Psychology and Bringing People Together After Disasters

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake “killed an estimated three thousand people”. The city was in complete shambles, many buildings toppled and half of its citizens had no place they could call home. This was said to be the greatest disaster for over 49 years. Rebecca Solnit tells recounts of events and actions that played a major part in the well being of people in the aftermath of various disasters in her book “A Paradise Built In Hell”. She begins her novel with how a family from Chinatown rose to the occasion as a hero in the midst of a disaster by forming a simple kitchen. The family started off with only one tin can to drink from and one pie plate to eat from, from there they were able to get funding and soon grew to be able to feel between two and three hundred people. This family was not the only one who launched relief projects, in fact it was only one of many. But this represents an ordinary response from people when disasters like this occur. Strangers come together in unlikely ways to better the community and help each other in time of need. I believe that Odell is interested in that idea of helping people, thus why she mentions it relating to “ thinking about maintenance and care for one’s kin”. Odell believed that when writing her book she hoped she would be able to encourage productivity to “individuals who can help restore communities, human and beyond”. This restoring of communities is what “ A Paradise Built in Hell” shows. As every horrible event occurs there are always people that come together in the end and pick up the pieces of what was, building it into something new. I believe that these super hero moments are what Odell aspires to occur all the time. Instead of being obsessed with benefiting ourselves we should help others, not only in times of distress and need but in times of prosperity. These Disasters give us time to think, time to be scared of what if’s. What if this happened to my city? What if this happened to my children? This fear drives people to do what they would want to be done for them if the situation was in reverse. Odell may have thought while writing her book that this sympathy towards others as a result of fear is an extremely useful physiological principal. In her writing it would be interesting if Odell were to discuss how it would be possible to not only use that fear of something happening to oneself, and how that will help the world as a whole steer away from selfishness and towards collective gain.

While there are examples of good there are also those who wish to bring pain as well. In New Orleans a hurricane battered the city for 8 days. Thousands dead, millions homeless, billions in damage. Hurricane Katrina was the worst hurricane the U.S has seen in a long time. People were left stranded in their houses, waiting for medical attention, starving for food and thirsty for clean water. With any recent disaster people poured their heart out from around the world, people sent in large funds to help with relief and within the first week over two hundred thousand volunteers promised to pitch in and reestablish the city to its former glory. But this disaster brought out a bad side of people. When people are in extremely vulnerable positions there are those who take advantage of that weakness. There have been recounts of stories which include the murder of African Americans while the disaster was being cleaned up. One story spoke of a military escort shooting 2 black men on top of a roof for signaling for help (the black men did fire first but most likely to gain the attention of the rescuers). This caused months of back and forth retaliation between enforcement and citizens. People had to stand their guard with rifles in hand to prevent looters and thieves from stealing and destroying what was left of their livelihoods. There is a general communal coming together of people to help out the less fortunate but there are those who take advantage of the situation. This is something that I believe deeply concerns Odell when writing her book. If we are supposed to work and benefit from each other, why is it not to say that the actions of a few will have detrimental effects on what is trying to be accomplished? This side of people is why we cannot move forward as quickly as we should. Humans are fundamentally flawed, and some people have flaws that allow them to exploit others for their own gain. Odell did not use this book recalling natural disasters much on her own but I do feel as if she thought about it often. Her discussions and stories she tells are based on the principles of human nature and what we can do to think differently. We are limited by both our ability/resistance to change and our flaws.

I believe those physiological principles of human nature are what Odell would continue writing about if she were to continue discussing Solnit’s writing. Odell underutilized Solnit’s descriptions of disasters by choosing not to relate it back to her main argument, how we should resist the attention economy. If Odell were to relate how humans are able to join arms in times of need to the need right now around changing our mindsets, she could be able to craft a very powerful argument into not only why we need to change our attention economy behavior but by showing how is really a viable solution that people can actively work towards, especially on a large scale. As shown in Solnit’s writing we can put aside our differences and help those in need when it comes down to survival or death, Odell should have capitalized on that fundamental behavior we possess and created an argument as to why the attention economy possesses such danger and death. By Odell continuing the conversation of human physiology in relation to our response towards tragedies she would be able to convince her audience not only how important it is to resist the attention economy, but how it’s something that is possible especially on a global scale.

Odell put this title in for a short tangent both in the beginning and expanded upon it later in the book, but I feel as though this book really stuck with her throughout the the entirety of her writing. The human physiology of how we react to certain situations is something that deeply influences the realistic approaches we can make to various societal problems. Without that knowledge of how people react it’s extremely difficult to put forth ideas reasonably. Odell believes that we as a society should refuse the attention economy. Which she believes is a disaster in itself. The understanding and knowledge that this book gave her shaped her thought process about how to attack this problem and why it is important to do so. I believe that Odell should have written more about the relationship between natural disasters and the attention economy and how it is possible to come together and fix the problem. I also believe if she were to write more about this particular book she would dive deeper into why people react the way they do and what that reaction means for the change she proposes. From fires to hurricanes people will always need to deal with the aftermath of disasters, it’s this understanding of how people react to them that allows us to get back on our feet as quickly as possible. This same understanding of reactions is what I believe Odell uses not only in her two mentions of “A Paradise Built In Hell” but throughout her book.