Introduction

You’re coming to college at a good time for imagination and creativity. The 21st century will be the age of the ecological transition, a period when people re-invent their relationships to the world around them. Like the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the ecological revolution will fundamentally change how people understand nature, human nature, and the relationship between them. In this century, earth’s people must learn how to harmonize our lives with the teeming life of a blue-green planet. We must harmonize our “buy-o-sphere” with the biosphere, nesting human economies gently within fragile natural economies. Any college—and especially one that prepares young people for lives of worth and service in a global community—needs to be mindful of this change. And any student who’s thinking of children or grandchildren needs to be a part of it.

Americans go to college for many reasons—for the intellectual challenge of great books and great conversations, for the personal challenge of living independently, for the vocational challenge of learning to do good work in the world, for the aesthetic challenge of the arts, for the civic challenge of citizenship in a democratic society. We go to college for the intellectual life and for the social life. We go for textbooks, exams, essays, research projects, performances and all-nighters. We go for beer, bull sessions, movies, concerts, and parties. We go to play sports and to watch sports, to make music and listen to it and dance to its beat. We go for friendship and for romance. Sometimes we just go just because all our friends are going too.

But most of all, we go to college to think about what’s good. We want to think about a good life, and how to live one.

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