At last year’s Vancouver Writers Festival, I went to see Rebecca Solnit in conversation with Kathryn Gretsinger of the CBC. At one point Solnit spoke of Astra Taylor’s book, The Age of Insecurity (Anansi), with such enthusiasm that I decided I had to read it for myself. The Age of Insecurity is the book version of 2023’s CBC Massey Lecture series, which took place over five evenings in September of that year, in Winnipeg, Halifax, Whitehorse, Vancouver and Toronto. Taylor traces the word “security” to the Latin phrase sine cura—sine meaning “without,” and cure referencing the Roman goddess Cura, seen as “the embodiment of care, concern, anxiety and worry.” Insecurity, in other words, is to be weighted down with cares. Taylor feels that “as long as we are alive, we are destined to exist in a condition of what I’ll call existential insecurity.” She sees capitalism as “a kind of insecurity-producing machine,” in that it deliberately seeks to create in us a sense of dissatisfaction with what we have, constantly in need of “new lifestyles, experiences, products, upgrades and apps with features we suddenly can’t live without.” She cites “Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, who made his reputation advising companies to intentionally stoke the fear of job loss to keep employees on their toes.” If, as Taylor claims, the sense of insecurity is pervasive and takes so many forms—anxiety about one’s job or financial situation; concerns about the planet and global warming; wars being waged in all corners of the world—you might well ask: how can one hope to achieve a feeling of security or a freedom from care? The way forward, in Taylor’s view, is to connect with others, fighting together “for collective forms of security based in compassion and concern instead of desperation and fear.” What’s more, “this communal and collaborative form of security is not something we have to create from scratch. It is here now, every time we watch out for one another: when we help and protect vulnerable friends and neighbours.” —Michael Hayward

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