Understanding the Anthropocene world – contemporary difficulties

Abstract

It is proposed that we need to develop a new educational language game that is responsive to both a) our understanding of the world and b) the world in itself, but also responsive to c) the fact that we now live in an Anthropocene world, and that this d) calls for a shift in both our world understanding and our view on education. Very broadly speaking this can be understood as a demand for a shift in what education should be about. In the Late Holocene humans fostered education as an enterprise that worked with helping new generations with changing themselves for the (presumed) better. Yet the educational aim was tied to the Holocene world view, and also its possibility of being actualized was conditioned by the life conditions of the Holocene world. When we today witness a shift in world view and world conditions, it is argued that it calls for an adjustment of what education should be about and how it should proceed. If we keep on with Holocene education – through families, schools, companies, art etc. – it implies that we try to keep on helping new generations to change themselves to function in a world that no longer exists and tie them to a worldview that is highly problematic, reductive and destructive.