Since we’ve entered the Days Gone phase of the open Internet, I find myself mostly participating in walled garden spaces (AOL eat your cold, dead heart out). And I realized recently that while I’ve been sharing this far and wide, I don’t really think I’ve mentioned it here.
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster is a book by American writer Rebecca Solnit, published by Viking Press in 2009. (wikipedia)
I don’t particularly like writing book summaries, so you can go check out the page for a quick overview. I do like telling other people what to do (of course I do) and so I’m going to recommend that you grab a copy of this book and read it.
Briefly, this is a book about how societies of people actually respond to disasters. It’s engaging and interesting and not a particularly heavy read (despite the subject matter). It has a narrative style that I really love for nonfiction. It’s not dry.
It also turns the commonly accepted wisdom of disasters on its head. Instead of what I think of as the World War Z theory of collapse (order is a thin veneer laid over the underlying chaos and societal breakdown), the truth is that left to their own devices, the majority of people will come together to help one another when things go sideways. More interesting is that people actually in these situations will report an incredible sense of wellbeing — of feeling connected, purposeful, even joyful in the face of hardship and disaster. People are self-organizing, self-policing, compassionate, and kind. Anarchists take note, all we need is an earthquake or flood to bring out our best social selves.
The other takeaway from the book is also a win for anarchists. Over and over, it’s demonstrated that “official” responses almost always make things much worse. Police, governments, FEMA… all actively HARMFUL during disasters. And while miscommunication and incompetence play a role, the most harm occurs when official response strays from providing support as a members of the impacted community and instead treats impacted people as othered: less than human, to be managed, a problem rather than a resource. Katrina is THE textbook case (this part of the book will PISS YOU OFF — whatever you think you know, it was much, much worse), but it goes further back (the book discusses the 1906 San Francisco earthquake). It also continues to this day. I’m reminded of the announcement during 9/11 NOT to evacuate the second tower after the first was hit or the roadblocks during the Maui fires.
I will say, as one criticism of the most recent printing, the section on Covid-19 (in a new introduction) is really weak and, I think, undercuts the main argument of the book. Over and over, Solnit posits that people become more connected and self-organizing during a disaster and that official effort to corral, separate, or disconnect people are harmful. I will let you make your own conclusions about the Covid response but if you get the new printing, skip that section and read the body of the book first. You’ll have clearer vision when it comes to the cognitive dissonance around Covid, and the work of balancing connection and protection in a way that honors the medical mandate to, first, do no harm.
I keep recommending this book because, well, disasters happen / are happening / will happen and I found the book overall hopeful and positive. Shit’s scary out there and fear is the mind killer, so anything that mitigates that is a very good thing. I also recommend it to magicians specifically, because I think there’s useful magical advice hidden in its pages.
If you are considering how to get your own community (of whatever definition) through difficult times (of whatever severity) here is wisdom and healing: People are fundamentally good, they want to connect and make meaning. The meaninglessness and disconnection of modern society and its authority structures are actively harmful and all it takes is one power outage for people to rise up against it. Maybe, just maybe, we don’t even have a disaster to make it happen. But disaster or not, reading this book will help make your role and path clear. Do good magic for connection and relation, stop othering others and find points of commonality, and never trust the government.
