Dark Optimism is the not-for-profit public interest research, activism and writing of Shaun Chamberlin, working with a wide network of friends and partners around the world. We are unashamedly positive about what kind of a world humanity could create, and unashamedly realistic about how far we are from creating it today.
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SURVIVING THE FUTURE:
CONVERSATIONS FOR OUR TIME
EXPLORATION and Community with Shaun Chamberlin
Developed with Vermont's Sterling College, our uniquely interactive, flexible online programs have, year by year, created and inspired an active global community, now seeking out and exploring new insights and paths forward, from diverse localities on every continent.
Join us to together explore beyond both green dreaming and doomsday fatalism.
Confronting today's dark predicaments while still seeking meaningful paths to make the future better than it might otherwise be. Amidst the intertwined crises unfolding as you read these words...
"Forward movement is not helpful if what is needed is a change of direction."
—David Fleming, Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It
Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
THE DEEPER DIVE:
5 Jan - 14 Mar 2026
for only fifty participants
Be in live conversation with confirmed guests
Nate Hagens, Leah Manaema Avene, Rachel Donald,
Isabelle Frémeaux, Tadzio Müller, Mark Boyle
and two more to be confirmed
