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. Hierarchies and institutions are inadequate to these circumstances; they are often what fails in such crises. Civil society is what succeeds, not only in an emotional demonstration of altruism and mutual aid but also in a practical mustering of creativity and resources to meet the challenges.

Excerpt from “Epilogue: The Doorway in the Ruins,” A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit, Penguin Books, New York, USA, 2009 (p. 305).

The disasters covered in this book include: Earthquake San Francisco/California/USA (1906), Explosion Halifax/Nova Scotia/Canada (1917), The Blitz/London/UK (1940), Earthquake Mexico City/Mexico (1985), Bombing World Trade Center/New York/USA (2001), and Hurricane Katrina New Orleans/USA (2005).

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REBECCA SOLNIT, writer, historian, and activist, is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, hope and catastrophe. Her books include Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and recently launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).