He doesn't offer hard solutions but ways of thinking. This book is definitely within the universe of the Transition Movement but you don't have to know about that to get a lot out of it. And it assumes you know and understand the problems we are facing, so you don't get a hundred pages of Disaster Porn like in so many other books, which can be emotionally exhausting.

There is an interview with the editor of the book (the author died prior to the book being published) with James James Howard Kunstler
Profile Image for Jonn.
111 reviews8 followers
January 9, 2022
Good book that gives you an abridged taste of Lean Logic, David Fleming’s masterwork. Great if you’re into systems thinking and post-sustainability. Still found the language a slog at times, so the style wasn’t always for me, but generally good to check out before you dive into Lean Logic.
Profile Image for Samarth Bhaskar.
229 reviews27 followers
April 21, 2017
The last time I felt this way after a non-fiction book was David Graeber's Utopia of Rules. I have rarely found works of popular social science to be compelling, or complete, or even worthwhile. I wonder if I had a background in the hard-sciences, if I would feel this way about popular science books too.

I came to David Fleming's Surviving the Future through a recommendation from a friend, via a blog post. A quick google or two later, and seeing his pedigree as a founding member of the UK Green movement, my interest was piqued. The book, though, didn't keep my enthusiasm for long.

There were multiple times when Fleming (or Chamberlin, I suppose) introduced a concept, defined it only briefly and then never used it again. An example that comes to mind is "climacteric." But even beyond tiny details like this, the overall argument of the book seemed facile. Advocating for religion, or a religion-like institution, more local governance and reliance, promoting more social behavior are all fine places to start. But a deeper description on how we get there would've added to this book's appeal. Size and scale, despite being maligned in this book, have also given us major advances in technology and medicine. Market capitalism, it can be argued, has also given us the longest run of peace in human history. Markets, some say, have lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system we've tried. Are none of these things worth addressing in this book?

I did find interesting, though, the idea that conservatives and the Green party may find common ground about local politics via an argument like this. But as with the rest of the book, a discussion about exactly who is part of these "local economies," and who isn't included, or what we lose when we leave scale and size behind is wholly missing. As Noah Smith and Cathy O'Neill discuss in this column, market economies and inequality reduction are not incompatible with each other. It is possible that market economies and climate protection may not be incompatible either.

I'll end on a positive note: there were a few descriptions of things like slack and the intensification paradox that I found interesting. To give credit where it is deserved, Fleming sees the pressures that capitalism and market economies place on society and on the Earth. And he is committed to finding other ways to organize human productive activity.
1 review
October 11, 2016
I discovered this book through a blog recommendation by John Michael Greer, and I'm surely glad I did. It's a little scary to think that Fleming died in 2010, because his book speaks more clearly and insightfully to the future we face than almost anything else I've seen, while doing so with such wry humour that you can't help but smile. This is a beautiful book and he is truly a master of explaining economics in a way that I not only understood, but found inspiring.

Unlike this book's first reviewer I found the narrative of this book easy to follow, but it is certainly full of interesting asides and tangents. For me those enriched the book and left me reassured at Fleming's range of learning, but I can see how some might find it bizarre, especially if they have a more positive view on modern society and where it's heading.

Like the book's first reviewer I was fascinated and can't wait to read the full Lean Logic now! This short book is so good that if I had to choose only one of the two, I'd choose the long one, even though I haven't read it yet.
548 reviews12 followers
May 4, 2017
This is more how we ought to live or how we might be able to survive lit along the lines of Wendell Berry on the optimistic side or Dmitri Orlov on the opposite shore - in other words, when the world breaks down completely due to climate disruption & resource depletion this is what's left for us to negotiate. I honestly like the writing of both Berry (one of my absolute favorites altho I should add that his fiction is what I really love) & Orlov better. Some people - see the cover blurbs - think of Fleming as a source of wisdom & a great loss to humanity. I'm truly not certain whether I consider him wise or full of shit. This book to me is mostly about how we get back to living in the Dark Ages but it is redeemed by its appeal to community building & organizing. Come hell or high water, our best hopes are at the local level.
Profile Image for Paul.
1,290 reviews30 followers
July 30, 2018
Not a coherent argument in sight. Author thinks poetry is a valid substitute. He is very sure of what will happen without explaining in any useful detail why, how or when it will happen. At one point he uses a completely fallacious thought experiment to argue for a shorter work week and I was willing to let it go since he clearly is not a person partial to logic but then he uses that same argument multiple times to base his ideas on (I'm taking about the 100 people slowly replaced by robots argument). I find it hard to believe that at no point one of his friends pointed out to him that's not how the economy works.
Profile Image for Will Knechtle.
40 reviews
July 6, 2020
Relevant and insightful read as COVID-19 ravages our market economy and cultural conflict rises in 2020.
Profile Image for Emile.
273 reviews
Read
August 3, 2020
This book feels seductively wrong. I'm glad I listened, and would like to do a more careful reading, taking notes and following up. It's an interesting contrast to one I just finished, Braiding Sweetgrass.

A few of the little things that really got under my skin:

There is a brief note in the beginning that "The Lean Economy" is not supposed to be a prediction, but a scenario, a tool for imagining a possible future. And then the entire book is a constant litany of "*the* lean economy *will* X" and "in *the* lean economy of the future we *will* Y."

Over and over the book picks out some aspect of life/culture and asserts that in order to create a sustainable society we should do X. But people don't pick and choose cultural elements instrumentally like that. It is most jarring in the section on religion: one can't just *choose* to believe X because it will have beneficial result Y if you do. The whole book ends up feeling like that. I don't want to have strong friendships & community norms that value caretaking and stewardship in order to *increase our collective fitness.* It feels... creepy?

I ended up with many more complaints, which I feel deserve much more careful thought before blathering about here. But again, overall, very glad I listened as it sparked much thinking about questions I care about deeply.
Profile Image for Rodrigo Dumont.
38 reviews1 follower
August 30, 2022
"Surviving the Future" is two different books in one: one about the post-growth economy, the other about human behavior.
The first is a mental exercise about what would be required to survive if our complex and global economy collapsed (or when it happens, since the author takes it as a given). It is a well-researched book, quoting past examples of similar situations and what a local community/economy looks like. The key word here is "past". Even though he mentions it, the author does not provide enough emphasis on new technologies of the future, that most likely, will solve today's problems. Sometimes it reads like an apocalyptic tale with no other possibilities than a climatic disintegration. 3.5/5
On the other hand, there are chapters than only discuss human behavior and our interactions with others. These are extremely insightful and worth reading just to hear possible comprehension of our own psyche. 5/5
Blended Review: 4/5
Profile Image for Shane.
130 reviews1 follower
November 27, 2024
This type of book satisfies my need to be a nerd.
As I considered the implications of the future Fleming envisions, my thoughts were on the C/church. Though the C-church isn't as prone to the market, many of the c-church's and more than a few denominational communities live or die by the market. The lean economy Fleming describes will provide a whole new world in which churches could flourish - if they survive the shift towards robust, local communities of mutual support. Hating institutions is fine, going solo is a death spiral. Connecting on common cultural convictions will require sacrifice from everyone in the community. The option is doom - something I do not get from Fleming. This isn't the end of the world. It is a deconstruction and realignment. Exciting times ahead!
Profile Image for Abraham.
Author 4 books19 followers
March 29, 2024
Spending time with a brilliant mind is a true pleasure. Never has the apocalypse been written about with such cheer and optimism.

So much to say here, but the focus on small communities of trust instead of large institutions of rules and transparency is a notion that need not wait for the fall of civilization to be applied.
Profile Image for George.
82 reviews19 followers
May 22, 2024
I couldn't get into this book at all. What's it even about? I think Fleming is trying to sketch an idea of what a post-fossil-fuel future might look like, but it's so vague and disjointed that I can't point to anything I learned.

Made it to page 84 before I became too bored to continue. DNF.

For a much more interesting book about "degrowth", I recommend Less is More by Jason Hickel.
Profile Image for Gavin Ridley.
16 reviews1 follower
October 8, 2020
Maybe “Lean Logic” has more well-thought-out arguments for the positions taken here, but I generally found much of the reasoning quite uncompelling.
Profile Image for Joshua.
Author 1 book48 followers
January 11, 2022
A lot of white pills about collapse. Do we really want to live in a society with unlimited energy? However, would have appreciated if this was better organized.
Profile Image for Matthew.
121 reviews9 followers
November 27, 2022
This is potentially the most important book you will ever read.
Profile Image for Robin.
115 reviews13 followers
January 5, 2021
Some goods ideas but a bit too eclectic with a lot of problematic presumptions .. admittedly I wasn't unable to slog through more than 2/3rds of the book.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews

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