Should a real life disaster strike, consumers of fictionalized accounts from Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead to Cormac McCarthy's The Road may well despair for humanity's survival.
Watch any disaster movie and assume chaos and panic.
Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (2009) offers a welcome antidote.
Consider:
"...human beings are at their best when much is demanded of them..."
"...human beings, and this cuts across all societies...rise to the occasion."
"...human beings respond with initiative, orderliness, and helpfulness; they remain calm; and suffering and loss are transformed when they are shared experiences."
Researching real life disasters from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, author Solnit examines how real people respond in disasters — and offers the phrase "disaster utopia."
It's an optimistic, but well-documented, assessment of the humanity, helpfulness, and calm people display when a crisis brings them together. People assist each other. Disasters uncover a sense of community and purpose and survivors often recall those times of earnest cooperation with pleasure.
Survivors of the San Francisco earthquake reported:
"Never in all San Francisco's history, were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror."
"While the crisis lasted, people loved each other."
Of course, disaster response is not all light and roses. Base impulses surface in a disaster as well as benevolent ones.
However, it's not usually the masses in the majority that cause the trouble. Solnit instead points the finger at those in charge. She explores the phenomena of "elite panic," in which those "in charge" do more harm than good by trying to keep control. She cites examples of authorities who hinder volunteers, further their own agendas, and who out of fear of "mobs" and "looting," brutally put protection of personal property ahead of the protection of human life.
Since our beliefs about how we will behave under stress influence disaster response, the field of disaster sociology's discovery that we can count on each other in a crisis is pivotal.
In a disaster, our first responders will likely be our neighbors.
There's an anarchist theme to Solnit's discoveries that decentralized, rapidly-formed communities frequently rise above bureaucracies and governments in a crisis. However, rather than forwarding the rather depressing idea that we need a disaster to bring out the best in us, the book leans toward the conclusion that the structure of our current day-to-day society breeds inordinate competition and isolation and restrains our social natures.
"The ruts and routines of ordinary life hide more beauty than brutality."
"...human beings are gregarious, cooperative animals who need no authority to make them so; it is their nature."
"...just as many machines reset themselves to their original settings after a power outage, so human beings reset themselves to something altruistic, communitarian, resourceful, and imaginative after a disaster..."
Pairs well with: Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature
Of note:
• research by biobehavioral scientists Shelley E. Taylor and Laura Cousino Klein offers an alternative view to the fight-or-flight stress response "...women in particular often gather to share concerns and abilities...the 'tend-and-befriend' pattern."
• Sociologist Enrico Quarantelli, in more than 700 studies of disasters, found "cooperative rather than selfish behavior predominating" and few instances of panic.
Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (2009) offers a welcome antidote.
Consider:
"...human beings are at their best when much is demanded of them..."
"...human beings, and this cuts across all societies...rise to the occasion."
"...human beings respond with initiative, orderliness, and helpfulness; they remain calm; and suffering and loss are transformed when they are shared experiences."
Researching real life disasters from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, author Solnit examines how real people respond in disasters — and offers the phrase "disaster utopia."
It's an optimistic, but well-documented, assessment of the humanity, helpfulness, and calm people display when a crisis brings them together. People assist each other. Disasters uncover a sense of community and purpose and survivors often recall those times of earnest cooperation with pleasure.
Survivors of the San Francisco earthquake reported:
"Never in all San Francisco's history, were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror."
"While the crisis lasted, people loved each other."
Of course, disaster response is not all light and roses. Base impulses surface in a disaster as well as benevolent ones.
However, it's not usually the masses in the majority that cause the trouble. Solnit instead points the finger at those in charge. She explores the phenomena of "elite panic," in which those "in charge" do more harm than good by trying to keep control. She cites examples of authorities who hinder volunteers, further their own agendas, and who out of fear of "mobs" and "looting," brutally put protection of personal property ahead of the protection of human life.
Since our beliefs about how we will behave under stress influence disaster response, the field of disaster sociology's discovery that we can count on each other in a crisis is pivotal.
In a disaster, our first responders will likely be our neighbors.
There's an anarchist theme to Solnit's discoveries that decentralized, rapidly-formed communities frequently rise above bureaucracies and governments in a crisis. However, rather than forwarding the rather depressing idea that we need a disaster to bring out the best in us, the book leans toward the conclusion that the structure of our current day-to-day society breeds inordinate competition and isolation and restrains our social natures.
"The ruts and routines of ordinary life hide more beauty than brutality."
"...human beings are gregarious, cooperative animals who need no authority to make them so; it is their nature."
"...just as many machines reset themselves to their original settings after a power outage, so human beings reset themselves to something altruistic, communitarian, resourceful, and imaginative after a disaster..."
Pairs well with: Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature
Of note:
• research by biobehavioral scientists Shelley E. Taylor and Laura Cousino Klein offers an alternative view to the fight-or-flight stress response "...women in particular often gather to share concerns and abilities...the 'tend-and-befriend' pattern."
• Sociologist Enrico Quarantelli, in more than 700 studies of disasters, found "cooperative rather than selfish behavior predominating" and few instances of panic.
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