The Name of the World is Chaos: Learning in the Anthropocene

All learning revolves around the act of questioning. How do you address chaos with questioning? Answers are important and relevant, but they reflect the questions we ask. The quest in learning, the ability to learn, does not come from answers unless you question them. To learn is to question how to question. Now, the Anthropocene shocks and provokes apathy. In its shadow, both the old problems and their solutions stand as outdated responses for action to follow. The circumstances from which the old questions emerged change, old questions are now inappropriate. The long and steady decline of convincing arguments for an improved capitalist economy and its technological fixes presents us instead with a depressing mass of problems that have replaced the previous goals of neo-liberal systems. In Chapter 15, we present an approach to the chaos presented by the Anthropocene condition, based on small steps and aesthetic action. If the Anthropocene is the age of ontological and epistemological chaos, then what does it mean to learn?