Anxiety
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in "The Concept of Anxiety" (1844), described anxiety or dread associated with the "dizziness of freedom" and suggested the possibility for positive resolution of anxiety through the self-conscious exercise of responsibility and choosing. In "Art and Artist" (1932), the psychologist Otto Rank wrote that the psychological trauma of birth was the pre-eminent human symbol of existential anxiety and encompasses the creative person's simultaneous fear of – and desire for – separation, individuation, and differentiation.
The Ingenuity Gap
Author Thomas Homer-Dixon was a 44-year-old academic and director at the University of Toronto's Peace and Conflict Studies program at the time of publication. While the book took eight years to write, Homer-Dixon had been developing the ideas behind it for most of his career. As a youth, an interest in current events was fostered by his parents and led him to study causes of human violence at university. He graduated from Carleton University with a Bachelor of Arts and, in 1989, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a doctorate in Political science. He accepted the director position at the Peace and Conflict Studies program in 1990. Homer-Dixon and his theories were featured in an article written by Robert D. Kaplan, in the February 1994 edition of "The Atlantic Monthly", entitled "The Coming Anarchy". The article made him into an emerging academic celebrity and resulted in several book deal offers. By 1997 Homer-Dixon, working out of his home office, had accumulated more than of paper and was overwhelmed by the project, stating, "I'm living the problem I'm describing." In 1999, Homer-Dixon and Princeton University Press published "Environment, Scarcity, and Violence" containing Homer-Dixon's research on resource scarcity leading to violence. For "The Ingenuity Gap", he re-organized the framework along three strands, thematic, geographical, and metaphoric, and structured it like a travelogue from which he could launch examples.