Solnit - Paradise Built in Hell

I’ve not read a more timely book by which to view the disasters of 2020, even though my reading quite often fortuitously draws me to titles that have considerable application to current issues. 2020 has presented man-made natural disasters of tornados, hurricanes, fires, and the spread of disease in the first truly global pandemic. Many U.S. citizens view the disasters of 2020 as resulting from or at least exaggerated by a metastasis of dysfunctional and destructive politics. I needed to read something that would give me hope and Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (2009) couldn’t have been more welcome.

Paradise Built in Hell recognizes the reality of catastrophic events and it couples that recognition with the sad reality that governments frequently falter in these times. Solnit reinforces that when disaster occurs and systems fail, the human yearning for connectedness and the search for meaning and purpose is what usually saves us. In fact, Solnit proposes that “life in most places is a disaster that disruptions sometimes give us a chance to change.” (Epilogue, locator 5138) Disaster preparedness and response has become an area of study at prestigious universities and one of the interesting conclusions from case analyses is that grass roots response is always on site first and mobilizes resources that governmental systems cannot. As this happens, the elites of communities and bureaucrats who serve them usually panic – not really in relation to the disaster but they panic at the threat that citizen activism in their own communities could undermine the control vested in the hierarchy of government agencies.

Solnit’s analysis of the power of grass roots response was documented by Victor Frankl when he reflected on what it took to survive Hitler’s concentrations campus. Frankl’s finding was that those who had a why for living could survive almost anything. In disaster, we see a glimpse of the way that most humans want to live – with purpose, in service to others, and vested with ultimate meaning. The problem is that the fleeting moment of a community “heaven made in hell” often devolve back into the old normal rather than evolving into a more humane, just, and purposeful community.

 

Numerous and diverse disasters were analyzed by Solnit, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Halifax explosion of 1917, Germany’s blitz of London in 1940, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, the 9-11-01 attack on the World Trade Center, and the devastation in 2005 of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. These examples demonstrated that there is much that can be done to improve infrastructure and systems that are put in place to respond to disaster but that an equally important adjustment needs to be in recognizing the dignity and worth of people who respond to disasters. Specific to this second point, the negative reactions of elite panic and bureaucratic intervention designed to control must be addressed. In the example of Katrina, Solnit wrote, “For many of the tens of thousands stranded there (Convention Center and the Superdome) for a better part of a week, the trauma was not merely the terrible storm and the flooding of their city,… but it was being treated as animals and enemies at the moment of their greatest vulnerability.” (What Difference Would it Make, Locator 4168)

 

What will be required to turn catastrophe into paradise is “more ability to improve together, stronger societies, more confidence in each other. It will require a world in which we are each other’s wealth and have each other’s trust.” (Epilogue, Locator 5197) If these stronger societies emerge, they will be more improvisational and will tap the strength and creativity of broader numbers and types of people. Likely most important of all, the communities that have both the systems and the human potential to respond to disaster are those where we all recognize that paradise is within us as a natural reset. Regardless of whether we face an imminent disaster or everyday problems, we can assume good will and work toward more ultimate and utopian goals of eliminating hunger, ignorance, environmental devastation, and other potential threats. The disasters of 2020, a pandemic, economic collapse, racism, and failure of government, can only be addressed and eventually resolved if we are able to create a society where no one is pushed to the margin or alienated.