The Wisdom of Insecurity PDF Download

Author: Alan Watts
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307809862
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
An acclaimed philosopher shows us how—in an age of unprecedented anxiety—we can find fulfillment by embracing the present and living more fully in the now. He is "the perfect guide for a course correction in life" (from the Introduction by Deepak Chopra). The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it. Alan Watts draws on the wisdom of Eastern philosophy and religion in this timeless and classic guide to living a more fulfilling life. His central insight is more relevant now than ever: when we spend all of our time worrying about the future and lamenting the past, we are unable to enjoy the present moment—the only one we are actually able to inhabit. Watts offers the liberating message that true certitude and security come only from understanding that impermanence and insecurity are the essence of our existence. He highlights the futility of endlessly chasing moving goalposts, whether they consist of financial success, stability, or escape from pain, and shows that it is only by acknowledging what we do not know that we can learn anything truly worth knowing. In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts explains complex concepts in beautifully simple terms, making this the kind of book you can return to again and again for comfort and insight in challenging times. “Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, Watts had the rare gift of ‘writing beautifully the unwritable.’” —Los Angeles Times

Author: Astra Taylor
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 1487011946
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
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.

Author: Pranab Bardhan
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674287584
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
An ambitious account of the corrosion of liberal democracy in rich and poor countries alike, arguing that antidemocratic sentiment reflects fear of material and cultural loss, not a critique of liberalism’s failure to deliver equality, and suggesting possible ways out. The retreat of liberal democracy in the twenty-first century has been impossible to ignore. From Wisconsin to Warsaw, Budapest to Bangalore, the public is turning against pluralism and liberal institutions and instead professing unapologetic nationalism and majoritarianism. Critics of inequality argue that this is a predictable response to failures of capitalism and liberalism, but Pranab Bardhan, a development economist, sees things differently. The problem is not inequality but insecurity—financial and cultural. Bardhan notes that antidemocratic movements have taken root globally in a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic groups. In the United States, older, less-educated, rural populations have withdrawn from democracy. But in India, the prevailing Hindu Nationalists enjoy the support of educated, aspirational urban youth. And in Europe, antidemocratic populists firmly back the welfare state (but for nonimmigrants). What is consistent among antidemocrats is fear of losing what they have. That could be money but is most often national pride and culture and the comfort of tradition. A World of Insecurity argues for context-sensitive responses. Some, like universal basic income schemes, are better suited to poor countries. Others, like worker empowerment and international coordination, have broader appeal. But improving material security won’t be enough to sustain democracy. Nor, Bardhan writes, should we be tempted by the ultimately hollow lure of China’s authoritarian model. He urges liberals to adopt at least a grudging respect for fellow citizens’ local attachments. By affirming civic forms of community pride, we might hope to temper cultural anxieties before they become pathological.

Author: Allison J. Pugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199957711
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
"We live in a tumbleweed society, where job insecurity is rampant and widely seen as inevitable. Companies are transforming the way they organize work. While new working conditions offer gains for some workers, others lose out. Home life offers little respite: while diverse types of families are more accepted than ever before, stability is increasingly lacking in our intimate lives. In The Tumbleweed Society, sociologist Allison Pugh examines the ways we navigate questions of commitment and flexibility at work and at home in a society where insecurity has become the norm. Drawing on 80 in-depth interviews with three groups of parents who vary in their experiences of job insecurity and family structure, Pugh explores how people are adapting to the new culture of insecurity and how these adaptations themselves affect what we can expect from each other. Faced with perpetual insecurity both at work and at home, people construct stronger walls between the two, expecting little or nothing from their jobs and placing nearly all of their expectations for fulfilling connections on their intimate relationships. This trend, Pugh argues, often has the effect of making intimate lives even more fraught, reproducing the very tumbleweed dynamics they seek to check. Pugh shows that our experiences of insecurity shape the way we talk about obligations, how we interpret them as commitments we will or will not shoulder, how we conceive of what we owe each other--indeed, how we are able to weave the fabric of our connected lives"--

Author: Andy Hargreaves
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807743593
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
We are living in a defining moment, when the world in which teachers do their work is changing profoundly. In his latest book, Hargreaves proposes that we have a one-time chance to reshape the future of teaching and schooling and that we should seize this historic opportunity. Hargreaves sets out what it means to teach in the new knowledge society, to prepare young people for a world of creativity and flexibility and to protect them against the threats of mounting insecurity. He provides inspiring examples of schools that operate as creative and caring learning communities and shows how years of "soulless standardization" have seriously undermined similar attempts made by many non-affluent schools. Hargreaves takes us beyond the dead-ends of standardization and divisiveness to a future in which all teaching can be a high-skill, creative, life-shaping mission because "the knowledge society requires nothing less." This major commentary on the state of today's teaching profession in a knowledge-driven world is theoretically original and strategically powerful?a practical, inspiring, and challenging guide to rethinking the work of teaching.

Author: Katherine S. Newman
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1250119464
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A sharp examination of the looming financial catastrophe of retirement in America. As millions of Baby Boomers reach their golden years, the state of retirement in America is little short of a disaster. Nearly half the households with people aged 55 and older have no retirement savings at all. The real estate crash wiped out much of the home equity that millions were counting on to support their retirement. And the typical Social Security check covers less than 40% of pre-retirement wages—a number projected to drop to under 28% within two decades. Old-age poverty, a problem we thought was solved by the New Deal, is poised for a resurgence. With dramatic statistics and vivid portraits, acclaimed sociologist Katherine S. Newman shows that the American retirement crisis touches us all, cutting across class lines and generational divides. White-collar managers have seen retirement benefits vanish; Teamsters have had their pensions cut in half; bankrupt cities like Detroit have walked away from their commitments to municipal workers. And for Generation X, the prospects are even worse: a fifth of them expect to never be able to retire. Only the vaunted “one percent” can face retirement without fear. Other countries are confronting similar demographic challenges, yet they have not abandoned their social contract with seniors. Downhill From Here makes it clear that America, too, can—and must—do better.

Author: David Rothkopf
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 161039738X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
In the wake of 9/11, America and its people have experienced a sense of vulnerability unprecedented in the nation's recent history. Buffeted by challenges from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the financial crisis, from Washington dysfunction to the rise of China and the dawn of the era of cyber warfare, two very different presidents and their advisors have struggled to cope with a relentless array of new threats. You may think you know the story. But in National Insecurity, David Rothkopf offers an entirely new perspective into the hidden struggles, the surprising triumphs, and the shocking failures of those charged with leading the United States through one of the most difficult periods in its history. Thanks to his extraordinary access, Rothkopf provides fresh insights drawing on more than one hundred exclusive interviews with the key players who shaped this era. At its core, National Insecurity is the gripping story of a superpower in crisis, seeking to adapt to a rapidly changing world, sometimes showing inspiring resilience—but often undone by the human flaws of those at the top, the mismanagement of its own system, the temptation to concentrate too much power within the hands of too few in the White House itself, and an unwillingness to draw the right lessons from the recent past. Nonetheless, within that story are unmistakable clues to a way forward that can help restore American leadership.

Author: Michael J. Graetz
Publisher:
ISBN: 0674980883
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The acclaimed authors of Death by a Thousand Cuts argue that Americans care less about inequality than about their own insecurity. Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro propose realistic policies and strategies to make lives and communities more secure. This is an age of crisis. That much we can agree on. But a crisis of what? And how do we get out of it? Many on the right call for tax cuts and deregulation. Others on the left rage against the top 1 percent and demand wholesale economic change. Voices on both sides line up against globalization: restrict trade to protect jobs. In The Wolf at the Door, two leading political analysts argue that these views are badly mistaken. Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro focus on what really worries people: not what the rich are making but rather their own insecurity and that of people close to them. Americans are concerned about losing what they have, whether jobs, status, or safe communities. They fear the wolf at the door. The solution is not protectionism or class warfare but a return to the hard work of building coalitions around realistic goals and pursuing them doggedly through the political system. This, Graetz and Shapiro explain, is how earlier reformers achieved meaningful changes, from the abolition of the slave trade to civil rights legislation. The authors make substantial recommendations for increasing jobs, improving wages, protecting families suffering from unemployment, and providing better health insurance and child care, and they guide us through the strategies needed to enact change. These are achievable reforms that would make Americans more secure. The Wolf at the Door is one of those rare books that not only diagnose our problems but also show us how we can address them.

Author: Richard Harrison
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442272856
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
Growing dependence on cyberspace for commerce, communication, governance, and military operations has left society vulnerable to a multitude of security threats. Mitigating the inherent risks associated with the use of cyberspace poses a series of thorny public policy problems. In this volume, academics, practitioners from both private sector and government, along with former service members come together to highlight sixteen of the most pressing contemporary challenges in cybersecurity, and to offer recommendations for the future. As internet connectivity continues to spread, this book will offer readers greater awareness of the threats of tomorrow—and serve to inform public debate into the next information age. Contributions by Adrienne Allen, Aaron Brantly, Lauren Boas Hayes, Jane Chong, Joshua Corman, Honorable Richard J. Danzig, Kat Dransfield, Ryan Ellis, Mailyn Fidler, Allan Friedman, Taylor Grossman, Richard M. Harrison, Trey Herr, Drew Herrick, Jonah F. Hill, Robert M. Lee, Herbert S. Lin, Anastasia Mark, Robert Morgus, Paul Ohm, Eric Ormes, Jason Rivera, Sasha Romanosky, Paul Rosenzweig, Matthew Russell, Nathaniel Tisa, Abraham Wagner, Rand Waltzman, David Weinstein, Heather West, and Beau Woods.

Author: Hugh Gusterson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520945085
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Americans are feeling insecure. They are retreating to gated communities in record numbers, fearing for their jobs and their 401(k)s, nervous about their health insurance and their debt levels, worrying about terrorist attacks and immigrants. In this innovative volume, editors Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman gather essays from nineteen leading ethnographers to create a unique portrait of an anxious country and to furnish valuable insights into the nation's possible future. With an incisive foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich, the contributors draw on their deep knowledge of different facets of American life to map the impact of the new economy, the "war on terror," the "war on drugs," racial resentments, a fraying safety net, undocumented immigration, a health care system in crisis, and much more. In laying out a range of views on the forces that unsettle us, The Insecure American demonstrates the singular power of an anthropological perspective for grasping the impact of corporate profit on democratic life, charting the links between policy and vulnerability, and envisioning alternatives to life as an insecure American.