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Shaun Chamberlin Quotes
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Shaun Chamberlin is an author and activist, based in London, England. He is the author of The Transition Timeline, co-author of several other books including What We Are Fighting For, chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, and was one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees.
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14 quotes
Failure to live up to a truth doesn’t make it any less true, less worth striving for, or less worth defending.
The only economic system that has ever truly worked – the system upon which all others have depended – is Nature.
All our thoughts and beliefs are somehow hollow until they find expression in action.
Resilience isn't predicting the correct future and preparing for it; resilience is acting in ways that make sense across the widest range of possible futures.
Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2021)
Put starkly, most of the wild nature that was here fifty years ago is gone. And still we seek to grow the human economy, and cheer when that growth accelerates.
I always thought economics wasn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Now I realise it might be the end-all.
Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2018)
The threat to our way of life is a consequence of our way of life. That's what unsustainability means.
Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2020)
Accusations of hypocrisy themselves tend to be rather hypocritical — if no hypocrites were permitted to hold opinions, there would likely be no opinions at all.
It’s demonstrably not ‘simply human nature’ to annihilate all around us. No, it’s the nature of this particular human culture. Human potential is so much more, and that’s why conflating the two is so toxic.
No system can ever relieve us of our personal responsibility, and it is essential that we all recognise the need to change the way we live.
What We Are Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto (2012)
The more one learns about Earth and her Earthlings, the more paradoxical the notion of a *Universal* Declaration of *Human* Rights appears...
Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2023)
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.
It is hopefully not too controversial to note that unsustainable things end. There are two possibilities from here – we dramatically change direction or we end up where we are headed. Either way, we are on the cusp of radical change.
Whatever you do will change the world. If you take the most default option, you follow the most mainstream, down the line, ‘just keep your head down and get on with what they’re telling you to do’, approach, then that’s the world that you’re helping to create. There is no way that you can not change the world.