Tactile Deprivation

David Fleming
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The loneliness, coldness and lack of communication in a society which, owing to anxieties about its abuse, has lost the language of touch. Touch has a large vocabulary of meaning, between bliss and pain, none of which can be abandoned without loss. Tactile deprivation leaves a misery of depression, isolation and emotional withdrawal, followed by trouble when touch is the central skill needed for complex endeavours such as marriage and child-raising.T1

At the same time, we are losing the touch of language, for language began as a replacement for grooming and, with careful, gentle articulation, it too has mildly erotic qualities. It works best when you take your time, travelling hopefully rather than being distracted by arrival. Community will be held together by both touch and sound: soporific, inspissated, stretch, smooth, evocative, dappled, spinster, Limpopo. Slow and attentive is best.T2

 

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Conversation, Reciprocity and Cooperation, Lean Education.

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David Fleming
Dr David Fleming (2 January 1940 – 29 November 2010) was a cultural historian and economist, based in London, England. He was among the first to reveal the possibility of peak oil's approach and invented the influential TEQs scheme, designed to address this and climate change. He was also a pioneer of post-growth economics, and a significant figure in the development of the UK Green Party, the Transition Towns movement and the New Economics Foundation, as well as a Chairman of the Soil Association. His wide-ranging independent analysis culminated in two critically acclaimed books, 'Lean Logic' and 'Surviving the Future', published posthumously in 2016. These in turn inspired the 2020 launches of both BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong's feature film about Fleming's perspective and legacy - 'The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?' - and Sterling College's unique 'Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time' online courses. For more information on all of the above, including Lean Logic, click the little globe below!

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