“Where’s the world heading?” “How should we live?” “What work should we do?” “How can we resource ourselves and each other?”

In December 2017, Sterling College hosted a two-day symposium sparked by the posthumous publication of Dr. David Fleming’s extraordinary books, Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive it, and its sister publication, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy.

Building on the success of that event, we now invite you to join Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg (a friend of Fleming’s), The Rules co-founder Martin Kirk and Sterling College President Matthew Derr for a three-day course exploring what ‘lives well-lived’ look like in this time of transition.

Fleming’s work highlights that “most of human history was bred, fed and watered by another sort of economy.  But the market has replaced, as far as possible, the social capital of reciprocal obligation, loyalties, culture and traditions with exchange, price and the impersonal principles of economics”

As the market economy continues to crumble under the weight of its own impossible need for perpetual growth, we should admit that for all its destructiveness, we will miss its essential simplicity, the comforts it delivers to many and the freedoms it underwrites.  And as capitalism’s former largesse continues to shrink away, that future is becoming daily reality for ever more of us.

Such a time brings fear and uncertainty, but also great possibility.  The forces that have cocooned us are failing, but these are also the forces that constrained us. This is a time of loss and freedom, if we can minimize our dependence on the market and find sustenance with deeper roots.

Now is the time to repair or replace the atrophied social and ecological structures on which most human cultures were built, as the basis for a nourishing, cohesive society that might survive the turbulent times to come.  This is the story of our times, and living it imbues our days with meaning.

Come if you are interested in:

• Talking about the future of society without needing to know economics or math!
• Discussing what ‘life well lived’ looks like in today’s world
• Getting real about the practicalities of living meaningful lives in our present society
• The importance of music, culture, love, humor and play
• Telling an alternative story to our growth-based market economy
• Questions around resistance vs. building alternatives

Faculty: Martin Kirk, Richard Heinberg, Matthew Derr