Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnitis an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including the environment, politics, place, and art. Solnit is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, where bi-monthly she writes the magazine's "Easy Chair" essay...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 June 1961
CountryUnited States of America
babies bad collapsed emergency everybody feed few hospital improvise kitchen next pattern people putting systems whether work
It's not that bad things never happen. But there's a pattern in which most people are calm, resourceful, altruistic, and they improvise emergency systems that work really well - whether it's getting the babies out of a collapsed hospital or putting together a community kitchen to feed everybody for the next few months.
anxieties concerns emotions future gratuitous intense people pulls talk trivial
I feel often that we don't have the right language to talk about emotions in disasters. Everyone is on edge, of course, but it also pulls people away from a lot of trivial anxieties and past and future concerns and gratuitous preoccupations that we have, and refocuses us in a very intense way.
disaster fact flee looting manage people primordial revert sort terrified trying
Panic is rare, looting is essentially insignificant, people are not terrified and trampling each other to flee from a disaster scene, but in fact are trying to manage a situation. We may in fact revert to some sort of primordial civility.
people risk survival
The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully.
self practice people
There are those who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or for satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis.
thinking people political
A lot of people think of political activism as some grim duty, and I think we do have an obligation to be citizens - to be informed and engaged.
thinking people way
I think that walking down the middle of the street with several thousand people who share your deepest beliefs is one of the best ways to take a walk.
grateful thinking people
I don't think my work has to be loved by everyone, and it's loved by enough people that I'm grateful and able to keep going.
people ordinary influence
I was not going to surrender to the status quo and corporate insistence that ordinary people have no power and influence.
believe people creative
Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves in the absence of coercive and centralized authority; the underlying premise about human nature (to use an infinitely problematized but necessary term here) is fundamentally positive. And the evidence that in disasters people are really pretty kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative fed that.
giving profound people
In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation and trivialization to feel engaged, connected, purposeful, ready to give, to engage, to care, to learn.
people passionate movement
Sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do.
meaningful army people
Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less meaningful - a provider of positive goods and more and more just an army and some domestic enforcement - people are withdrawing to shape and support more localised forms of organisation and power. To the extent that it's part of that civilised and localising world, the same is true of the U.S.
interesting people choices
Given a choice between their worldview and the facts, it's always interesting how many people toss the facts.