How can we ensure that future generations enjoy the miracle of life? Learning as if Life Depended on it is a work of planetary reckoning and educational leadership by the Director General of the International Baccalaureate and former State Secretary of Finland, Olli-Pekka Heinonen. Informed by his statesmanship and deeply rooted in the practices, idioms and metaphors of his Finnish cultural heritage, Heinonen explains why the root cause of global crises is that we don’t adequately perceive the ideas we live and work with. Our worldview is out of tune with reality. Humanity is suffering from an identity crisis. We have become overtrained and undereducated. This book has four main parts. Part One, about our predicament, details how we are challenged to survive and thrive as a species just as we are discovering that familiar solutions no longer work. Part two highlights how our prevailing perceptions keep us stuck, through an analysis of ten pervasive illusions of the modern world. Part