Ideas - CBC Massey Lectures: Audience Q&A with Astra Taylor

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Insecurity has become a "defining feature of our time," says 2023 CBC Massey lecturer Astra Taylor. She explores how rising inequality, declining mental health, and the threat of authoritarianism, originate from a social order built on insecurity. In this episode, Astra Taylor answers audience questions from the cross-Canada tour. *This episode originally aired on Nov. 27, 2023.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad.

And welcome to a bonus sixth program in the 2023 CBC Massey Lecture Series, The Age of Insecurity, by writer, filmmaker, and political organizer, Astra Taylor. If you've been following along, you'll know what this year's lectures are all about. Insecurity, the feeling pretty much all of us have in today's world. Everything we've built our lives on seems unstable. There's not much we think we can trust. Political systems are wobbly, affordable housing is out of reach for many people,

and stable jobs are vanishing. Astra Taylor explores all this and more in her lecture series, Why Are Things This Way? And How Did We Get Here? When we were on the Massey tour through Winnipeg, Halifax, Whitehorse, Vancouver, and Toronto, the topic of insecurity seemed to touch a common nerve. During the question and answer sessions following each lecture, people across the country asked deep and pointed questions. We thought the questions as well as the answers were particularly good and worth a program on their own. Today on Ideas, we brought Astra Taylor back

to talk about the tour, the questions she got and the answers she gave, and to play some of those answers. This is That's a Good Question, a bonus edition of the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures. So again, thank you so much for doing this with us, Astra. Always a pleasure. I'm so glad to be here. So as advertised, we're going to be playing some exchanges that you had with people in the audience, the questions you fielded on the Massey's lecture tour.

Now, the first lecture was in Winnipeg, titled Cura's Gift. Can you summarize it briefly? I'm making the case that insecurity is indeed a critical part of modern life. And I distinguish in that chapter between two types of insecurity that I sort of riff on in the talks to come. One is existential insecurity, the kind of insecurity we feel just by virtue of being mortal, fragile, vulnerable creatures. And I contrast that with what I call manufactured insecurity, which is a kind of insecurity that is imposed on us by our economic and political system to facilitate power and profit. And that's a kind of insecurity I think that we don't need to accept. And then, in fact, we should resist and we should restructure our societies to make us all more materially and emotionally secure. to make us all more materially and emotionally secure.

I was there for that lecture, and it clearly resonated with the audience, because there were some really thoughtful questions that came about capitalism and the erosion of the self, about choosing optimism over fear, and about how the insecurity, as you say, kind of affects not just all of us, but affects innovation. How are these questions that you're hearing these days and the conversations you're having, how are they different than in times in the past? Audiences today are, I think, just more keenly aware of the urgency of addressing these sort of political questions. So, you know, compared to a decade ago, the climate crisis has certainly heated up.

As we gathered in Winnipeg that day, the sky was gray from wildfire smoke. There's a real fear for democracy. People are looking at authoritarians winning elections around the world, even in places like Finland and Sweden, where you think that wouldn't happen. You know, people are worried about technology. We're living in a moment of intersecting crises. There are so many emergencies. What are we going to do about it? So, you know, you're not really convincing people of the problem anymore. It's actually about trying to figure out solutions. So, great. So let's go to some of the Winnipeg questions. And you'll hear first the voice of Winnipeg moderator Marcy Marcuse. In part of the lecture, you mentioned that a good worker is an insecure worker. Is that a truth? Or is that just an image? Yeah, a lot of this, you know, there's different

things going on in these lectures. But I think one one thing that they're doing is trying to deconstruct that idea and challenge that idea and you know if you look at and here i'm drawing on the economist uh john kenneth galbraith and others who there was more discourse around insecurity actually in the middle of the 20th century but you know in that period where there was job security for again a subset of mostly white male unionized worker, those were incredibly productive times. So there's a strong correlation between job security and productivity. And it makes sense when you, again, look at all of that research that shows how job insecurity has just devastating consequences on people's physical and emotional health, right? So you're literally making people sick by making them insecure on the job and, you know,

trying to wring some extra motivation from them. But, you know, I think it's actually a self-defeating strategy. And so a question that a later lecture asked really explicitly is, well, what are the benefits of a baseline of material security? And there's just lots of evidence that it increases productivity, but also open-mindedness, tolerance, creativity. Another twin myth to this idea that an insecure worker is a good worker

is this idea that security will make people lazy and not take risks, right? You know, I think there's lots of evidence and I try to show quite a bit of it that that's wrong. So I do think it's an image, but I think it's a really powerful one. I asked Astra, so I'll repeat it here. We talked on the radio earlier, but do you view the lectures as a call to action or a call to

understanding? Yeah, my response to that question is that it's both, and I just don't see them as separate. I mean, you know, I do work at the intersection of sort of organizing. Again, I founded the Debt Collective, which has been, I think we can claim responsibility for the fact that student debt cancellation is now an official policy of President Joe Biden in the United States. But in that organizing, there's a whole lot of thinking. So I really bristle against the division

between theory and practice. I think that we shift our understanding in order to shift our actions. And then I think from shifting our actions, we actually realize, hey, maybe our ideas are wrong or, oh, what if you think about this? Or, you know, it's really, this idea is not reaching other people. Maybe I need to rearticulate and reassess. So to me, those things are one and the same.

And I feel like my life would be so much poorer if I didn't have a foot in both worlds, that if I didn't have that organizing outlet and then the space to think and read and be a serious nerd. I mean, partly because I think if I only did the sort of reflection idea side and I was telling people they should change the world, I would just feel like a phony because actually you have to try to do it

to just realize how hard it is, how hard it is to change these structures, which is why I don't think we can just dismantle everything because the structures are so big. It's hard to even change a little bit. Question? Yeah, you talked a lot about manufactured insecurity and it led to me to think, okay, manufactured by who or by what? But at the same time, you're saying don't tear down the system. I don't think there's a revolution button. There's not an abolish it all button. Like as an organizer, you need to be like, what can I change?

You know, you can almost be like, we need to dismantle the whole system. And then you're like, so I won't do anything now because that's such a big proposition. You know, so I think, I think we do need a radically different system, but I think we get there in steps, right? We get there by figuring out, you know, who we want to be in community with, who we want to organize with, whether it's the workers at our job or for me, you know, debtors and being in solidarity with debtors or people concerned with environmental destruction and like, what can we do together? And I think sometimes when you're just like,

we need to change the whole system, it's, it might be true. And I think it, I think the system I'd like to build is radically different, would be revolutionary compared to what we have. But I think we get there. Yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no shortcut. You know, we have to sometimes take small steps to get to that. Thank you. Yep. Two more questions. Oh, pardon me. Are you waiting there, sir? Okay. Three more questions. Are you all right, Oscar? Sure, go for it. Okay, here we go. You can do lightning round. So I'm thinking in a high level of human evolutionary constructs,

concepts such as selfishness, right, and cooperation, altruism. And it seems to me that one of the core reasons behind insecurity is selfishness. However, when I look at, when I read studies, people instinctively are inclined to be more cooperative and altruistic as an instinct than being selfishness. So why is seemingly this selfishness winning over our basic instincts to work together yeah so i mean i think the selfishness thing essentially goes to what i said about greed that

i don't think selfishness is the the root of the problem i mean i think we're selfish sometimes but we cooperate and collaborate a lot you know my my friend has anybody here read david graper the yeah um david graver is a he passed away, but a brilliant anthropologist, wrote a book called The Dawn of Everything. He wrote a big book about that. And he was like, there's all of this cooperation we just never even bring out. We never even acknowledge it. And we just kind of take it for granted. But if you drop something on the street, a stranger will pick it up and pass it to you. And they don't go like, and now you owe me five bucks. They just help you.

And I do think cooperation is a lot more present than we like to say. And the capitalist worldview, I mean, many of the biggest theorists of that system, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, explicitly say, we're selfish, right? That is part of the ideology, saying that is what human nature is about. But I think the way we structure our societies, as I said, can make us more insecure or less so. They can make us more selfish or less so, right?

There's a way in which a system that runs on insecurity, we have to be kind of selfish, right? I mean, I either have to buy a house that is mine and hope it appreciates so that I can have a chance of having some security in old age because the risks are joining the growing ranks of the elderly and destitute, right? I mean, so if there was a different way of providing housing, I would act differently, right? But social housing isn't an option where I live. So I think that the way we structure our societies really matters.

And I don't think on that point that we're up against some deep human nature. I think it is, incentives are important and we're incentivized to behave in certain way. It doesn't mean that we're always bad people. So there you're answering a question about the tension between the human drive to cooperate and the opposing drive to be selfish. And you're

saying that it's that way because that's how we've built society. Is there a way to square that circle? I don't think it's a circle that really needs to be squared because I don't see a contradiction there. I see cooperation as in our self-interest, you know, other people's safety and security and well-being is a key component of our survival. And so, you know, I think it's a false tension, and we're told that there's a tension there. And that's one of the myths that these lectures are trying to debunk. We're told that other people's security and well-being is somehow a threat to our own security and well-being, and that, you know, if we give people material security as a matter of right, so, you know, think right to housing or a right to a minimum income, that they'll get lazy. They won't work as hard, that society will go off the rails.

And, you know, I'm trying to push back on that binary and say, no, actually, you know, caring about other people, cooperating, other people's security is ultimately in our self-interest. Because our survival is tied up with the survival and well-being of other people. So the next stop, it was in Halifax, where the subject was barons or commoners. This was mostly about the evolution of human rights. And you made the point that people need things as much as they need rights. Stemming from that, there were a lot of questions, about 40 minutes worth in Halifax, covering everything from housing to legal rights to how to deal with apathy. So here's a selection of those questions and answers, starting with a question about the importance of hope. People often ask me about hope.

This is one thing when you're an activist, the end of every interview is like, how do you get that hope going, you know? I'm like, you know, hope isn't optimism. It's not the sense that things are going to go well, right? For me, hope is is in the words of marian cabba who's a great organizer and writer based in in new york now hope is a discipline yeah i think hope is a discipline it's something we have to really work to have in some in times

like this and i find that the organizing actually gives me hope because sometimes, you know, when things seem really despair-inducing and you realize that there are all these people who, despite their own struggles, are putting time in to try to change things, that's energizing, that's nourishing and hope-inspiring. So I guess I just do the same thing and find hope in other people. And maybe that's the answer, that hope is something that we actually create together through our actions and our commitments. But the alternative to not trying to cultivate this discipline of hope is, I think, to not act, which just seems unacceptable given all of the problems we're facing. So yeah, I think that's a helpful thing.

Hope isn't just an innate state. It's something that we actually can work on and cultivate in ourselves with other people. My name is Nick. I'm a master student and aspiring clinical psychologist, hopefully one day. I wanted to ask, kind of a theme of your talk to me seemed to be that political instability, as we're seeing it now, might be a consequence of the fact that economic insecurity and economic inequality are essentially synonymous. And so is it true that people need to feel like they're winning, even if we can solve the problem of economic insecurity? Or is economic inequality inherently and independently destabilizing? So you're saying that some right-wingers say that economic inequality is necessary because people like to compete. So I think maybe some right-wingers say that, but sort of the right-wing

view that I take issue with in the book is the idea that people need to feel afraid of the floor falling out from under them in order to be motivated. So I think more than tapping into people's love of winning, it's tapping into people's fear of losing, right? Fear of falling. And I think that's a very cynical and destructive view of human nature, and that there are all these other motivations that we could be tapping into. The desire to collaborate, to create, to be in community, to contribute something meaningful,

and not just motivate people through fear or through a desire to collaborate, to create, to be in community, to contribute something meaningful, and not just motivate people through fear or through a desire to win. Nobody's winning. I mean, if you look at the people who are winning according to the logic of the capitalist game, a lot of them seem pretty miserable. I mean, it's hard not to just beat on Elon Musk, but he was the richest man, and he does not seem happy. So, yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Hi, my name is Louis. My question is, to what extent is the activism you've described you're very involved in, which seems to be aimed at motivating governments to take positive right action. How does activism, what role does it have to play in motivating the electorate to potentially vote in governments that are more likely to impose positive rights? I mean, I think that's a great... I mean, I think they're obviously

sympathetic projects. I do think, you know, part of, there's a shifting consciousness perspective too. You know, again, we need to help foster this idea that we're entitled to positive rights. We're entitled to things like a good education without a lifetime of debt, or a place to live,

or a healthcare system that's not crumbling, right? Or a healthcare system that also offers dental care and, you know, prescription drugs. Like, we're entitled to more. So I think that shifting consciousness is something activism really does, and that serves both projects as you've outlined them. One, which is getting different people into office, and the second, which is then pressuring existing governments. My sense is the people who get all riled up to vote need to stay in the fight and then also continue to pressure even the people they like. You know, because even when they're...

It's actually the people on your side you should be pushing the hardest, because those are the people who, you know, ostensibly owe you something in return for you having elected them. And so that's also a kind of subtlety that I think sometimes people have a hard time with. Like, yes, you like this team better than the other team or teams, but the minute they're in, you have to push them like hell, right? They make good on the promises.

Like we really mean it. But we need to do it all. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you so much. to do it all. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening.

Thank you so much. My name is Caitlin. I think my question kind of builds on this kind human's question. I get so jazzed up when I hear you talk about rights and it makes me really excited, I think, to go and organize around some of these things that have such a deep history

and we really are entitled to do these things and I really believe it. And then I think the anarchist-y side of me is like, but so many super smart and super fiery people have been fighting for these things and pressuring the state to make good on these promises for so long

that a big chunk of me just wants to say, you know, how much more time and energy can we devote to pressuring the state? And would that time and energy be better spent in organizing in our communities? I mean, again, I think, you know, we need people doing all sorts of things, right? We need people engaging in community projects and also more prefigurative projects, which is the way of saying, you know, building experiments that might help us model different ways of relating to each other and being in community. And those kinds of projects can take all sorts of forms. But I guess for me, and anarchists know this really

well, which is ultimately you might want to get away from the state, but the state is interested in you, right? And at some point, if you are doing something that challenges power, you will have to interface with the state because you'll probably get in trouble. Right? And so I just think we can't afford to just go off. And because to me, there is no outside. So I'm all for community organizing. I'm all for labor organizing. I mean, part of why I've chosen to organize around debt is that it's very additive to other causes. You know, we can look at rising rates of indebtedness and household indebtedness in Canada is off the charts as a form of wage theft, right? Because people are underpaid at the job,

they have to borrow to close the gap. It's also very much tied to racial justice because there's deep histories of racialized predatory lending. It's tied to economic, sorry, ecological justice because to borrow means to borrow at interest, which means that economic growth is locked into our contracts, our lending system. So I'm always trying to find things that are additive, and resisting, sort of like it's

either or. Reform or revolution, in the state or against the state. So the point is, when you're going to get involved in a project, it's so contingent on where are you? Where are you? What levers do you have? What community are you in? Right? And allowing for that nuance and that situatedness, I think, is really key, especially when we're trying to build coalitions across difference, right, with groups that are doing something different than what we're doing. It's like, well, where are you? And who are you in community with? And

what opportunities do you actually have? Thank you. So those are questions from the Massey Lecture in Halifax. That last comment of yours, that what you do to make the world a better place really depends on where you are, your situatedness, as you call it. That felt like a very empowering message. Oh, good. I want it to be. I mean, I think my whole life is oriented towards trying to empower others, to trying to help people recognize the power they possess. And I think it's important to say that I spend most of my time organizing, trying to build collective power with other people, trying to sort of revitalize democracy from the ground up.

Not, you know, not just writing things about it or going around and lecturing about it, but really trying to do something and trying to give people what we might call credible hope. Right. something and trying to give people what we might call credible hope, right? Not just, oh, let's hope something happens down the road. There's some kind of miracle. But no, let's create hope together by acting in concert to change things because we know, looking at history, that that works. Informed hope. Yes. Not just like, you know, the writer Rebecca Solnit says, you know, hope's not a lottery ticket that you clutch, right? I mean, hope is something that you have to do day by day, action by action. Yeah. You're listening to That's a Good Question, a bonus edition of the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures,

where a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. In The Age of Insecurity, the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures, Astra Taylor explores the mystery of insecurity. In so many spheres of life, there's little to trust.

The systems that we count on to support us in healthcare, education, the law, housing, food supply, our very political systems themselves, all seem either on the verge of collapse or designed to exploit us. Astra's talks in Winnipeg, Halifax, Whitehorse, Vancouver, and Toronto struck a nerve with many people in the audience, and the question and answer sessions after each lecture were lengthy and impassioned. People were looking for answers to the great questions of everyday life. People were looking for answers to the great questions of everyday life. How do we build a better future? Today on Ideas, that's a good question.

A bonus edition of the 2023 CBC Massey Lectures. So next up, it was Whitehorse. The day of the Whitehorse lecture, there was a demonstration and a counter-demonstration about LGBTQ rights and educational policy in schools. I imagine for you that would have been quite memorable. So it was amazing to have my lectures line up with the day of this remarkable protest. So there was a small action that was a kind of far right action denouncing LGBTQ people and their allies. And then on the other side of the street, there were, you know, blocks and blocks of supporters of LGBTQ folks. And, you know, essentially just people standing up for individual freedom and the right to coexist and to not be discriminated against.

You know, in the lectures, I talk about the ways insecurity can be a conduit to sort of right wing authoritarian politics. Right. But I think, you know, it's a real problem and something we have to start talking about. Right. Is how do we give people better, more humane frameworks to understand, you know, the threats that they are facing or that they think they're facing. The demonstration and a question about it opened the Whitehorse Q&A session that evening. Let's listen to that now. Today was a day of protests and counter protests across Canada and here in Whitehorse. I'm wondering, and I think you've spoken to this, but how does the age of insecurity speak to what we witness today? How do we begin to talk to each other again? So I guess those two things. Yeah.

You know, we're in a moment that's similar to the one I'm drawing on the work of Ronald Engelhardt in this, similar to what he was describing in the 1970s. Rising inflation, economic downturns, and a resurgent right wing. And I think economic conditions don't explain everything. I'm not a reductionist, right? That everything can be explained by those forces. But I think many people contain different possibilities in them, right?

And as material insecurity rises, I think people are more susceptible to authoritarian appeals, and I think we're seeing that. So today was a day the protest was not really a space of dialogue. It was a space of shouting across the street and I think feeling our strength, right, feeling the solidarity of so many people that were there. But that can't be the only political strategy. You know, you said, well, how can we talk to people? I'm very much for trying to organize with people who don't agree with you. I think that's really important. I think there are some people that you can't reach for dialogue.

And that's why I think we have to work on changing the economic conditions. Because I think the evidence shows that does change people's behavior. When people feel less afraid, like there's less scarcity, people, again, as I argue in the piece, become more open-minded and tolerant. And even if it's not everybody, it's a significant shift. But part of, you know, what motivated this, these lectures and my thinking about insecurity was my, is my organizing. I mean, my organizing with the Debt Collective is a big part of my life. The Debt Collective is the world's first union for

debtors. You know, even that, even building a movement of debtors was first trying to you know build connection between people who didn't see that they had something in common because debtor wasn't an identity that was politicized it was like well i'm just someone who has debt you know and my life is hard because of it and we were saying well no this is actually a basis for solidarity with other people in the same situation as you but even if we were to magically win and erase the debts of all of our members, given the nature of the economy today, people would still be very insecure. And so I think part of what I'm trying to do with these lectures is to say, is to widen the frame and say, look, even folks who appear to be doing well actually feel like the floor

could fall out from under them at any moment. And there's a basis for solidarity there too. You know, so there's a reason, you know, a renter and somebody who, you know, has a mortgage, but is worried about what's going to happen when the interest rate goes up and they can't make their payments anymore

might have a basis for fighting for a different kind of housing system and the idea of housing security for all. So yeah, I think we need to take multiple approaches. You know, sometimes it's good to just reinforce your political stance like today and just shout and show your power. Sometimes it's good to try to have dialogue, but I think sometimes we just try to change those economic conditions and behavior will change as a result. I think there is a way in which people's behavior does... There's a kind of feedback loop where policy shapes people's orientations.

Thank you for the evening. Thank you for your words. I was born insecure. I am a black woman I'm a lesbian I'm insecure I feel as if I'm always organizing and I'm always marching

do you think that there will be a day where it actually changes I'm sorry for the heavy question. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you for that question. I mean, I think that's a real, a real question. I mean, when you're just being you, right, you're also being assaulted in some ways and having to assert your rights, your equality. And then when you're organizing, to organize is to annoy people. It is. It's to say, you know, hey, you have to pay attention to this, or you should pay attention to

this. And, you know, come to this meeting, give your limited time to this cause, and we probably won't win, but it's worth trying. So I guess I'm saying I hear that. I hear the hardness of it. I am optimistic, though, that if we organize at scale, we can win. I mean, I think, you know, look at the march today. The side that was standing up for, you know, basic human dignity, equality, love, decency, vastly outnumbered the other side, right? Yeah, I believe it, you know.? So we have the many. They have money. We know, looking back at history, that people lose a whole lot. You know? And then there's a breakthrough. And then you have to really fight and protect that breakthrough because

things can go into reverse. So I don't know if we'll ever get there. In fact, I wrote a whole book about democracy. Democracy may not exist, but we'll miss it when it's gone. About just how we're never actually done with the democratic project. And it ends with the image that we shouldn't aspire to be founding fathers of a democracy where everything's just done, finished. But rather to be perennial midwives. Always birthing democracy and reaching for the next horizon. Because even if we got where we want to go, I would hope that a few generations later, they're like, wow, that was the dark ages.

You know? But yeah, there's also, you know, I've been taking a lot of solace in Miriam Kaba's definition of hope. She's a prison abolitionist based in New York. And she says, hope is a discipline. You know? And I think that's right.

Like, you don't just hope or believe things are going to get better you know you discipline yourself and you have hope and you keep doing the work but we should also be allowed to take breaks sometimes when we're tired um yeah just a quick question I'm curious on your take on how you shape education systems that socialize people positively for the social good and the the collective good versus conforming them to negative social ideals I'm just curious on your take yeah I mean I guess my initial response to that is that that's a really big job just for educators and one I think one problem with our education system is that educators are expected to fix so many social problems that are beyond the classroom. I mean, it's not fair to ask teachers who are underpaid and already having to perform

so much vital labor to then somehow make vast social inequities disappear, right? I mean, the fact that many kids come to school hungry, the fact that school, you know, kids are under this barrage of negative advertising and social media and all this stuff, and teachers are just supposed to magically fix that. So, I mean, I think that's where those of us who aren't teachers have a role to play. Like, let's create a more fair and less exploitative system, because

a teacher's job, I think, would be a lot easier. It would be easier then to nurture those capacities that we're talking about. So yeah, I guess that's my initial response, is it just can't be all on educators. But I think trust is key, and figuring out, you know, how much, given the reality we're facing, given all the social problems, like, how much trust can we extend to other people? And, like, leading with as much trust as possible feels to me like an important experiment instead of, you know, meeting it out like it's a scarce resource. And maybe I'm just an idealist, but I think in lots of situations, people do rise to the occasion when you express a kind of faith in their capacities and in their trustworthiness. Woo! Thanks.

Those were excerpts from the question and answer session following the third of the Massey lectures in Whitehorse. You're talking there about trust in that last answer, that trust is not a scarce resource. Maybe we can even trust people a little more to do the right thing. Is it fair to say that means you're an optimist about human nature? There's the famous quote by Antonio Gramsci, who says that, you know, we should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will, you know, in the sense that, yes, we should be sort of pessimistic about our odds making things better. But nevertheless, you know, we should keep going and we should keep trying, even if we think we're going to fail. And there's something to that

framework. You know, Gramsci's quote has always appealed to me, but I don't know if it's entirely right. I think we can actually have optimism of the intellect, too, because when you look back on history, people have made amazing social progress against tremendous odds. Transatlantic slave trade was abolished. Women won the right to vote. LGBTQ people do have rights today. We have protections for disabled people. We have international human rights law that encodes all sorts of protections. Yes, we have a long way to go. We're facing a lot of challenges today. But there's a lot of evidence that when people, when people come together to create social change, that they can win. So, you know, I'm kind of, that's the thing. I'm not, I don't think it's just a character trait, you know, like, oh, I just have like the optimism gene. I think it really is, you know, optimism of the intellect. And then that actually gives me optimism of the will.

I look back at all these people who I really admire, my historical heroes, and I think, okay, I want to contribute a bit to that progress. You know, we have to bend the arc of the universe towards justice. It doesn't just bend that way. But people working together can do that. We can exert that moral force. Okay, so next up on the Massey tour was Vancouver with a focus on ecology, where you raise questions about our responsibility to the natural world. Here are a few questions that you answered in Vancouver,

leading off with one from the moderator, CBC Morning Show host Stephen Quinn. I have a question which is, out of all of the horrifying scenarios that you've just outlined for us, what is, what's most imminent, do you think? And which one is most solvable I mean if you were going to do one thing and have it be successful so I think there's sort of two things happening in this talk one is I'm saying all of these problems are actually, they actually share a root, right? Which is the way we value or devalue the more than human world and an economic system that can put a price tag on a fallen tree, but not on a living forest or on an ecosystem.

And so I think our various strategies have to aim at that, at transforming that. But in terms of what we do as individuals, I think that for me, the organizer in me always goes back to, well, where are you? What community are you part of? Who can you build power with? What's most urgent in the place that you're from? So I think there's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all recipe for every individual. There are places where you might be able to

get amazing legislation passed. In New York, there's a big push for public investment in renewables that people were working on for a long time. If you're a teenager or a kid who doesn't have political rights, then maybe you join a climate lawsuit or something like that.

But I think, for me, an effective strategy has to aim at the deeper, profound revolutionary transformation of our economy. But as individuals, we can only take little bites of that apple based on where we are and what the possibilities are. Do you feel as though we are moving closer to the commons or further away politically, sociologically? Oh, I mean, I think, sadly, further away. That's where the energy is.

And the commons is a useful concept in that it can describe all sorts of things. It can describe all sorts of things. It can describe, you know, internet connectivity. It can describe, you know, social services from healthcare to housing. It can describe ideas and culture. But yes, we are not in a position where the commons are becoming more dominant, but certainly more exploited, we all must be reminded that we do have the capacity to manage scarce resources and that I think right now a lot of it is challenging the myth that something that's not privately owned is going to be ruined, right? So remembering that there are other ways to manage and share

scarce resources is part of that. But no, I think we're going in the wrong direction. That's why I wrote a lecture about it. Actually, the next question didn't get recorded very well. So I'm going to paraphrase it for you. In the lecture, Astra, you suggest that insecurity can lead to collective action, but it can just as easily lead to populism. And the question was, how do we bend insecurity towards solidarity? Here's the answer that you gave. I mean, I think, you know, people are complicated. And there are lots of folks who can go in different directions based on the circumstances and the opportunities. So the third lecture was really about the fact that there's a lot of empirical evidence that a baseline of material security does make the general population more open-minded,

more tolerant, less susceptible to fascist appeals. Periods of scarcity are when people feel anxious about the future. They are more inclined to kind of get into a survivalist mode. This is something I'm very emphatic about. Solidarity is not spontaneous, right? It'll appear in a moment of heroism or something like that, but then it's kind of fleeting. I think the kind of solidarity that turns insecurity into power really has to be intentionally built.

It has to be guided by strategy. It needs structures to sustain it. And so, you know, moments of crisis can be moments of opportunity for progressive militancy and renewal. But we really have to work towards that end because there are so many forces pulling people in the other direction. You know, making people feel more afraid, making people feel more atomized, more besieged, and the economic and ecological trends are not good, right? And that makes people hunker down, even liberal people. It's not like it's just people on the far right who feel like, oh, geez, I should just watch out for myself and my family. That's all I can do. Again, people contain multitudes. We can go in

different directions based on the circumstances. And I think right now, so many of the structures that we live in increase in security, undermine solidarity, even criminalize it. You know, as I mentioned, the environmental activists and the animal rights activists being deemed security threats. But that's what we have to work with. These are the conditions that we're in, not of our choosing, and we have to work with what's here. But I do think that solidarity is something that can be really facilitated by democratic social policies

that consciously aimed at that. And we've got one more question over here. Yeah, I'm just wondering, like, as individuals, we may turn out lights and things like that, but how can we convince big corporations and things like that? How can we put pressure on them to make change? I think individuals should do their part, but we have limited power when we're isolated. So again, this is why I think organizing is so important. By working together, we multiply the power we have. And the best way to alter the behavior

of a corporation is to regulate it. That's it. Not pleading with them, not appealing to their better angels, but to say, no, this kind of behavior is just not allowed. It's illegal. And to actually put teeth behind those rules. I mean, this is part of the problem is what agencies have enforcement mechanisms? The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States doesn't have a police force. But I think this is why citizen action

aimed at government action is really, really key. Because that's where we can get the most bang for our buck. And that's why corporations have spent so many billions of dollars trying to sabotage regulation and to shrink the state and to disempower citizens because that is where the power lies. I will say, though, since I'm talking about animals in this, I do think there are choices that we make that do matter. I mean, that's why I'm a vegan. That's why I'm vegetarian, right? I think that as someone who's as motivated

by, you know, political change, and it's the corporations that need to alter their behavior, I do think what we do matters. And so I just, there's, sometimes there can be a kind of dichotomy between that, like our individual choices and collective action. And I'm someone who's like, between that, like our individual choices and collective action. And I'm someone who's like, we can do both, right? Like I can try to engage as an individual in a way that corresponds to my ethics without thinking that that's enough, right? And those just, those aren't opposed in my mind. So you're answering a question there in Vancouver about holding corporations to account through regulation, but you pivot at the end to our responsibilities as individuals. You're not letting us off the hook.

The thing is, you know, there's an interplay between sort of structural change and the choices we make every day. And, you know, I think we can't wait for the big structural changes to try to be good people, to try to be ethical consumers and committed citizens. And I think part of that process of empowering people we discussed is saying, you know, your decisions matter. The things you do every day matter. The things you buy, the job that you devote, you know, 40 hours a week to the people you vote for. I mean, this stuff adds up. You know, we have to do both, right? We have to aim at that bigger political change while also thinking about our personal choices.

You know, and for me, that really is reflected in what I choose literally to consume in my diet. You know, I'd like to see stronger regulations, for example, of big agriculture and industrial farming. But until then, you know, I'm going to just try to eat as low on the food chain as possible, because the evidence says that that's better for the planet and better for the non-human world. The final lecture was in Toronto, and it was entitled Escaping the Burrow. And it was effectively a call to arms to redefine security for ourselves and learning to organize and act collectively. So to end our program today, here are some excerpts from the question and answer period, beginning with a question about how to organize in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. I mean, it's a question that really hits close to home because the group I co-founded, the Debt Collective, fought for a

decade for student debt cancellation in the United States, finally won a big announcement from President Biden. If that had happened, it would have been the largest progressive transfer of wealth in the last century, would have been $450 billion back into the pockets of ordinary people. And it was snimed by the ultra-conservative majority on the Supreme Court. But I think to sort of zoom out, you know, that was only accomplished because of decades and decades of relentless strategic organizing and really imagining a future and how to get to it. And so I, you know, I would like to be part of a movement of movements that does exactly that, that has a multi-decade plan for taking power and then wielding it in a very different way.

And I think that gets to part of the imbalance between the right and the left. I mean, when the far right wants to wield power, they want to do so in a very autocratic way with the simple goal of maximizing profits by imposing minority rule. When you're imposing minority rule, you don't have to wrestle with the messy questions about how best to have democracy or to share power or to protect the future.

It's a lot easier to deny climate change than to figure out how to respond to it, for example. So we have a harder project, which means it's all the more incumbent on us to be smart and to be serious about it. I think that good organizing has many components, but, you know, we could say, and this is something I explore in a book that's coming out next year, you know, that the kind of solidarity that has a transformative potential involves identity, vision, and strategy. Meaning, you know, part of the question is, well, who's the we that's involved? And that's, I think, the intervention I'm trying to make in this book is to say, by looking at all the ways we're all insecure, we can actually build a bigger we, right? We can see the ways that, even if our situation is not identical, that it's related.

You know, inequality is really important, but inequality encourages us to look up and down at sort of the extremes of wealth and power, whereas insecurity encourages us to look sideways, you know, and say, okay, we're not exactly the same, but you're insecure, I'm insecure too. So I think bigger we is really critical. A vision of what it is we're trying to achieve, so not just like random acts of kindness or good deeds, but a plan for, again, taking power and how to wield it in a just way. How do you actually provide meaningful

material security for people? How do you actually do democracy? These are questions I'm really interested in. Yeah, and then strategy, like staying on message, you know, not just giving up when you have your first setback, you know, being disciplined. I think those are skills that we learn in movements and that need to become more widespread. One thing I'm always saying to my group is, discipline is not domination. Like, yes, we're for individual freedom and expression, but as a group, we have to be disciplined.

We have to be strategic. But, you know, we need a long-term plan because the people committed to, again, committed to minority rule, definitely have one. And we might be just at the beginning of it, which is really terrifying. Thank you very much, Astra, and welcome to Toronto.

Thanks. Okay, I'll try to be quick. So these ideas of what you're talking about are amazing. It seems like they really look after our materialistic and physical needs. So kind of like a dual-sided question. For one, what are some real concrete things like we we the people

can do to change the bigger structures around us and then also the other side is like i think the insecurities also are just come from like the mindsets and structures and again things that we're shaped by and across all societies so like how do we also like change rather than just not just materialistic physically but like the whole mind body spirit like how do we also like change rather than just not just materialistic physically but like the whole mind body spirit like how do you support a human individual themselves like from deep within and then as collective humans my view is that by attending to people's material needs will do a whole lot for people's mental health um and that's not to just be reductive but I think a lot of emotional

and psychic suffering we're experiencing these days does relate to the economic and the stresses we're under. And, you know, as I said, for me, engaging and organizing is a kind of nourishing practice, you know, because I think that we are communal beings. And so, you know, we need that community. And that's also a huge driver of the suffering we see and the spiritual kind of loneliness people experience is that, you know, communities are very atomized because of insecurity. People have to leave where they're coming from, whether that's leaving their home country to come and pursue upward mobility in a country like the United States or Canada, or just having to move to a different town to get a better job or being pushed out

of your neighborhood because you can't pay the rent anymore, right? So I think, to me, the material and the emotional, the political and the psychological are just really tightly embedded. And so part of the work I'm trying to do is to really weave those together. In terms of what people can do, I mean, you know, one way of thinking about organizing is distinguishing it from, because you say, what can people do? And again, my answer is the same, organize. And I like to distinguish organizing from activism. Activism is something you can do on your own by raising your voice or raising awareness. And that can be good, but I think the power is very limited. Organizing is something

you do with others. And so my advice is, you know, join or start a labor union. If you're a tenant, start to join a tenant's union, join a community association, you know, find other people to do something with. And there's a decent chance that will also have a spiritually beneficial effect because you'll be in community you'll be doing that work of taking care that i'm talking about thank you for the question astra it's been a privilege to watch you do what you do thank you very much for tonight So in listening back, Astra, and thinking about the lectures that you've given across the country, what did you take away from the kinds of questions that you heard? Was there any common theme as far as you can ascertain? So many of the questions I got were about how, how to create change, how to put ideas

into practice. And that's really striking to me. And the reality is there aren't a lot of places to have that discussion, right? You know, we learn about all sorts of things in school. We learn math and science and literature and languages, you know, but where do you learn to organize? Right? You know, and we're told to vote, you know, in periodic elections, and that that's important. But, you know, we don't actually know really how to influence political structures beyond that. And so I think the fact that I have some experience organizing, even though I'm very self-taught at it, I think made the Q&A sessions actually sort of spontaneous forums on how you actually create power with the people in your community so that we can address some of the

crises that I was discussing. So these Q&As were very much about how we take the next step, right? There are all of these problems in the world. What do we do together? So in that sense, they were hugely encouraging and moving for me to participate in. Thank you so much for coming back to discuss these conversations.

Thank you, Nala. You've been listening to That's a Good Question, Thank you, Nala. Massey Lecture Series at cbc.ca slash Masseys. You can also stream episodes through the CBC Listen app or download the lectures from your favourite podcast app. Your local bookseller will have the book version of the lectures, The Age of Insecurity, Coming Together When Things Fall Apart, published by House of Anansi Press. Our partners in the Massey Lecture Series are Massey College in the University of Toronto and House of Anansi Press. The Massey Lecture Series is produced by

Philip Coulter and Pauline Holdsworth. Online production by Althea Manassan, Ben Shannon and Sinisa Jolic. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our senior producer is Nikola Lukšić. The executive producer of the Massey Lectures and Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayed.