This new book is addressed primarily to academics who teach at the college level, even though its core message is of urgent relevance to anyone who cares about the welfare and well-being of the younger generation.
The book argues that modern civilization is in the initial stages of Collapse. In addition to social and economic disruptions and political upheavals, the ongoing Collapse is demolishing our taken-for-granted certainties and precipitating a profound crisis of meaning. Given the enormous challenges of living through the coming years and decades, we must fundamentally change how we live, teach, and lead.
Teaching at Twilight invites the readers to take an unflinching look at the rapidly deteriorating state of the earth’s life-support system, become aware of its implications for human civilization, and rethink their role and responsibility in light of that awareness.
From the Preface
This book is not about “sustainability.” In some ways, it is about the opposite of sustainability, about what happens when we fail to achieve a sustainable state within the grace period that nature gave us for this purpose. Nor is this book about saving the planet; instead, it provides suggestions for moving forward after we’ve realized that humanity may already have caused more damage than nature can fix on human time-scales. For decades, scientists have been warning us that bad things will happen unless we change course. This book doesn’t repeat that warning; instead, it is about what educators can do now, given that we did not change course and that bad things have already started to happen. As such, this is not the book that I wished to write, but it is definitely one that needed to be written.