Surviving the Future

Surviving the Future is a story draw 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 seventy-two interlinked dictionary entries, inviting readers to choose their own path through its radical vision. Recognising that Lean Logic's shear size and unsual structure can be dautning, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has slected and edited one of these potential narratives to create Surviving the Future. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyably writing style remains Fleming's but are presented here at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format. Surviving the Future lays out a copelling and powerfully different new economics for 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, humour, conversation, and reciprocal obligations of a rich culture. Building on a remarkable breadth of intellectual and cultural hertiage - 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, yt 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 acutally the only system with a realsitic claim to longevity. With friendless, homour, and char, Surviving the Future plucks this vision out of our daydreams and shows us how to make it real.