Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.
Rebecca SolnitRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that during disasters, people often act rationally and help each other rather than descending into chaos.
Rebecca Solnit's quote highlights the often misunderstood human behavior in times of crisis. Contrary to popular belief that panic and chaos prevail during disasters, she argues that individuals usually strive to maintain order and assist one another. This perspective challenges societal narratives around disaster response, emphasizing that humanity has an intrinsic tendency towards cooperation and civility even in dire circumstances.
Themes
DisasterHuman BehaviorCrisisCivilityCooperation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about community resilience during emergencies.
More from Rebecca Solnit
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We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities.
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If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nabhan calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.
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The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
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Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller's, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.
Rebecca SolnitRead
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