Cory Doctorow’s review of Naomi Alderman’s The Future mentioned this book, so after wrapping up the former, I decided to start the latter. It’s not what I expected—Doctorow’s comments suggested the whole thing might be about billionaire survivalist bunkers—but in a good way! It turns out that it’s a broader take on a broader attitude behind survivalist bunkers and the way that attitude manifests in other ways.

I had a hard time deciding on a rating for this. I do have some issues with the book, including its appeals to neuroscience (which is always a pet peeve of mine) in a book that otherwise has a productive skepticism toward empiricism as the end all, be all of human discovery. I’m also intrigued by Rushkoff’s critiques of how we approach social justice but I could use some more elaboration on those critiques so that they don’t just come off as contrarian (to be clear, I don’t think Rushkoff’s writing in bad faith, but there’s enough superficial resemblance to bad faith critiques from other actors that I’d like to see him elaborate more).

Despite those hang-ups, I went ahead and gave the book full marks because it lays out a compelling attitude and philosophy, encouraging the reader to reject “The Mindset” of competition, inevitability, and disconnect in favor of mutual aid, deeper values, and a shared future. There’s a lot to this book, and it may be worth getting a copy for my bookshelf one day.

• Survival of the Richest
• Douglas Rushkoff
• audiobooks
• Cory Doctorow
• The Future
• Naomi Alderman
• mutual aid
• empiricism