Introduction
This paper proceeds as follows: I introduce the existential metacrisis dynamics as an embodiment of a mythical Moloch who consumes humanity and the ecosystems that predicate our existence (Cooley et al., Reference Cooley, Shin, Cooley and Avance2023; Pineault, Reference Pineault, Dörre, Rosa, Becker, Bose and Seyd2019; Schmachtenberger et al., Reference Schmachtenberger, McGilchrist and Vervaeke2023). Referring to Rupert Read’s (Reference Read2017) concept of Thrutopia as a frame, defusing Moloch emerges as the educational challenge of our time. To position Thrutopia, I follow with a discussion of the dialectic between utopian idealisms and dystopian outcomes, Margaret Atwood’s (Reference Atwood2015) Ustopia. I then propose ways to move beyond akrasiaFootnote 1 , denial and paralysis toward anchoring hope in dire circumstances as a prerequisite for educational engagement with the Moloch. With reference to the minor theory of Katz (Reference Katz1996), I suggest minor-utopian strategies and focus areas for the development of a thrutopian curriculum that can disrupt the metacrisis Moloch. I conclude with the comment that we already have many of the required educational and pedagogical tools at hand, but need to activate them with purpose in deriving a curriculum for thrutopian times and environmental education, in particular.
The Polycrisis, Metacrisis and the Moloch
The world is becoming engulfed in an accelerating maelstrom of existential crises, including the climate emergency (Ripple et al., Reference Ripple, Wolf, Gregg, Rockström, Mann, Oreskes, Lenton, Rahmstorf, Newsome, Xu, Svenning, Pereira, Law and Crowther2024), a multitude of interconnected ecological overshoot, over-extraction, pollution and species extinction trajectories (Cowie et al., Reference Cowie, Bouchet and Fontaine2022; Fanning et al., Reference Fanning, O’Neill, Hickel and Roux2022; Herrington, Reference Herrington2021; Merz et al., Reference Merz, Barnard, Rees, Smith, Maroni, Rhodes, Dederer, Bajaj, Joy, Wiedmann and Sutherland2023), as well as the destabilisation of the post-WWII global and social world order, as right-wing, populist, nationalist, neofascist, neoliberalist and neocolonial ideologies gain traction (Ayers, Reference Ayers2024). Extreme floods and storms alternate with severe droughts and wildfires. Not a week passes, as it seems, without destructive climatic extremes somewhere on Earth that turn entire regions into dystopian disaster zones (Iles et al., Reference Iles, Samset, Sandstad, Schuhen, Wilcox and Lund2024). A major war is currently being fought in Europe, and the Middle East conflict has entered a genocidal phase for the people of Palestine (Pieris, Reference Pieris2024). Artificial hyperintelligence threatens to make human existence expendable through exponential developments in computation and robotics (Kasirzadeh, Reference Kasirzadeh2025). Dystopia is encroaching on the collective consciousness, while perceptions of peaceful and abundant normality within liberal Western democracies are receding into utopian domains. Summarily, these crises have been called the polycrisis (Lawrence et al., Reference Lawrence, Homer-Dixon, Janzwood, Rockstöm, Renn and Donges2024).
The current political, psychological and spiritual condition in which humanity finds itself has been termed the metacrisis (Neal, Reference Neal2023; Rowson, Reference Rowson2021; Schmachtenberger et al., Reference Schmachtenberger, McGilchrist and Vervaeke2023). Arendt’s (Reference Arendt1958) insights into the paradoxical and dystopian dimensions of humanity’s ever-increasing capabilities are playing out in our time. Rowson (Reference Rowson2020) argues that the metacrisis is a crisis of identity and likens it to a living, self-propelling process that defines us from within and usurps our “social imaginary” (para. 6). The metacrisis is “educational, epistemic and spiritual in nature” (Rowson, Reference Rowson2020, para. 5). Contemplation of the metacrisis perspective induces a sense of finitude (Read & Alexander, Reference Read and Alexander2019) with profound consequences for education. Stein (Reference Stein2022) made the point that education precedes politics and, therefore, is generative for civilisations. Consequently, he saw the metacrisis as a result of educational failure and argued, “that there is no viable future for civilisation that does not include a radical change in the nature of our educational systems” (p. 6). The metacrisis is education’s ultimate challenge today.
The metacrisis dynamics and the game-theoretical imperatives that keep society stuck in its accelerating destructive spiral have been referred to as Moloch (Schmachtenberger et al., Reference Schmachtenberger, McGilchrist and Vervaeke2023), a mythical “abomination who calls for the ritual sacrifice of children” (Cooley et al., Reference Cooley, Shin, Cooley and Avance2023, p. 8) and now demands “the whole world as a sacrifice” (Pineault, Reference Pineault, Dörre, Rosa, Becker, Bose and Seyd2019, p. 119). The Moloch is fed by the actions of humanity in competition for dwindling resources, the unsustainable demand for economic growth and the struggle for power and dominance in the capitalist monopoly game.
The Moloch metaphor was recited in Allan Ginsberg’s (Reference Ginsberg2010) poem “Howl”, which led to Alexander’s (Reference Alexander2014) comprehensive meditations on Moloch and the capitalist entrapment. Alexander asks, “The implicit question is—if everyone hates the current system, who perpetuates it?” (p. 2), and he then lets Ginsberg answer: “‘Moloch’. It’s powerful not because it’s correct—nobody literally thinks an ancient Carthaginian demon causes everything—but because thinking of the system as an agent throws into relief the degree to which the system isn’t an agent” (p. 2).
The Moloch is not an agent that can be argued with, but rather an automaton, an emergent, self-organising monstrous assemblage generated and coded by the competitive capitalist socio-economic system that feeds with exponential appetite and growing powers on limited planetary resources and, ultimately, on humanity itself. It is now racing to replace people with robots and human minds with AI systems. The emergent Moloch has downward causation affecting the lives of humans and the more-than-human world (Voosholz & Gabriel, Reference Voosholz and Gabriel2021). In the language of Deleuze & Guattari (Reference Deleuze and Guattari1983, Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987), the Moloch is an emergent assemblage of individuals, organisations and nations, with territorialising behaviour and internal self-maintenance through the coded actions its structure and dynamism demand from its constituents. Cole (Reference Cole2021, Reference Cole2022) argues that, in confronting the Anthropocene, as he frames the metacrisis, the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari is perhaps finding its most important application today. I built the theoretical foundations of my thesis on climate change education on their work and provided an accessible summary of their concepts (Everth, Reference Everth2024, pp. 11–17 and pp. 21–36).
The personification of the metacrisis dynamics as an entrapping Moloch provides a powerful, revealing and educationally useful metaphorical framing that can mobilise thinking, generate useful narratives and unmask false moral compromises. With reference to the environmental movement, Lakoff (Reference Lakoff2010) argues that “[t]he truth must be framed effectively to be seen at all” (p. 80). The Moloch metaphor portrays the complex network of interacting metacrisis dynamics as an emergent assemblage that territorialises the planet and its constituent heterogeneous elements, including individuals, organisations and flows of matter. Human agency and actions are revealed as conditioned by Moloch’s coding. The Moloch metaphor enables effective pedagogical mirroring but also personal distancing as part of the struggle to break free eventually: “I am not the Moloch, but I too have been feeding it. What can I do to change my behaviour?” The Moloch framing provides a powerful lens for the development of the anti-complicity pedagogy discussed by Zembylas (Reference Zembylas2019). A depiction of the Moloch from the early eighteenth century by Johann Lund is shown in Figure 1. For a comprehensive critical discourse on the pedagogy of vilifying evil, I recommend Kessel et al., (Reference Kessel, Edmondson and Journell2024).
Figure 1. Moloch Idol, Public Domain.
Defusing Moloch: Thrutopia and the Educational Challenge of Our Time
Education has traditionally served as a mechanism for intergenerational cultural reproduction (Nash, Reference Nash1990; Webb et al., Reference Webb, Schirato and Danaher2020). During the exuberance of exponential economic expansion of the post-WWII decades, education in Western societies focused predominantly on socialising students into productive and rewarding roles within the evolving planetary domination of humans. Narratives of dystopias and utopias featured as warnings and inspirational contexts on the sides of educational curricula (Papastephanou, Reference Papastephanou2016; Priyadharshini, Reference Priyadharshini2019; Sypnowich, Reference Sypnowich2018). A wide scope of rewarding pathways could be envisioned between dystopian and utopian extremes toward relatively benign and prosperous futures. Today, the tables have turned, and modernity, either because it remains incomplete or, more likely, because it is fundamentally predicated on exponentiality and inevitable overshoot, reveals itself as utopian in a one-planet reality with dystopian consequences (Vieira, Reference Vieira2021). The enviro-material consequences of the metacrisis dynamics are rapidly becoming dominant features of contemporary events. The situation we find ourselves in calls for a radical redefinition of the purpose of education in response to the realities in which young people are thrown today (Stein, Reference Stein2019, Reference Stein2022).
Realising that dystopias and utopias are unsuitable narrative guardrails to guide humanity through the coming time, Rupert Read (Reference Read2017) coined the term Thrutopia to bring into focus visions of life ahead that can shape expectations, adaptations and agency to help us navigate the long trajectory of climate and related emergencies. Read (Reference Read2017) proposed that a thrutopian narrative can inform us “how to live and love and vision and carve out a future, through pressed times that will endure” (para. 5). He argues:
The climate crisis is going to be a long emergency, probably lasting hundreds of years. It is useless to fantasise a shining sheer escape from it to utopia. But it’s similarly useless, dangerously defeatist, to wallow around in dystopias. We need ways of seeing, understanding, inhabiting, creating what will be needed for the very long haul. Visioning the politics and ecology of getting through. (Read, Reference Read2017, para. 5, emphasis added)
Read (Reference Read2017) argues that visions of a world being returned to balance cannot remain static but must become dynamic, adapt to the growing dystopian realities and be “continually remade” (para. 6) on a permanent basis. This continual adaptation is giving rise to the thrutopian narrative in which society pragmatically navigates emerging dystopian challenges without succumbing to defeatist despair or deferring our dreams of a better world to ever-distant utopias. Instead, Read (Reference Read2017) prompts us to pay indefinite attention to the present, the here and now.
The concept of thrutopia says: Don’t defer your dreams. We need those dreams now. Experience the present as paradisiacal, and change it where it isn’t, and then we might just get through. (Read, Reference Read2017, para. 8)
Read is not channelling hedonism here. The human capacity to persevere and build a better world necessitates positivity, energy, dreams, love and compassion. These qualities must be cultivated despite and as an essential antidote to the dire circumstances of the metacrisis.
Read’s pragmatic approach and his focus on the nearfield of events and relationships make his thrutopian concepts appealing for educational theory and praxis and provide a useful framing in which educational strategies for overcoming Moloch can emerge. I propose a thrutopian curriculum that enacts his call for attention to the present through a focus on daily steps of resilience building, environmental care, positive relations and enjoyment of the possible. This would be a curriculum where dystopian possibilities are pre-emptively confronted as present-day challenges, and utopian concepts are pulled from the permanent deferral inherent in major utopias down into minor-utopian (Katz, Reference Katz1996; Parrinder, Reference Parrinder2012) realisations in the daily here-and-now of education and active survival. I contend that thrutopian thinking can be empowering, help to defuse the rise of debilitating climate and eco-anxiety (Jarrett et al., Reference Jarrett, Gauthier, Baden, Ainsworth and Dorey2024) and provide a framework in which strategies to defy Moloch can emerge. However, before tracing thrutopian educational strategies, it is helpful to contrast Thrutopia with Utopia, Dystopia and “Ustopian” (Atwood, Reference Atwood2015) dialectics.
Utopias, Dystopias and Ustopian Dialectics
Visions of how the future ought to be, as envisioned from historical and contemporary subjective perspectives, have inspired literature and philosophy and guided social movements, power struggles, wars and revolutions throughout human history. However, seductive utopian visions of better futures carried within them the seeds of dystopian hellscapes. Religious utopias were generative of dystopian outcomes, the crusades, the Inquisition and witch-burnings or the dystopian life of women under the Taliban (Penn, Reference Penn2024). The grand utopian propositions of the early 20th century produced arguably the most profound dystopian human suffering, from the utopian hubris of Nazi Germany resulting in the Holocaust and a world-consuming war, the Stalinist collapse of communist utopian ideals into mass-murder in the Gulag, the utopian phantasies of the Khmer Rouge ending in killing fields or the consequences of Israeli utopianism ending in dystopian suffering of the people of Palestine. As the consequences of the metacrisis grow exponentially, capitalist modernity is being unmasked as a utopian ideal with the dystopian consequence of giving rise to Moloch, global overshoot, environmental destruction and the looming replacement of humans by AI systems (Wojewoda, Reference Wojewoda2023). Utopian idealisms, when observed from the point of view of those not fit for or included in their perfectionist aims, can be as hellish as the dystopias they might wish to escape from. Utopia and dystopia are entwined in a dialectic entanglement.
To describe the dialectic inseparability of utopias from their corresponding latent dystopian potentials, Atwood (Reference Atwood2015), in her “Dire Cartographies” of literary utopianism, coined the word “ustopia” (p. 66) and argued that ustopian literary fantasies are frequently bound with cartography through which imaginary landscapes are linked with idealist or hellish mindscapes in which place and being are interwoven through mutually generative relationships. The utopian promises of modernity evoke a successive transformation of growing areas on Earth into dystopian sceneries. Real-world utopian idealism remains Earth-bound and is, therefore, inseparable from mitigating and surviving the dystopian environmental trajectory of the metacrisis. Atwood’s (Reference Atwood2015) ustopian dialectic is central to the metacrisis discourse. Read’s (Reference Read2017) Thrutopian vision arises as an interstice between utopian and dystopian imaginations within a “restless dialectic [that] resists the calm ossifying into complacency” (Gunderson, Reference Gunderson2021, p. 156). Within this dialectic, we need to find the seeds for radical hope (Lear, Reference Lear2009) and a curriculum to get us through.
Anchoring Hope: From Akrasia, Denial and Paralysis to Love and Forgiveness
Envisioning thrutopia will require the radical hope (Lear, Reference Lear2009; Mosley et al., Reference Mosley, Neville, Chavez-Dueñas, Adames, Lewis and French2020) that oppression through Moloch and collective complicity in the destructive rituals of capitalism can be overcome through collaborative resistance. Alexander (Reference Alexander2014) sets Elua, the God of love and the pursuit of “niceness, community and civilisation” (p. 22), who “embodies the principles of altruism, empathy and coordination” (Peborgh, Reference Peborgh2023, p. 2) as a foil to Moloch. However, the obstacles are significant. The complexity of the metacrisis and the breakdown of science-informed, progressive democracies under neofascist, right-wing populism—the “organic crisis of neoliberal capital accumulation” (Ayers, Reference Ayers2024, p. 413)—is eroding major-utopian (Parrinder, Reference Parrinder2012) ideals of a global state-led sustainability transition. Greta Thunberg’s astonishing appeal and impact raised hopes that students and schools could become a centre for cultural transformation (Everth & Bright, Reference Everth and Bright2022). However, five years after she inspired the first global school strikes, her momentum has faded, and a majority of students appear to be in denial or akrasia, while education systems continue to pay only lip service to the climate crisis. After his fateful re-election in 2024, Donald Trump has thrown the official position of the USA into a dystopian denial of reality and is deliberately destroying the capacity of the USA to address the climate and sustainability crises he denies. Moloch reigns supreme in Trump’s MAGA America. “Fixing this world” in a grand global action seems to recede from reach.
The weight of the situation is becoming increasingly difficult to bear for educators working to implement climate change education and for their students (Bright, Reference Bright2023; Everth, Reference Everth2024). What do we tell our children? Little shoulders cannot bear this. Being conscious of this situation can turn life into a rollercoaster of fear, culpability and dread, resulting in a paralysing inability to form a persuasive response. Active participation in the socio-economic milieux that is generative of the metacrisis almost inevitably results in cognitive dissonance, akrasia and depression. Reflecting on Lutheran Christian Ethics, Swenson-Lengyel (Reference Swenson-Lengyel2017) turns to a proclamation of forgiveness as the gateway to survival, to getting through in the face of anthropogenic dystopia, practical denial and moral weakness. With this move, the author provides a fitting segue to thrutopian education:
Christian ethics, then, cannot only proclaim the norm but must also include (again and again) a proclamation of forgiveness, a reminder of freedom, and an encouragement of love. Our failure can be our starting point rather than that from which we hide in denial and in moral paralysis. We must recognise and work with these moral weaknesses rather than seeing them solely as that which must be overcome for environmental ethics to flourish. (Swenson-Lengyel, Reference Swenson-Lengyel2017, p. 183)
This move toward forgiveness, freedom and the encouragement of love has universal appeal and is not bound to any particular religious doctrine. I argue that in these words, Swenson-Lengyel (Reference Swenson-Lengyel2017) has found an anchor stone from which a successful thrutopian educational stance can emerge, dovetailing with the insights of Alexander (Reference Alexander2014) and Peborgh (Reference Peborgh2023) regarding the weakness of Moloch. I draw attention here to the realisation that the polycrisis (Lawrence et al., Reference Lawrence, Homer-Dixon, Janzwood, Rockstöm, Renn and Donges2024), while having direct, major existential physical implications for the future, is only part of the issue. However, it is Moloch, the metacrisis dynamics within the social discourse and the behaviour-inducing or blocking psychology it entails, that troubles the human capacity to escape from our predicament and to educate us out of it. Getting through will require addressing the psychological drivers of the metacrisis to enable the human capacity to respond effectively to the physical, cognitive and emotional challenges. It will require the deterritorialisation of the Moloch assemblage in billions of minds, and especially in the minds of those who come after we are gone. In this context, deterritorialisation in the language of Deleuze & Guattari (Reference Deleuze and Guattari1983, Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987) refers to liberation from the Moloch assemblage and ultimately its dissolution and disempowermentFootnote 2 .
Minor-Utopian Strategies: Toward a Thrutopian Curriculum
In sketching steps towards a thrutopian curriculum, I will connect to Read’s (Reference Read2017) insight of focusing on the present, the here and now, the non-deference of life and dreams, the small steps, the local resilience building and the minor-utopian deterritorialisations (Katz, Reference Katz1996) of the metacrisis dynamics through Alexander’s (Reference Alexander2014) invocation of Elua, and Swenson-Lengyel’s (Reference Swenson-Lengyel2017) acts of love and forgiveness. I also acknowledge the work of Wheatley (Reference Wheatley2025), who addressed the question of how PK-16Footnote 3 education should tackle the metacrisis by developing 21 educational goals, which encompass much of the spectrum of recommendations that my Thrutopian curriculum perspective would agree with.
Like in Rosen’s (Reference Rosen2003) children’s book on making it successfully through obstacles that cannot be circumvented, we need stories that focus on the beauty in the day, and the pragmatic realisation that obstacles can be experienced, and passed through, one step at a time, whereby each individual step becomes a minor-utopian interstice within the dominant major context of the crisis dynamics. I contend that this minor-utopian step-by-step progress offers a core learning that can get us through.
I am building here on the work of Katz (Reference Katz1996) on “minor theory” flowing from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (Reference Deleuze and Guattari1986). Katz (Reference Katz1996) argued that minor theory creates an interstice in dominant major contexts and “tears at the confines of major theory; pushing its limits to provoke ‘a line of escape’, a rupture – a tension out of which something else might happen” (p. 489). As Katz (Reference Katz1996) states, minor theory invokes a continual rupturing of the oppressive powers of the major narratives by “subversion, escape, transformation. It is metamorphic – ‘a becoming’” (p. 491). The political power of minor theory, as Katz (Reference Katz1996) argues, enables minorities to create interstitial disruptions of dominant powers. The embrace of minority, or “‘Becoming-minor’ is a subversive act” (Katz, Reference Katz1996, p. 496)Footnote 4 . I contend that pragmatic minor thinking is crucial for disrupting the oppressive and disempowering impact of the major crisis mele and defeating Moloch through the aggregation of a multitude of minor, achievable and liberating steps. See Figure 2, for a vision of Moloch’s deterritorialisation.
Figure 2. The deterritorialisation of Moloch through minor-utopian interstice.
Moloch and the metacrisis are global phenomena. However, they derive their devastating impact from the summation over the actions, inactions and psychological conditions of billions of people, their families, communities and local contexts, and the large-scale systems and structures of capital and political power that have emerged from them. The major-utopian response to the situation is an appeal to global solutions and society-wide, programmatic system change on a grand scale. However, in light of the ustopian dilemmas, hoping for the materialisation of major-utopian solutions is likely futile and disempowering. The Moloch will usurp grand utopias and direct their enactment to grow its powers. The strategy I propose for the deterritorialisation and disempowerment of Moloch is a minorisation of the problems, a refocusing on the minor contexts and relationships, from family to community and local place-based politics, the molecular tapestry from which the crises arise, within which we live and must get through and within which solutions can emerge. In my view, we already possess much of the educational theoretical and practical toolset to enact such a strategy, but we need to employ this deliberately now to form a thrutopian curriculum that defies Moloch and guides us and the next generations through.
Key Strategies for a Thrutopian Curriculum
I focus on the following strategic areas for such a curriculum. Most of these will be familiar to the reader, and in those cases, I will refer in this paper only briefly to the relevant literature.
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Philosophy of Existence, Purpose and Meaning, in and of Life
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Resilience Building through Nature Connectedness
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Place-Based Contexts and Community Building
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Learning from Indigenous Cultures and Wisdoms
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Ecofiction and Environmental Storytelling
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Meeting Moloch: Understanding the Metacrisis
Philosophy of existence, purpose and meaning in and of life
Moloch challenges the purpose of our existence and questions the meaning of life, and impacts teacher capacity to lead young people toward discovering meaningful perspectives in an increasingly meaning-deprived world. Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles (Reference Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles2022) talk about the “political and moral contortions” (p. 29) that trouble “Education at the Ends(s) of Worlds(s)” (p. 36). They point to cognitive dissonance, where our actions feed the Moloch despite our insights on the metacrisis and speak of the moral obligation for teachers to provide a meaningful outlook on life for their students. Generating hope while simultaneously teaching to take the metacrisis seriously requires the engagement of young people with philosophies of existence and a quest for purpose. It must take young people’s questions, ideas, concerns, despairs and hunger for a deep connection to meaning and purpose seriously. Education must address the “Inauthenticity at the level of personal experience” (Stein, Reference Stein2022, p. 9) with which questions of meaning are too often alienated by inauthentic engagement with the big questions of the meaning of life and meaning in life, the “fundamental cornerstone of wellbeing and flourishing” (Steger et al., Reference Steger, O’Donnell and Morse2021, p. 551). These questions begin in early childhood, when young people often ask very big questions, only to be deferred and disappointed by inauthentic deflections, because many adults may never engage authentically and deeply with these questions themselves.
I paraphrase here Steger et al., (Reference Steger, O’Donnell and Morse2021, p. 558), who referred to three foundational dimensions from the literature on meaning-making in life: coherence of cognition and experience of self; purpose of pursuits and goals; significance of mattering in and for the world. I argue that in a world of growing virtualisation of existence and globalisation of contexts, these three dimensions are becoming eroded and lose the essential intimacy of authentic anchoring in the immediate surroundings and human connections. Humans have been “ushered into a new kind of alienation” (Tease, Reference Tease2025), resulting in a lack of authenticity in viva activa, the enacted life (Arendt, Reference Arendt1958) and a vulnerability to intersectional oppression and disempowerment (Tease, Reference Tease2025). The dimension of significance and mattering is fundamentally linked to authentic relationships within the human and the more-than-human world. Confronting the meaning crisis and overcoming the sense of futility induced by the crisis focus is an essential prerequisite to galvanise thrutopian action. Steger et al., (Reference Steger, O’Donnell and Morse2021) emphasise that “meaning in life is a process not an outcome” (p. 570). This is an important insight for outcome-oriented education systems, focused on assessments, grades, achievements and the acquisition of status (Everth, Reference Everth2022).
Addressing the three educational foundations Steger et al., (Reference Steger, O’Donnell and Morse2021) referred to is linked to the realisation that the material impacts of the world crises are experienced locally, and the responses to these impacts call for local engagement. Minorisation of the crises through local place-based engagement, connection with nature and the building and nurturing of local community is a continual interstitial process of becoming (Katz, Reference Katz1996). The following thrutopian education strategies focus on local relationships, action, engagement and authentic experiences in the natural and human worlds that surround us.
Resilience building through nature connectedness
Nature connectedness is well regarded as a pathway for generating environmental awareness, providing emotional grounding and spiritual growth and instilling ecological behaviour (Otto & Pensini, Reference Otto and Pensini2017; Restall & Conrad, Reference Restall and Conrad2015), all of which will be crucial for a successful thrutopian curriculum. The experience of joy in nature fosters a sense of freedom and meaning-making, as well as a sense of independence from daunting global issues, and can induce threshold events that lead to life-changing personal spiritual transformation (Hollingsworth, Reference Hollingsworth2022). Nature-connectedness and outdoor education can foster the generation of hope and galvanise environmental action (Chawla, Reference Chawla2020; Mcphie & Clark, Reference Mcphie and Clarke2015; Pirchio et al., Reference Pirchio, Passiatore, Panno, Cipparone and Carrus2021). Bringing climate change into discourse with respect to experiences in the students’ local environment was found to be especially productive (Duke & Holt, Reference Duke and Holt2022). Local nature-based education is a minor theoretical interstice that disrupts the psychological distance and akrasia arising from major theoretical environmental issues. Teachers who have experienced the value of nature connection in their own lives often show a desire to incorporate it into their teaching (Everth, Reference Everth2024). Making it through the coming hard times will, without a doubt, require working with nature in local settings to generate physical and emotional sustenance by fostering a deep connection with the more-than-human life.
Place-based contexts and community building
Place-Based Education (PBE) has gained significant traction in curriculum reforms. “PBE is a promising and meaningful pedagogical approach” (Yemini et al., Reference Yemini, Engel and Ben Simon2023). Extensive literature argues that PBE is an effective strategy for climate change education and strengthening community resilience in the face of hazards and emergencies (e.g., Hata et al., Reference Hata, Kondo, Allen, Singer and Furihata2021; Mbah et al., Reference Mbah, Ajaps and Molthan-Hill2021; O’Sullivan, Reference O’Sullivan2019; Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Reference Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles2020; Winograd, Reference Winograd2016). Nusche et al., (Reference Nusche, Rabella and Lauterbach2024) explore education as a driver of transformative change with regard to climate change in an OECD working paper and argue that local contexts offer “microcosms in which sustainability solutions could be tested and piloted” (p. 9) to induce tipping points for social behaviour change. Education in local place-based contexts provides opportunities to engage in minor-utopian disruptions and lines of escape from the major crisis discourse. Engagement with “local obstacles” offers teachers opportunities to make a difference, build resilience and undertake steps of “getting through”, one small issue at a time.
A thrutopian lens on sustainability education and PBE must be critical of techno-fixes and, paraphrasing what Adam et al., (Reference Adam, Whitehouse, Stevenson, Chigeza, Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Lasczik, Wilks, Logan, Turner and Boyd2019) argued, “unlearn what sustainability means before we can authentically engage with the wicked problem it presents” (Everth, Reference Everth2024, p. 75).
Backwards to the future: learning from indigenous cultures and wisdoms
Deterritorialising Moloch is a part of a decolonial process (Thornton et al., Reference Thornton, Graham and Burgh2019; Whyte, Reference Whyte2017). A thrutopian response and adaptation may greatly benefit from a rediscovery of Indigeneity, Indigenous knowledge and intercultural collaboration (Lazrus et al., Reference Lazrus, Maldonado, Blanchard, Souza, Thomas and Wildcat2022; Mbah et al., Reference Mbah, Ajaps and Molthan-Hill2021; Mustonen et al., Reference Mustonen, Harper, Revera Ferre, Postigo, Ayanlande, Benjamsen, Morgan and Okem2021). We may find that “walking backwards into the future” (O’Sullivan, Reference O’Sullivan2019) by embracing Indigenous wisdoms can be a key strategy for a thrutopian pathway. In this sense, education can foster a process of becoming re-indigenised with planet Earth, what Whyte (Reference Whyte2017) calls “renewing relatives” (p. 158, emphasis in the original). Freeing ourselves from Moloch is also a process of “decolonisation and reinhabitation” (Gruenewald, Reference Gruenewald2003, p. 8) of our place in the world. Indigenous and postcolonial perspectives can turn dystopian realities into a thrutopian stance (Ashcroft, Reference Ashcroft and Kim2021; Whyte, Reference Whyte2018) and refuse the colonial linear time (Rowland, Reference Rowland2019; Wright, Reference Wright2006) that replaced natural cycles with exponentiality and collapse trajectories. The thrutopian stance relates to the realisation that for Indigenous cultures, the looming apocalypse is not an “impending future to be dreaded” (Whyte, Reference Whyte2018, p. 227) but already a contemporary and post-apocalyptic struggle. For Indigenous people, “the present has already been dystopian” (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Reference Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles2022, p. 132) due to the impact of colonialism and the displacement of Indigenous life by the unsustainable expansion of modernity. As Katz (Reference Katz1996) argues, the embrace of Indigeneity and solidarity with minorities constitutes minor theoretical disruptions of dominant powers. Learning with and from Indigenous cultures is a crucial component of a thrutopian curriculum.
Ecofiction and environmental storytelling
A thrutopian curriculum will rely on generating collective moral imaginations. Ecofiction and environmental storytelling (Manwaring, Reference Manwaring2024; Molthan-Hill et al., Reference Molthan-Hill, Luna, Wall, Puntha and Baden2020; Robinson et al., Reference Robinson, Bacigalupi, Foster, Hudson, Burt, Hanson-Kahn, Barrage, Lord, Hastie and Baden2022) can elicit these imaginations. Stories are like mirrors through which the self and the world are reflected. In thrutopian times, “[w]e truly need ‘rainbow mirrors’ – diverse visions that reflect the plurality of social norms, collective aspirations, and the potential of technology to support human and planetary Flourishing” (Mytka & Isakovic, Reference Mytka and Isakovic2024, p. 54). Navigating the ethical dilemmas of entrapment in Moloch feeding behaviours while envisioning otherwise must be undertaken in the present, with reference to the immediate future and within the scope of our own relationships. Reflective storytelling and imagining are continual and procedural, not focused on outcomes. If storytelling is supposed to elicit action, then these stories must refer to local and personal contexts (Manwaring, Reference Manwaring2024). The rainbow must be grasped and turned into the proverbial “pot of gold” of love, care, community and difference-making in the here and now instead of being chased as it recedes over the horizon, never drawing closer. Positive, hope-inspiring stories in which the reader or listener can see themselves are far more likely to result in action-taking (Moltan-Hill et al., Reference Molthan-Hill, Luna, Wall, Puntha and Baden2020).
Meeting moloch: understanding the metacrisis
Teaching about the metacrisis responsibly and effectively is undoubtedly a complex and challenging task. Older students will need to develop a deep understanding of the dynamics that drive the metacrisis and are generative of Moloch. In his 21 educational goals, Wheatley (Reference Wheatley2025) begins with six life goals aimed at “Understanding the global metacrisis” (p. 3). All of his goals for understanding the severity of the metacrisis are valid and important. However, meeting Moloch requires solid preparation. This is the reason I put this point last on my list, but not least. Coming to realise the gravity of the situation can be emotionally crushing and deeply life-altering. I recommend Shugarman’s (Reference Shugarman2020) book on how to talk to children about climate change as a practical guide for teachers. Foremost, we must remain authentic and, as Shugarman (Reference Shugarman2020) argues, tell the truth when talking to our students about climate change. Shugarman holds that “[t]he crisis unfolding is still within our control” (p. 9). While I argue otherwise, nobody controls the Moloch because it is an emergent system and can best be defused from the bottom up, I agree with her affirmation of hope as an essential element when teaching about the metacrisis:
In order to keep going, we must be unafraid to look truth in the eye. There is no one magic seed that will grow the beanstalk to help us reach the castle high in the clouds. Instead, there are billions of seeds, overflowing handfuls for every person on our planet. Each one of us is part of the larger solution, a piece of the puzzle of climate hope. Some of the pieces fit easily together; others are much more challenging to find. Even once we find them, we may still have difficulty seeing how they fit together. (Shugarman, Reference Shugarman2020, p. 9)
Conclusion
In my view, entering into a thrutopian stance on education is a new beginning. It is a move to take the situation we are in seriously with all its implications and respond accordingly. The thrutopian perspectives on the here and now and on local contexts are dovetailing with the focus on engagement with process instead of outcomes and the experience of continually making a difference from which meaning is derived. At present, the world is on a rapidly ascending trajectory of increasing ecological and material effects of the metacrisis, and at a minimum, it will take centuries to undo the consequences of our actions. Thrutopia is a process and will be ongoing for a very long time, spanning our lives and those of our descendants for generations to come. The Moloch emerged from the collective akratic actions and reactions of billions of people. Something different can emerge in its place if we dream and educate the conditions for it into being. The rising instability in the world presents an obligation to become involved because small actions matter most when systems are out of balance. Generating thrutopian curricula will be a continual process, not an endpoint, but the frameworks of reference we can produce will likely endure. Foremost, education must generate and amplify local vision and action, again and again, in a recursive spiral to get us through. This will not be accomplished through imaginations of grand utopias but through a persistent focus on the next beautiful day, the next step in the nearfield of our gaze, while enacting minor-utopian acts of love and care for the relationships that matter. Then, eventually, Moloch might run out of minds to feast on, and we might get through.
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge encouragement and discussions with my dear PhD colleagues Chris Moorey, Thea De Peteris, and Ria Bright, my former PhD supervisors at Waikato University, Laura Gurney and Chris Eames, and work colleagues at EcoQuest during the writing of this article.
Financial support
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Ethical standards
Nothing to note.
Author Biography
Thomas Everth obtained a master’s degree in physics in Germany, had a career in the IT-Industry and worked as a science and mathematics teacher in New Zealand before completing a PhD in Education at the University of Waikato, undertaking research on climate activist secondary school teachers. Thomas is currently a lecturer in ecology at EcoQuest, Centre for Indigeneity, Ecology and Creativity in Whakatiwai, New Zealand.
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