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

Security means having some assurance of future stability and the ability to plan ahead.

What The Silent Revolution demonstrated was that varying levels of insecurity and security can have profound cultural and political consequences. Security or its absence can usher along the forces of reaction or of progress. It can stifle democracy or strengthen it.

The fact that our lives depend on biological and physical processes we can barely categorize, and complex dynamics we certainly do not command, should occasion wonder—and a large dose of humility. This humility is the ethos I associate with the good and generative capacities of insecurity, the kind that can help us be curious, connect, evolve, and

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.

The hazard, in other words, comes from the possibility that millions of people might be less stressed-out and more free.

The inherent volatility of capitalism and the uncertainty of life both undermine the predictability security seeks. These stresses don’t excuse unethical behaviour—including spying on or sacking employees—but they can help us understand what propels it.

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.

Trying to be less guarded, more resilient, and authentic does not preclude also trying, simultaneously, to change the structures that systematically assault our self-worth.

our economic system depends on manufacturing insecurity to create more pliable workers and insatiable consumers.