Shaun Chamberlin

Verbindungen

Beschreibung

Blogautor, Buchautor, Filmautor und vor allem Schöpfer der Marke Dark Optimism (siehe dort für einige tolle Blogposts!). Er hat David Flemings Werk nach dessen Tod vollendet und trägt es weiter.

Er betreibt das Happy Pig mit seinem guten Freund Mark Boyle.

Chamberlin betreut außerdem den (kostenpflichtigen) Kurs Surviving the Future: A Path Through Tumultuous Times am Sterling College.

Auftritte:

Zitate:

Then I decided to find a peer group. I felt like finding an oasis in the desert. And to anyone else who's in a similar place with feelings of being alone with the apocalypse, I would say that's the key thing: find a peer group, find other people who care. [...] Don't be just sitting there with the internet, because it just is so hard and not conducive to the kind of interactions... There's a wonderful line from David's work actually: he says “Do nothing that matters without consulting a conversation”.

It hurts to let go of the stories that we've been told about what makes sense as a life path and to accept that the stories that we were raised in (most of us) don't lead where they said they were gonna lead – they don't lead to Star Trek, they lead to the annihilation of life on earth. And the space between stories is one of the most awkward and painful places, because you don't have anything to make sense of life with.

You know, okay, I'm living in a dying world, and it's actually the same dying world I lived in yesterday, but today I see it for what it is. And then the question of ‘What now?’ somehow is actually lighter and freer, because before I was spending so much energy on denying my actual predictions on what was unfolding, my actual beliefs about what was happening. I kept going ‘No, we must keep hope, we must stay positive, we must...’ But I didn't really believe it, so it was exhausting to continually be trying to find hope. So when I can actually accept ‘Okay, I don't think I can change this. I think we're headed into the collapse scenario, we're headed into what David calls the climacteric, you know, the coming together of all these intertwined crises’ – once you step beyond that threshold and actually accept that, actually a huge amount of energy is liberated. A lot of energy, and that ‘hope beyond hope’ is actually stronger than the original hope because it's no longer really attached to outcomes. It's just about telling a story with our lives that we're proud to tell in the context that we find ourselves. And the default hope, the ‘must stay positive’ hope is kind of fragile, because it's constantly being threatened by information that maybe our hope is misplaced. But that hope beyond hope – there's nothing that can challenge it. No matter what kind of future we face, no matter how wrong I inevitably am about how the future is going to unfold, I want to tell a story with my life that I'm deeply proud to tell. And nothing can make me doubt that.

Collapse ... I tend to see it more as shrinking circles of affluence. You know, and anyone who can still ask that ‘where's your collapse, mate’ question is still in one of those shrinking circles of affluence. But more and more people aren't, and more and more non-humans aren't, of course ...

I’ve lately become ever more aware of the internal schism (still) between my beliefs about what the future is likely to hold and the socially-agreed reality in which I operate. The shared assumptions about the future that surround me, how implausible they seem to me, and yet how much they still shape my choices. The inner reflects the outer. I’m taking some time out to sit with that yet more deeply, for something tells me clearly that if I don’t I’ll look back on my forthcoming choices with regret. (4. März 2019, Antwort auf einen Kommentar von Dougald Hine unter einem Blogpost von Shaun)

Zitate zweiten Grades:

“It's easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.” (Quote investigator)

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman

“Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success, namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” ― Wendell Berry