The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (The CBC Massey Lectures)

Debt today functions as a kind of makeshift insurance scheme for people without recourse to adequate wages or social assistance, pushing household borrowing to record highs—Canadian households now have the worst debt ratio of any G7 country, outpacing the US.

It is not enough to be granted the right not to be abused by our governments without the corresponding right to receive assistance; not enough to possess civil and political rights without social and economic ones as well.

Manufactured insecurity reflects a cynical theory of human motivation, one that says people will work only under the threat of duress, not from an intrinsic desire to create, collaborate, and care for one another. Insecurity goads us to keep working, earning, and craving—craving money, material goods, prestige, and more, more, more.

Curiosity is something we can safely be consumed by, since consuming knowledge enriches us without creating waste.

Certainty is not security, it’s a snapping shut and a cover-up—an attempt to escape from the insecurity of not knowing.

The most secure communities do not have the most police. They are the ones with the resources to meet people’s needs.

you do not have to be at rock bottom to feel insecure, because insecurity results as much from expectation as from deprivation.

Manufactured insecurity encourages us to amass money and objects as surrogates for the kinds of security that cannot actually be commodified, the kind of security we can find only in concert with others.

When we examine society through the lens of insecurity, which affects everyone, as opposed to inequality, which emphasizes two opposing extremes, we can see the degree to which unnecessary suffering is widespread even among those who appear to be “winning” according to the logic of the capitalist game.

Today, we are caught between two conflicting theories of human motivation: one that sees material security as the basis for personal and social growth (a view held, for example, by Inglehart and Maslow), and another that is committed to manufacturing insecurity to keep people compliant, anxious, and striving.