disasters, trials of
common fate, can create bonds
of community
Today’s haiku comes from this snippet of text.
New bonds of community are often created by disaster, as Rebecca Solnit charts in A Paradise Built in Hell.
The shanty town built by survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the self-organised evacuations New Yorkers arranged with strangers after 9/11, show how people facing a common fate can see themselves as belonging to a single group.
Like the Covid-19 mutual aid groups we see today, these altruistic communities provide glimpses of an alternative world.
From the article, “People power: the best books about the allure of crowds and community“