Why Does Alan Watts's Anxiety Book Sound Like Now?

Alan Watts wrote a book in 1952 about the age of anxiety, and the description of how much the world was changing sounds like 2026. The movement is two steps up and one step back, then three steps up and two steps back.

Pinker's work suggests the long change is generally for the better, while the middle of it feels helpless and scattered. Boomers often picture the 1950s as a time when a man, a woman, a job, and kids all made sense, yet Alan Watts was already calling 1952 the age of anxiety.