I really recommend reading Rebecca Solnit’s “a paradise born in hell” about the communities that form in the wake of disasters. thesis: people are shocked out of their quotidian concerns and largely altruistic, government driven by capitalism interferes with that altruism

had the chance to speak with her once about Occupy wall st being just such an altruistic community formed in the face of the man made disaster of the 2008 financial collapse

Prior to Occupy I thought disasters would be a sort of zombie movie libertarian shootout. What I learned at Occupy was that everyday people would help me feed me and shelter me and I didn’t have to earn it. People just help each other. I saw that again after hurricane sandy.

Once people have been disaster-level screwed and abandoned by their government and then shown kindness by random strangers it’s sort of like an induction into the world of solidarity and I hope that leaves politicians across the spectrum quaking in their boots

We evolved a shared neurobiology of cooperation to help us survive threats and it can be life changing to experience that in action. I will forever want to help facilitate that experience for others because it turns popular narratives about what we call human nature on its ass

Something that helps prevent a disaster from turning into PTSD is having a community that helps you create shared meaning from the challenging event. Mutual aid and decentralized informal disaster recovery can be that community

when we feel powerless to help someone we witness suffering there can be an impulse to blame them for their suffering in an effort to stop feeling bad about that powerlessness. I think we are seeing that defense mechanism a lot with Texas.

another option is to embrace that broken hearted feeling as information in your body about the shared survival need to help others and then act on that in the ways that you can. There are ways! Donating to mutual aid orgs is one