A Paradise Built in Hell
What startled me about the response to disaster was not the virtue, since virtue is often the result of diligence and dutifulness, but the passionate joy that shined out from accounts by people who had barely survived. These people who had lost everything, who were living in rubble or ruins, had found agency, meaning, community, immediacy in their
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
“The map of utopias is cluttered nowadays with experiments by other names, and the very idea is expanding. It needs to open up a little more to contain disaster communities. These remarkable societies suggest that, just as many machines reset themselves to their original settings after a power outage, human beings reset themselves to something altr... See more
A quote from A Paradise Built in Hell
a disaster is a lot like a revolution when it comes to disruption and improvisation, to new roles and an unnerving or exhilarating sense that now anything is possible.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
disasters are often moments of strange joy.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Solnit suggests that the real disaster is everyday life, which alienates us from each other and from the protective impulse that we harbor.