A Paradise Built in Hell

Wanderlust: A History of Walking was published in 2001. Rebecca Solnit's latest book is called A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. The following is from the Publishers Weekly review posted on Amazon:

Natural and man-made disasters can be utopias that showcase human solidarity and point the way to a freer society, according to this stimulating contrarian study. Solnit (River of Shadows) reproves civil defense planners, media alarmists and Hollywood directors who insist that disasters produce terrified mobs prone to looting, murder and cannibalism unless controlled by armed force and government expertise.

Surveying disasters from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, she shows that the typical response to calamity is spontaneous altruism, self-organization and mutual aid, with neighbors and strangers calmly rescuing, feeding and housing each other. Indeed, the main problem in such emergencies, she contends, is the elite panic of officials who clamp down with National Guardsmen and stifling regulations. Solnit falters when she generalizes her populist brief into an anarchist critique of everyday society that lapses into fuzzy what-ifs and uplifting volunteer testimonials. Still, this vividly written, cogently argued book makes a compelling—and timely—case for the ability of ordinary people to collectively surmount the direst of challenges.

Interestingly, it was his experiences during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that finally convinced Kotoku Shusui, widely regarded as the father of Japanese anarchism, that society without government was possible. Back in Japan, Kotoku renounced parliamentarism and began advocating direct action. In 1907 he wrote, "A real social revolution cannot possibly be achieved by means of universal suffrage and a parliamentary policy. There is no way to reach our goal of socialism other than by the direct action of the workers, united as one." Kotoku was eventually arrested and executed as part of the so-called High Treason Incident. You may recall I blogged about this earlier in the year.