Each catastrophe is a test of what kind of society we’ve built. And each recovery offers a chance, however fleeting, to build another.
The link is to a really long story in the Sunday (November 13, 2020) New York Times Magazine. I know there’s a paywall that will block access to the story unless you have a subscription or have purchased the print edition. I read part of this story, and was totally impressed by the introduction, so I’m posting it here for you. It’s a great piece of writing, creating a catalog of all the crap that circulating around all of us these days:
The era we are now in the midst of might be defined, most notably, by the omnipresence of disaster. Plagues, droughts, floods, toxic air and water, wars, massacres, famines, earthquakes, heat waves, wildfires, recessions, dust storms, despotism — slow-motion nightmares are crashing into fast-moving catastrophes, each one amplifying the next.
I live in California’s East Bay, where disaster is a constant threat. In some cities, houses are succumbing to lengthening wildfire seasons, while people living in tents breathe air poisoned by the flames. Seasons of drought are starting to blur into one long era of aridification. Tectonic plates rumble frequently, reminding us that the Hayward fault underneath us is due to cause a major earthquake. Elsewhere, mere weeks after unprecedented heat waves scorched the country this spring, apocalyptic floods began engulfing Pakistan and are ongoing. Tropical hurricanes continue to reshape coastlines in the Gulf of Mexico, their names lingering like ghosts long after their winds have quieted: Katrina, Harvey, Maria. A virulent combination of governmental corruption and the debt traps of the global finance system have contributed heavily to starvation-level food shortages in Sri Lanka. Authoritarian leaders have unleashed mass state violence against protesters in Iran, while far-right extremists clamor violently against democracy in the United States. Disaster is so ubiquitous that the idea of an aftermath has started to lose its meaning. Covid’s brutal, blurry slide from pandemic to endemic is an example that underscores one defining truth of our reality: Our disasters don’t exactly end; they evolve. And if we are to outlast them, so must we.
In one respect, we already have: Knowing that hellish dangers lie around every corner has made us better at anticipating and bracing for them. We can detect the warning signs earlier, and as a global society we’ve improved at mobilizing in response. But the world we knew — where “100-year floods” happened roughly once a century — is ending.
I lead the Headway team at The New York Times, which explores global challenges through the lens of progress. We wanted to understand how people around the world approach rebuilding in this state of continuous disaster. Everywhere we looked, long-simmering crises had reached breaking points: For example, a hurricane that on its own would be an emergency hits a brittle food system misshapen by colonialism, sparking a crisis. These ruptures carry both the threat and possibility of broader transformations. Disasters compress time, and in a world besieged by them, dramatic shifts occur: For planners and architects and officials, whose work typically unfolds over years, disaster recovery requires and enables otherwise-unthinkable haste. For survivors, unfathomable loss creates what the psychologist William James called an “awful discontinuity of past and future.” This essay is part of a special issue of The New York Times Magazine about rebuilding. In creating it, we found ourselves widening the lens, from singular dislocations caused by disaster to the wider possibilities for change that emerge as society seesaws between creeping calamities and sudden shocks.
To recognize the power of these frenzied moments to transform is not to glorify chaos. Grasping at possibility doesn’t begin to ease the struggle of the present. But the steady breakage of the world around us is an omen that another world is coming, and we may have a chance to shape it.
