Those are my personal notes on Rebecca Solnit’s book “A Paradise Built in Hell” about communities arising in disasters.

Generally, the people furthest away from the disaster tend to panic the most, be the most emotionally affected, and have the most distorted view of its actualities.
- People directly affected by the disasters most often look back positively on them and their local response.
- People at the epicentre (ideally, typically) live through the disaster collectively, as a bonding experience, creating community.
  - Collective suffering redeems. (Isolated suffering is the true bane.)
  - Disasters unite (through the common fighting against an exogenous adversary.)
- At the heart of the disaster, there is often very little doubt on the right, natural, instinctual thing to do. “There is no time for fear.”
  - Disasters, disaster utopias let societies operate alternatively, focussed on immediateness and generosity rather than transactions, calculation and profit.
    - “No long-term plans, just the immediate demands of survival.”
    - Through the suspension of the usual order, disasters liberate and let one act in new ways.
      - communitas (Victor Turner): the spontaneous ties that are made beyond constructs, societal boundaries and limiting beliefs.
    - Disasters “provide a view into another world for our other selves” (× Your Symphony of Selves)
    - Disasters wake people up. Ruptures in daily life bring with them an immersion in the present, clarity of thought and a sense of urgency.
      - These states do not necessarily have to be brought about by disasters.
      - One should find other means to “manually” engineer or trigger these states.
        
        “One of the complex questions for those who need not struggle for basic survival is how to engage passionately with goals and needs that keep such drive alive.”
    - Disaster-created utopias typically do not persist, though they could, and should.
      - Making such projects endure is a challenge (× All About Love).
      - Reflecting on the experience helps seize it and re-create it.
        
        Language is essential in helping to seize, make sense of an experience and create a mental framework.
      - Temporary autonomous zones (TAZ) (just like burns) are an attempt at re-creating these circumstances temporarily (though recurrently), with the added benefit of ephemerality an effective tactic to forestall repression.
        
        “TAZ liberate an area of land, of time, of imagination.”
    - These utopias, where neighbours meet, remind citizens of fundamentals lost in modern society.
- Disasters bring back civic life: engagement with one’s community.
  - In our modern world, we rarely feel connected to society, only in rare occurrences — the experience of citizenship is getting rarer and rarer.
  - Disasters provoke a universal enlistment in community.
  - The emergency circumstances infuse people with meaning (just like war): “The martial type of character can be bred without war. The only thing needed henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as past history has inflamed the military temper.” (James)
The first response in any disaster is by the common people, not the state, emergency services, or charities.
- We tend to think otherwise due to the fact that when the press arrive on the site of the disaster, emergency services are already here — but already a lot of time has elapsed since the outbreak.
- Residents are “here” when the disaster happens and their response “makes or breaks it”, dictates whether the disaster becomes controlled or a catastrophe.
Top-down, one-way “charity” differs from mutual aid; one creates a dependence and a power dynamic, the other fosters community and self-sufficiency (“learning how to fish”).
- A happy medium is to support (already existing) local efforts.
Self-organisation in disasters reveals the superfluity of governing institutions.
- Self-organisation demonstrates that a state is not necessary for society to function and adhere to principles and morals (anarchy — a state of society without government or law)
- This insight endangers the legitimacy, authority and existence of the powers that be.
  - Chaos (such as that provoked by disasters) shakes things up, reorganizes things, and renders the established order particularly fragile and malleable.
    - “An emergency is a separation from the familiar.”
  - Crises (for instance provoked by disasters) mark a turning point, “in which things can go either of two ways”, with the potential to subvert entrenched institutions and patterns of thinking. (Disasters “wake people up”.)
- The state and the media tend to assume that a society struck by disaster, in a temporary state of lawlessness, naturally degenerates into a mob of profiteers, looters and criminals.
  - In reality people have other concerns, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, a better nature.
  - What actually emerges is a culture of mutual aid and natural attendance to others’ needs.
- Disasters can suggest the inadequacy of governing authorities, once again jeopardizing their legitimacy.
  - Bureaucracy is good at dealing with predictable systems, terrible at dealing with emergency situations that require improvising and thinking outside the box. (× Toyota Way: having a mix of organic and mechanistic attributes)
  - Because of this, bureaucracy is often incompetent in dealing with disasters and often gets in the way of emergency relief initiatives.
- Because of these perceived threats, disasters often trigger an unwarranted impulse to control on the part of the ruling powers, sometimes excessive: “elite panic”.
  - It is often the few at the top who behave badly and the masses who shine, the opposite of what sensationalistic narratives want us to believe.
    - The state typically wants to spin the story such that they are portrayed as the saviours of the people.
  - These delusional beliefs and decisions are typically held and made based on rumours and biases and without actually seeing the situation first-hand at the disaster site.
    - See things for yourself and form your own opinion. (× Gemba, Toyota Way)
    - “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” (Roosevelt)
  - This reaction from the authorities can stifle already existing, well-functioning grassroots response initiatives or even clash with them.
Beliefs matter.
- Beliefs shape how you act, and, especially in times of crisis, how you act (and how your fellows act) becomes a matter of life and death, determine whether you live or die.
- Work on, revise and decide on beliefs now, while you have time to think, before it is too late and the circumstances become critical.
Beliefs make the world.
- The world is created by beliefs, by acts out of beliefs.
  - Reality and states of mind form a loop: circumstances create states of mind, which in turn create circumstances. (× Psycho-Cybernetics)
  - Policy changes are fundamentally contingent on changing societal beliefs; the policy changes then naturally ensue.
- “Any belief that is acted on makes the world in its image.” (self-fulfilling prophecies) (× Psycho-Cybernetics)
- A belief doesn’t have any truth by itself (× Psycho-Cybernetics); its value can be judged on the basis of the consequences it would have on the world (pragmatism: “what difference would it make?”)
  - Pragmatism focusses on what to make of the world, rather than what it is made of; is prescriptive rather than descriptive. (× the action focus of Psycho-Cybernetics; not having to psycho-analyze yourself)
- “Revolutions fail, but never fail to do something.”
  - Striving towards something impossible is still meaningful.
    - The belief that social change and utopia is possible lets people act in ways that shape the world for the better — sometimes even making the original vision a reality.
    - Initiatives, disasters and other events imperceptibly set things in motion with snowballing effects down the line, for example through a transformed individual.
  - Meaning is in working towards the paradise, not being in it.

Other

Celebrations (anniversaries) are about reconnecting to the sense of possibility and exhilaration that were felt during the original event, landmark or encounter — reconnecting to what potential and possibilities they hold and what they symbolize; reconnecting to the high hopes and visions for the future they carry with them; it is an instance of realignment, an unmuddling of the mind and a regular reset to start off from the right place again. “Letting ties again become enchantments rather than obligations.”
- “When the connections were made, the possibilities were exciting, and joy came readily afterward. Memory of such moments becomes a resource to tap into through recollecting and invocation, and celebrating those moments revives and reaffirms the emotions. […] The enchanted time can be reclaimed and renewed by memory and celebration.”
  - Celebrations let you reconnect to the sense of possibility and magic of a connection.
- Celebrations as falling in love again, as reviving these feelings, and reconnecting to the exciting possibilities. (× Sex Talks)
Dorothy Day: not making a distinction between falling in love with things and falling in love with people.
Carnivals (just like role-playing) are a “temporary liberation from the prevailing truth”.
- Carnivals historically happened outside of time: “Some ancient calendars had three hundred sixty days, the five at the end of the year were categorically outside time, so that the ordinary rules did not apply.”
- Carnivals (just like psychotropics) let you return to ordinary life with a newfound sense of possibility, not accepting the current reality as is but understanding that things can be different.
Community projects: “working with, rather than for”.
- “Sweat equity” (New Orleans): the future homeowners must work on the houses.
“After that I had twenty dollars, Sharon put up thirty dollars, and with that we financed Common Ground.”
“It is when people deviate from the script that exciting things happen.”