Bringing human passion into Sustainability education

Abstract

Human passion, it can be argued, is the source of all human life and progress. It can also be argued that human passion, when misguided, misunderstood and developed along unhealthy, aggressively competitive paths or solely for material greed is the source of much of the suffering, conflict, cruelty, pain and destruction that humans cause one another. In reality, the creative and destructive sides of human passion are deeply integral to what it means to be human, but as an educator I increasingly wonder how can we differentiate between the two sides? How can we learn or, more poignantly, relearn to overcome our own deeply felt and historically reinforced fears of difference and change? How to develop the human passion of the newly discovered brain centres of empathy, care and loving communication—the areas of emotional and social intelligences that most productively bridge difference and different cultures—in learning how to best achieve sustainable living on this planet? In doing so, we could potentially create the type of education for sustainability that would reinforce how to passionately care for ourselves, each other and our planet, in order to ultimately save humanity itself.