The Age of Insecurity - (CBC Massey Lectures) by Astra Taylor (Paperback)

About the Book

"These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially precarious, overwhelmed and anxious, and worried about the future. While millions endure the stress of struggling to make ends meet, in reality, the status quo isn't working for anyone, even the affluent and comparatively privileged; they, too, are deeply insecure. What is going on? The Age of Insecurity exposes how seemingly disparate crises -- our suffering mental health and rising inequality, the ecological emergency, and the threat of fascism -- are tied to the fact that our social order runs on insecurity. Across disparate sectors, from policing and the military to the wellness and beauty industries, the systems that promise us security instead actively undermine it. We are all made insecure on purpose, and our endless striving shapes how we feel about ourselves and others -- including what we believe is personally and collectively possible. The Age of Insecurity sheds new light on our contemporary predicament, exposing the psychological and political costs of the insecurity-generating status quo, while proposing ways to forge a new path forward."--]cProvided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Finalist, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction
Finalist, 2024 Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn't working for anyone, even those who appear to have it all. What is going on?

In this urgent cultural diagnosis, author and activist Astra Taylor exposes how seemingly disparate crises--rising inequality and declining mental health, the ecological emergency, and the threat of authoritarianism--originate from a social order built on insecurity. From home ownership and education to the wellness industry and policing, many of the institutions and systems that promise to make us more secure actually undermine us.

Mixing social critique, memoir, history, political analysis, and philosophy, this genre-bending book rethinks both insecurity and security from the ground up. By facing our existential insecurity and embracing our vulnerability, Taylor argues, we can begin to develop more caring, inclusive, and sustainable forms of security to help us better weather the challenges ahead. The Age of Insecurity will transform how you understand yourself and society--while illuminating a path toward meaningful change.

Review Quotes

"A handbook for a new way forward." -- Literary Review of Canada

"A must-read." -- Peace News

"Astra Taylor's The Age of Insecurity made me feel I understood something obvious that I had overlooked before ... that we on the left can (and need to) offer a different, better conception of security." -- Current Affairs

"Taylor asks us to contemplate a better world ... This ethic of insecurity, collectivism and egalitarianism should be on the forefront of every educator's mind." -- Winnipeg Free Press

"Taylor makes the case for clearing away capitalism's distracting, destabilising regime; Keltner for expanding and more clearly valuing our connections to each other, to our own depths and capacities, and to the grandeur and order of the world beyond." -- New Statesman

"The ideas that Taylor puts forth are not only radical, but world changing ... The Age of Insecurity is exactly the right book at exactly the right time. That time is now." -- The Tyee

"The Age of Insecurity doesn't tackle those challenging questions. What it does, instead, is explain why our world hardly allows them to be posed and hardly gives us the breathing space to think about them. It is, yes, a readable and insightful analysis of our present. But we have a lot of those--maybe too many. What makes this book worth the reader's time is its idiosyncratic blend of the personal and the public, the emotional and the economic." -- Commonweal Magazine

Astra Taylor is a rare public intellectual, utterly committed to asking humanity's most profound questions yet entirely devoid of pretensions and compulsively readable.

--Naomi Klein

Blending big-picture thinking with the history of the populist struggle in America [Taylor] makes a strong case that the time for change is now.

-- "Publishers Weekly"

Whether she is writing about gender discrimination in the tech industry, the plight of refugees, or the rights of the natural world, Taylor reveals in her essays a forthright commitment to "the cause of common humanity.

-- "Kirkus"