A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

This key theme is addressed in the book’s title. For Solnit, heaven and hell can rub shoulders with each other and exist in same time and space in different ways. From the trauma, pain, and loss of a disaster, paradise can be born. This view requires careful considerations of what “paradise” and “hell” actually represent. Solnit defines social utopia, or Paradise, as where “deprivation—hunger, ignorance, homelessness” are eliminated and where “no one is an outsider, no one is alienated” (32).

For Solnit, people have a natural tendency towards creating Paradise. In disaster settings, when the usual frameworks of economics and personal life are suspended, cooperation, altruism, and solidarity take over. While disaster communities are unlikely places to find the conditions of Paradise, they have been displayed repeated in disaster settings. So, for Solnit, Paradise is not necessarily an eternal, perfect state of absolute happiness and fulfillment but more often manifests itself temporarily in the hearts and actions of disaster survivors before the coercive powers of the state and other authorities take over again. Paradise, or at least that which is manifested in disaster communities, is liminal and temporary, while also the “default setting” for survivors.

“Hell,” on the other hand, takes two main forms in this book. First, Solnit points out that everyday life is a social disaster for most people because of social isolation, poverty, and the belief that others are selfish and cruel. Second are the disasters themselves and particularly the disastrous reactions of the authorities that worsen the original disasters, such as the fires made worse by the army during the San Francisco earthquake.

The common contemporary assumption about utopia is that it is impossible because of human nature. In this narrative, popularized in the 1700s by philosopher Thomas Hobbes, it is authority that keeps people under control—they are not seen as inherently sociable and cooperative. However, Solnit argues through the book that this belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy, perpetuated by economic privatization and devaluing of the public good. When we believe that our neighbors are selfish, and when social trust is low, we act selfish in response. The disruptive moment of a disaster, when cooperation is needed for collective survival, suspends this belief and reveals utopian impulses that lie dormant in most people until the right conditions are present. The question then becomes how to harness this impulse in non-disaster settings.