Act: Inspiration

Deep Solidarity

April 8, 2019

Sometimes, like Kant, I’m moved to write by reading something I so profoundly disagree with. Tonight, curiously, I’m moved by a wish for a little less disagreement.

Reading Jeremy Lent’s excellent post What Will You Say To Your Grandchildren? and seeing it so passionately take issue with Jem Bendell’s “dangerously flawed” calls for Deep Adaptation, I just felt deep solidarity with both.

I left a comment on Jeremy’s piece, then thought I’d expand it a little and post it here too, because, in truth, vigorously debating the question of whether it’s all too late is not where I want to see these two outstanding gentlemen spend their potency.

The more critical question – I believe they would both agree – is what to do in these times. And, counter-intuitively and doubtless controversially, I’ve come to believe that the answer to the first question isn’t necessarily central to that. Wendell Berry’s words bear repeating:

“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.”

For me, standing in resistance to the system driving mass extinction is not dependent on knowing – or even believing – we might succeed.

I know Jem’s a fan of this piece I wrote six years ago about my painful grappling with ‘is it all too late?’:

And yet there I was in Parliament Square on Hallowe’en when we declared rebellion against the UK government, and accordingly getting arrested for the first time in my life 14 days later. The next day I stood on Blackfriars Bridge and gave a speech to my fellow rebels about my experience in jail, but also about the fact that I believe it’s all too late, and how I relate to that.

Many have come to thank me since, for not being afraid to voice that dark truth, and for sharing a vitalising way forward for those who share that belief.

The whole day was so profoundly nourishing, and while I don’t intend or expect to have grandchildren – I have enough on my plate trying to ensure the safety of the children already on the Earth – it would be a rich pleasure to tell the tale to yours:

Of course, in the months since, just as Roger Hallam and others predicted, those 100+ arrests garnered headlines that helped launch a global movement in a world sick and terrified of the future we’re creating.

Does that change my belief that it’s all too late? No.

But does that belief in any way undermine the joy and delight I feel at telling a story with my life that I’m proud to tell?

Not one bit!

And I’ll be proud, grateful and emboldened to know that when I take my stand this month, I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with authentic and impassioned folk like Jeremy and Jem.

Shaun Chamberlin

In 2005 I quit my job to devote myself full-time to exploring the dominant cultural stories and ‘myths’ that chart the course for our society and, in particular, how we might change direction before we end up where we are headed. My various efforts since have been covered across the UK press, including by the BBCGuardianSunday TimesIndependent and Daily Express, as well as internationally by Time magazineBloomberg News and the Financial Times. Perhaps my proudest achievement is having shepherded the late David Fleming‘s extraordinary, award-winning Lean Logic and Surviving the Future to posthumous publication. In light of their ever-growing popularity, I taught the ‘Community, Place and Play: A Post-Market Economics‘ course at Schumacher College, was executive producer of 2020 film The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?, and now partner with Vermont’s Sterling College, both as consulting scholar on their EcoGather project and leading the groundbreaking online programme ‘Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time’. Meanwhile, putting the theory into practice, I am one of the six custodians of legendary free pub ‘The Happy Pig‘, and was involved with the Transition Network since its inception, leading to my co-founding Transition Town Kingston and authoring the movement’s second book, The Transition Timeline, back in 2009. I was one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees, and have previously served as chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, a director of the campaigning organisation Global Justice NowChelsea Green Publishing‘s commissioning editor for the UK/Europe and an advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, as well as co-authoring the All Party Parliamentary report into carbon rationing. My writing roams across social, political and spiritual themes, including popular explorations of collapse, energy and ecological issues, and has found homes from online platforms openDemocracyThe Oil Drum and The Huffington Post to print magazines such as TikkunSTIRThe EcologistThe LandKosmos and Resurgence, along with academic publications such as the Solutions and Carbon Management peer-reviewed journals (including the most-read paper in the history of the latter). Over the course of my work I have delivered presentations at venues ranging from community groupsRebellionsClimate Camps and Occupations to the London School of Economics, the UK and Scottish Parliaments and the European Commission, and been shortlisted for the Sheila McKechnie Foundation Environmental Campaigner Award as well as, locally, being named Kingston’s ‘Green Champion’ by the council and Kingston Guardian newspaper. I have also edited or contributed chapters to a diverse collection of books, from Grow Small, Think Beautiful (Floris Books), The Future We Deserve (PediaPress) and Low Impact Living Communities (Diggers & Dreamers) to What We Are Fighting For (Pluto Press), The Moneyless Manifesto (Permanent Publications) and two of the Dark Mountain books.

Tags: building resilient societies, climate change responses, grief