The Wisdom of Insecurity

Alan Watts wrote The Wisdom of Insecurity in 1951, arguing that the modern search for security and certainty is the very thing that makes us anxious and unhappy. Watts draws on Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Western philosophy to show that the self we are trying to protect is an abstraction, a memory of the past and a projection of the future, while the only reality is the present moment. He examines how religion, consumerism, and the cult of progress all promise a future safety that never arrives, and he proposes that peace comes not from securing the future but from fully entering the now. The book is brief, closely argued, and written in the clear, often witty prose that made Watts one of the most popular interpreters of Eastern thought for Western readers.