Not Oprah’s Book Club: A Paradise Built in Hell

Rebecca Solnit’s dense tome about disaster’s silver lining essentially argues that human beings rise to the occasion during times of great and sudden trouble, and in so doing, give ourselves a glimpse of the best that lies within us, and the best that we could create as communities and nation states. In other words, despite all the lauding of firemen and government officials, it is regular ol’ Joes and Janes that save one another in times of trouble. She writes:

Who are you? Who are we? The history of disaster demonstrates that most of us are social animals, hungry for connection, as well as for purpose and meaning. It also suggests that if this is who we are, then everyday life in most places is a disaster that disruptions sometimes give us a chance to change. They are a crack in the walls that ordinarily hem us in, and what floods in can be enormously destructive–or creative.

Solnit, a talented writer without a doubt, takes her reader to the site of many disasters, both historic and more contemporary, and paints a picture of community uplift and spontaneous kindness that ranges from friends carrying a disabled man down 26 flights of stairs in the World Trade Towers to long, all-night drinking parties on the streets of San Francisco after nasty earthquakes. Her point is that, though the media often focuses on fear and/or heroism is the form of burly, trained men, the impulse to help one another and be part of the solution is rooted in all of us, flowering in our worst collective moments.
The book can be a little repetitive at times, and though Solnit is an exhaustive researcher, she’s not the best at filtering the examples. But despite it’s shortcomings, A Paradise Built in Hell is a gorgeous re-imagining of what really goes on–both personally and politically–during disasters. It de-genders heroism, de-mystifies emergency services, and challenges all of us to feel safe in knowing that we live in communities that may be anemic during ordinary times, but tend to bring out our natural interconnection and good will during the extraordinary ones. I’ll give her the last word: “The possibility of paradise is already within us as a default setting.”