Drawing on the educational experimental mega site “Naturkraft” situated at the Danish west coast (Kardyb, 2023), we engage with the questions of how 1) education in the Anthropocene faces ongoing challenges from the emphasis on anthropocentric conceptualizations of the world, and 2) how education is always enmeshed within different realities that are constantly de-centered, eccentric, destabilized, out of sync with anthropocentric aspirations of control. Drawing on Timothy Morton tri-partite notion of the world-for-us, the-world-in-itself and the world-without-us- (Morton, 2013, 2016), we open up for perspectives on how these three worlds co-exist, overlap, and struggle in Naturkraft, and potentially in any given educational setting. Adhering to anthropocentric logic within education quickly reaches its limits as we face global, regional, and local challenges in a time of hyper-object-derived wicked problems (Lysgaard, Bengtsson, & Laugesen, 2019). A way of navigating these problems is to indulge in visions of shedding existing educational thought and practice in order to transcend correlationistic foundations of education (Clarke & McPhie, 2020; Paulsen, 2021). We argue that such transcendence is never out of reach, and on an ontological level requires more emphasis on rigor of thought and less on the journey to pinpoint an authentic outside that can rip us out of our correlationistic slumber (Lysgaard & Bengtsson, 2020). Through analysis of the manmade ‘nature’ in and of the Naturkraft site, we argue for the omnipresence of the world-without-us and the potential of engaging with this darker side of the specific and general educational site (Bengtsson, 2018; Kardyb, 2023). Being attuned to and engaging with aspects of education that breaking with correlationism is no mean feat though. Such an effort shares characteristics with efforts to engage the like of the Lacanian Real, Philip Pulman’s Dust, or Lovecraftian cosmic Horror (Bird, 2001; Harman, 2012; Lysgaard, 2018). There is no chance to look directly at it without being stunned, our gaze diverted, or the thing that we want to see withdrawing from us. At the same time there is no escaping the world-without-us as our petty plans and hopes for the past, present and future are easily dashed aside by forces outside of our time, space and senses. Naturkraft offers examples of how education and educational practice benefit and suffer from the encounters with the world-without-us and how these encounters instill a notion of realism that challenges the ongoing emphasis on correlationistic foundational values of education.

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