I’ve been reading A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. Here’s an excerpt with some new words we could use around here, too. She’s talking about Argentina during its economic crisis a decade ago:
“The 2001 meltdown created something akin to disaster’s sense of community. It was a revolution in spirit as well as in practical things. In fifty years of bad government, including a few murderous military regimes, Argentines had become deeply distrustful of politicians and state power, and most had abandoned the public life. This time, they sought to withdraw from and reduce government’s sphere, turning not to left-wing movements but to each other, relaunching a vital civil society. What they created was so new it required new words—horizontalidad, or horizontalism, to describe the nonhierarchical way many communities made decisions; protagonism to describe the new agency many found; politica afectiva to describe the politics of affection. The earthquake of 1944 and the crash of 2001 demonstrate again that disasters are ultimately enigmas: it is not the disaster but the struggle to give it meaning and to take the opportunity to redirect the society that matters, and these are always struggles with competing interests.”