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

Throughout the book, Solnit discusses varying forms of the self, including the public and the private self. These questions of selfhood are at the center of questions of well-being. The questions of human nature discussed throughout the book also come to bear on the question of the self. The notion of human nature, as Solnit points out, “implies a fixed essence, a universal and stable inner self” (74). Solnit rejects this idea in favor of the notion that the self is more of a tendency—towards viewing ourselves either as part of a community or as isolated individuals. The tendency that we display depends largely on the situation, and thus, we have many selves.

Solnit argues that contemporary society privileges the private self above the public self. In therapy, the problems of the individual’s life are given more weight as a cause for their distress than are the ills of society. For example, women in the 1950s were bullied “into accepting their status as housewives” using Freudian diagnoses that primarily addressed family and erotic life (91), leaving no room for a public self that desires social change. Solnit then asks, “What if your sense of self is so vast that your well-being includes these broad and idealistic engagements?” (91), prompting the reader to consider that what occurs in the public sphere deeply affects one’s well-being. Solnit observes throughout the book that the communities formed in disaster settings satisfy the needs of our social self, and this point can explain the positive, deep emotions akin to joy that she widely reports.

William James’s concept of the moral equivalent of war addresses this need for a social self. He argued that war provides a necessary social function, uniting people under a singular mission in which each person can find a part to play. James explains that “all the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs him” (79). In being proud of the collective, he becomes proud of himself while continuing to work for the collective’s betterment. This dynamic fosters social cohesion and trust. James was anti-war and instead proposed finding a “moral equivalent” of war, which could take the form of a youth corps working on community improvement projects.

Gustave Le Bon also theorizes a social self, but in a way that diminishes its humanity. For Le Bon, when people join a crowd or mob, they lose their civilized, rational “self” in the mob, becoming automatons that are subservient to the collective’s wild impulses and “savagery.”