Question: How can Solnit’s description of a community coming together post-Katrina in the United States or Cooke’s reflection on covid 19 be brought together with the examples of community resiliency that are discussed in the post (and linked videos) of the Disaster Archipelago blog? How might some of these insights help us navigate the times we are in right now? Tag your post with #HIEA114. Don’t forget to do this last bit, as it’s one of the main ways, we’ll be able to find each other’s work.
Rebecca Solnit stressed the idea of “Beloved Community” in her article. In my understanding, a beloved community is a utopia style place where everyone lives in peace and love without discrimination, hierarchy and violence. Volunteers from everywhere came to disaster area after Katrina destroyed everything when she passed and created a new warm community with local people. The Disaster Archipelago blog mainly discussed how people lived in disaster area came together and their changing attitudes and feelings after the earthquake and tsunami. What’s more, Cooke’s reflection on covid-19 is a retrospect of past epidemic diseases and a prediction of future.
From their words, I have learned several things. Firstly, the situation of covid-19 probably will get worse but finally we will conquer this disease. During the evolvement of covid-19, social unrest is happening, and bureaucracy may put us in a worse situation. In America, I think that Trump’s silly words messed people up and caused chaos in international relationships. In China, I think the most influential example is a series of misconducts of Wuhan government.
Secondly, although we may face frustrated things during the combat with covid-19, we still need to stay inside, living our lives and protect ourselves. Secondly, as Cooke said, during this special time, we are way closer to our community. We need to maintain connections in a community and to help each other. Here we can apply the ideology of “Beloved Community”. We should control ourselves and still be nice and warm to each other. Only we come together, we can survive.
Thirdly, as mentioned in the Disaster Archipelago blog, disasters also make us stronger. Keeping thinking makes us sharpen. In my opinion, Covid-19 is a human caused disaster. We must learn from it and learn from countries’ mistakes.
