Welcome to Dark Optimism!

It's been brought to my attention that after over fifteen years of Dark Optimism, some of the best stuff has got a little buried. If you're new here, I keep this post updated, so let me give you the tour and see what grabs your interest! -- About me and Dark Optimism (video interviews at the bottom of that bio, or check out this intimate podcast for more on my life and lifestyle) On my home at The Happy Pig in Ireland - our free pub, bunkhouse and community space My online home. Our warm global community, and online programmes developed and offered in partnership with Vermont's wonderful Sterling College. Join us any time! Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time About my late mentor David Fleming's astonishing books, which I shepherded to posthumous publication. Perhaps the most potent contribution I've yet made to our world 2020 update: check out the new custom-built, searchable, interactive and completely free LeanLogic.online! On my involvement with the Extinction Rebellion, as one of the earliest arrestees A taster clip from our feature film - The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation? These tasters have been viewed over 5 million times, and the online premiere on 16th March 2020 was watched live by 25,000+ On grief, activism and the darkness in my optimism (see blog post, 2014 interview, or 2019 interview) The 'Dark Optimism album' - sit back and listen. Product of my passion for finding the music from various artists that speaks powerfully to the times we live in (new song suggestions most welcome!) On land and the wonderful Ecological Land Co-operative, which I used to chair (as of 2023 it has seven sites around the UK and is growing fast - see my blog post or... ...

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Humanity - not just a virus with shoes

As awareness spreads of the ecocidal consequences of our civilisation, I increasingly hear opinions to the effect that humanity is nothing but a plague, a parasite. A virus with shoes... It can even lead to the opinion (frequently expressed by those in favour of burying our heads in the sand) that people concerned about humanity's impacts should do the world a favour and kill themselves. Indeed, as this hypothesis continues to spread, I don't doubt that it has contributed to actual suicides. So it seems worth highlighting that it isn't true. ...

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Realists of a larger reality

In 2014 Ursula K. Le Guin accepted the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters with a deliciously powerful speech. Aware that her time was nearing its end, she declared that her “beautiful reward” was accepted on behalf of, and shared with... . . . writers of the imagination who, for the last fifty years, watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists. I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now. Who can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries; the realists of a larger reality. . . . We live in capitalism; its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art: the art of words. . . . The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom. Today, it is evident that those hard times have arrived for many, and will continue to arrive for ever more people around the world. As Simon Mont wrote in Tikkun’s recent issue on the New Economy, “capitalism is collapsing under the weight of itself, and it’s not pretty”. Our globalised world finds itself caught on the horns of a seemingly impossible dilemma – either cease growing, and so collapse the economy on which we all depend, or continue to grow until we overwhelm and destroy the ecosystems on which we all depend. As my late mentor, the historian and economist David Fleming, put it, It is certain that there are no simple answers to this—none that could be proposed without... ...

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The secret truth behind environmentalists' favourite argument

When environmentalists argue amongst themselves, whether at some formal debate or late at night over a few drinks, I confidently predict that the argument will go like this. One will say (in one form or another): "There's no time to wait for radical change or revolution; the crisis is overwhelmingly urgent, we simply have to act within the frameworks we have now". The other will argue (in one form or another): "But there's no point in acting without radical change or revolution; without that we are only addressing symptoms and not the real problems". ...

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Purpose in Times of Collapse

LATEST POSTS

Surviving the Future: The Deeper Dive 2024

Oct 28, 2023

Autumn has always been my favourite season, and over recent years it brings additional succour, signalling time to start preparing in earnest for the winter's Deeper Dive. This now-annual tradition has become a real highlight of my year, as a new small group capped at just fifty folk gathers to reflect meaningfully on our tumultuous times, and the ways we might choose to move through them. Starting in January and running online for nine weeks, I find it the perfect complement to the...

Rest in Peace Michael Dowd

Oct 11, 2023

I was deeply shocked to hear last night of the death of Michael Dowd, creator of the wonderful PostDoom.com. He and his wife Connie Barlow have been good friends to me, as they have to so many others. Michael and I had exchanged a few words on Saturday, so I knew that he was in New York with his family, after the passing of his father on Thursday. I had absolutely no idea that he himself passed away that night. I'm very much still processing the news, but wanted to share the below beautiful...

LATEST POSTS

Surviving the Future: The Deeper Dive 2024

Rest in Peace Michael Dowd

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SURVIVING THE FUTURE:
CONVERSATIONS FOR OUR TIME

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Shaun Chamberlin

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LATEST POSTS

Surviving the Future: The Deeper Dive 2024

Rest in Peace Michael Dowd

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SURVIVING THE FUTURE:CONVERSATIONS FOR OUR TIME

Online COMMUNITY withShaun Chamberlin

Success!

SURVIVING THE FUTURE:
CONVERSATIONS FOR OUR TIME

Online COMMUNITY with
Shaun Chamberlin