A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit — A Reader’s Dialogue
A Paradise Built in Hell is one of those books that I kept seeing referenced in other books, and yet, it took me so long to find my own copy. But when I finally found it, I immediately felt like this would be an important book for me. I’ve read Rebecca Solnit before, specifically her fantastic book, Orwell’s Roses, but I have also heard great things about Men Explain Things to Me. Overall, I find her insightful and really good at providing the foundation for a new way of looking at the world, which she does expertly in A Paradise Built in Hell.
A Paradise Built in Hell counters the institutional narrative that when a crisis erupts, people will descend into anarchy as the veneer of respectability and decency is rubbed off, and that it is essential for the government to provide order, even to the point of martial law, to protect citizens from themselves. However, Solnit provides numerous examples where both individuals and entire communities came together to selflessly meet the crisis head on, oftentimes in a manner more effective and empathetic than the authorities. And, more importantly, she describes why that collective coming together could be described as a paradise.
But what is this paradise? Paradise, as far as I understand Solnit, is one in which institutional rules and the status quo is ruptured from individual experiences on the ground. “If paradise now arises in hell, it’s because in the suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems, we are free to live and act another way. (7)” We become free to imagine another way in which society can be structured. The upper class therefore risks losing power, and so they want to reinforce the narrative that martial law and weaponized strength is needed during crises to keep populations in check from mob violence.
Further, it is a paradise partly because modern society is unable to fulfill basic human needs, and it is only when order is suspended that those human needs can be met. “Disaster offers temporary solutions to the alienations and isolations of everyday life. (108)” And “It is only because calamities provide as a side effect what is often unavailable otherwise that they become what he calls ‘social utopias.’ In a society where immediacy, belonging, and purposefulness are already ubiquitous, a disaster would only be a disaster. (114)” In other words, this book highlights that something is missing in our modern lives, and while a disaster is terrible, it also allows for the opportunity to fill that gap.
In Solnit’s description of paradise, people bond to each other in ways that they could not or would not previously. “As so often happens in disaster, people need to give, and giving and receiving meld into a reciprocity that is the emotional equivalent of mutual aid. People shifted imperceptibly from needing to do something practical in response to the disaster to needing to participate, belong, and discuss. (203)”
This reminds me of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s book, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, specially of the idea of precarity, which is “the condition of our time. (20)” And “the condition of being vulnerable to others. (20)” When we are in a precarious environmental state, we are vulnerable to others and need to depend on our relations. Tsing talked about matsutake mushrooms in relation with pine, and I suspect that Solnit would apply that to individuals being in relation to other individuals, and as something which is mutually beneficial, not only materially, but also spiritually and emotionally.
It is partly because paradise is temporary. “It’s a liminal time, a time between worlds that is a world of its own. (172)” “It is by its very nature unsustainable and evanescent, but like a lightning flash it illuminates ordinary life, and like lightning it sometimes shatters the old forms. It is utopia itself for many people, though it is only a brief moment during terrible times. (17)” “To make fellowship, joy, and freedom work for a day or a week is far more doable than the permanent transformation of society, and it can inspire people to return to that society in its everyday incarnations with renewed powers and ties. (169)”
There is something about the temporality of that paradise that I find interesting. So much about the way we govern ourselves is based around the idea of making something perfect and long lasting, whether that be a market in perfect equilibrium, or a revolution where everyone’s needs are met. But people are always in conversation with each other, responding to what someone else is doing. Someone will always be able to find a way to get an advantage in any system, because we, as people, are in flux. No system will ever be perfect. But something temporary might be able to be beautiful because it is temporary and extra-ordinary.
As Solnit writes, “One reason was that you were not focused on long-term plans. (28)” When you focus on your immediate needs, you really start to clarify what you as a person need right now. Everything moves into focus, and you put all your energy into the present.
However, sometimes a paradise does not happen, and it might not happen for a number of reasons. “… One reason is that no community converged: people were uprooted and isolated, many of them permanently, and much of the rescue work was done by uniformed outsiders. (113)” Furthermore, disasters are dangerous not only for the terrible, immediate loss of life, but they are also “dangerous because when thrust upon those who are unprepared or unequipped, rather than chosen or embraced, when it comes by surprise its effect is only loss and suffering. (117–118)” So, if a disaster has forced people away from their communities or those communities were not given the tools and experience to act in times of duress, that sense of community might not develop. Or in other words, if a civil society has been broken and forced to exist only at the will of the state, when a disaster happens, they will be more limited by what they can do.
It is also possible that a disaster would provide horrible opportunities for injustice. Solnit provides examples of vigilantism and military responses that led to deaths and murder. Even though Solnit uses the word paradise, she is very careful about how the term is used, and she is clear that that state of paradise does not happen in every disaster. “Leftists of a certain era liked to believe that the intensification of suffering produced revolution and was therefore to be desired or even encouraged; no such reliable formula ties social change to disaster or other suffering; calamities are at best openings through which a people may take power-or may lose the contest and be further subjugated. (160)” I really focus on the line, “calamities are at best openings.” We will not be able to fully predict whether a disaster would lead to paradise, however, under the right conditions, they could help us imagine an alternative way to live.
There is a lot to love in this book and it is worth reading, not only for the many examples provided throughout the book of disasters and how people came together, but because this book provides hope in a way few things do these days. As the years of climate inaction have made me incredibly disappointed in governments and corporations, this book has made me look at civil society as a potential source of solutions to climate change. I can’t recommend enough A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit, and I hope everyone goes out and reads it.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Penguin Books, 2020.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibilitily of Life in Capitalist Ruins. New Jeresy: Princeton University Press, 2015.
