this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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This is a great time to bring up elite panic. TL;DR in emergency situations (fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, bombing, etc.), it's been proven time and again that individuals are not only capable of organizing impromptu mutual aid and direct action networks, but that they're better at disaster relief than state bodies. When heirarchical enforcement rears it's head in the form of state and military bodies, things get awful for everyone quickly. A podcast on the topic. A book on the topic.
This is a time and place where all social paradigms are shattered. You can "steal" all you want and fuck over everyone else if you so please without any threat of punishment from above. People don't do that. They help each other, they directly distribute what they have to those who need it most and work together to ensure everyone's wellbeing.
It's not surprising either. Mutual aid is baked into existence. Humans are capable of both cooperation and competition. Our society is built around competition. And even still you see people doing what they can for one another when they're able to. I feel a lot of social ills are caused by alienation from community and not being able to exercise our cooperative impulses enough.
If there were no authority, people would wait in line. By and large, people want to help and labor. Most of us want to work, especially if we feel it is meaningful. If there were no authority, I think the majority of us would be better off for it
Can you really expect the kind of behavior that emerges from a disaster to be the behavior that people would maintain forever even in the absence of some unifying horror? The disaster creates temporary community unity which allows such incredible social cohesion at scale.
Obviously not. That's why most anarchists advocate for pre configuration and organization. If you've already got mutual aid networks, horizontal systems of distribution and production in place before shit goes down, your odds of a successful transition to a stateless society are much higher. The examples of elite panic were there to highlight the cooperative impulses of individuals and the malignancy of the state on those impulses
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires. People spontaneously formed networks of mutual aid and direct action. They autonomously conducted firefighting, medical, food distribution, and rescue efforts to those afflicted. When the military showed up to provide disaster relief they were met by people managing their own affairs and clamped down on it. Killing several victims of the earthquake, jailing many more, and inadvertently starving people by not providing enough food and water to the victims. This was all made worse by the military severely punishing people who "looted" abandoned stores for food and other resources in reaction to the states failure to help effectively. The military even went as far as to level and burn entire blocks to prevent people from "stealing".
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, people again formed mutual aid networks to help those in need. The state cracked down on looting (people taking what they needed from abandoned and flooded stores), killing a few. Rescue efforts by the national guard were delayed because they weren't able to have an armed person on every rescue boat. So instead of just sending them out unarmed or only sending the armed ones, they just didn't send any. This killed people. Rich racists went on killing sprees in their neighborhoods any time they saw black people nearby. This was ignored and in some cases encouraged by local police as "protecting their property". The anarchist black cross was the only organized body to effectively deliver aid and defense for the people affected.
In 1964 an earthquake struck Anchorage, Alaska, levelling large portions of the city. People spontaneously organized into mutual aid and direct action networks. They were so effective, only 9 people died from injures related to the earthquake. The death toll would have been significantly higher if it weren't for the actions of residents. It was a subject of study for years due to the swift and effective response of the locals. The police in the area scrambled in a state of panic. They attempted to enforce the rule of law. Even granting civillians with the temporary position of deputy. They gave them a gun and marked them as deputies using lipstick. These "deputies" were a gaggle of drunks in a local bar. The residents of Anchorage kindly told them to fuck off. When the military arrived to aid in rescue efforts a few days after the earthquake, there was no one left to rescue. The residents saved everyone themselves.
There's 3 examples of what happens when people are not subject to the rule of law. When there are no power structures to enforce it's will on the people. When they do get reintroduced, its often violent and cruel.
These are great examples. One other non-disaster one I love is the Irish Bank Strike. The banks didn't like some regulation so they decided to go on strike thinking it would bring the economy to its knees.
It didn't. People used cash to buy things, and if they needed bigger purchases they just used their existing checkbooks. If there was a question about someone's credit they'd go down to the pub and the pub owner would vouch for the person writing the check.
Eventually the banks gave up and reopened.
Loving the dialogue because you specifically are willing to bring up examples of spontaneous human cooperation during times of geological hazard. It seems like regular folks do rise to the occasion.
I guess my worry is what happens during times of sociological hazard i.e. war or conflict. It's one thing for humans to join together and help each other after disasters have happened to them specifically, but if those hazards are being speculated and predicted about so as to happen in the future, I wonder how much regular folks care about it. Look at climate change maybe and the inaction a lot of people take (a lot of action is being taken too, don't get me wrong, but whether that action is fast enough depends).
I would say that humans have a great ability to react to geological or sociological effects, but as for preparing for or preventing geological or sociological causes, I would say it's hit or miss.
I think timescale is the important factor for spontaneous organization. As you noted with climate change, despite us feeling the effects of it every day, it's still "abstract" to many of us. That's a problem for later, we don't need to deal with it now. And even then, if you asked the average Joe if we should act immediately around climate change I think you'd find there's enough of us out there who are willing to do something. We just aren't sure what or how. We've been prevented from acting with self determination for most of our lives and the practice isn't familiar to us.
A quick aside, because I don't want to forget about your mention of cooperation in conflict. That impulse is still present and practiced in times of political strife and war. You see it all the time without realizing. People react in much the same way after a series of bombings that they do in natural disasters. I don't have any examples off the top of my head but it should be easy enough to dig up a few stories on the subject.
I was writing earlier about the importance of prefigurarion organization to build a successful stateless society. These practices not only put egalitarian power structures in place (neighborhood councils, unions/syndicates, co-ops) and forms the basis for direct distribution in a moneyless economy, it also allows individuals an opportunity to practice self determination, direct action, and exercising real political power. And that's part of my reasoning as to why I think time is a more important factor.
All of these things will be important as climate change progresses. As Peter Gelderloos highlights in his book "The Solutions are Already Here" (couldn't find a free copy, otherwise I'd link it) the state is incapable solving climate change. Many of their grand projects have been either unnecessary, inappropriate, or abject failures. Grassroots efforts have been far more successful and long lasting. The best thing the state can do for climate change is to get out of the way and allow people who know what they're doing to work.
People are able to act and react, but we're not permitted to meaningfully act in our day to day lives as a consequence of various forms of heirarchy. Have you ever had to stand by and watch something awful/dumb/misguided happen because the reaction from those with power over you may have been more severe than just letting the thing happen? Stuff like that is happening on a mass scale every day because those above us hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and are happy to use it if the "threat" you present is great enough.
I'd keep rambling but I have to get ready for work haha. Feel free to reply or DM me, I'm happy to talk!
Well said. I'm a novice in learning about how humans react to adversity, whether personal, sociological, habitational, geological, cosmological, or ontological, so it's always appreciated when people put more effort to teach when their interlocutor seems to have all but given up on the project. We all should remember that our words posted online don't necessarily just reach those we're replying to - there is the public who are reading.
Thank you, I appreciate it. If you feel like diving back into the whole human nature thing, I think you would enjoy an anarchist perspective. Peter kropotkin and David graeber are great people to start with. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is a foundational book in evolutionary biology that holds up quite well despite being written over a century ago. And I wouldn't be a real anarchist if I didn't recommend The Conquest of Bread. It's less "human nature" and more "societal change is possible". David Graeber was an anthropologist and anarchist who's written a number of fascinating books. His most famous being Bullshit Jobs. If history is your jam he and David Wengrow wrote The Dawn of Everything in 2016 and it's an amazing (but dense in parts) read. It's been criticized for being idealist (in the ontological sense) so take it's rationale with a grain of salt. It is however, very informative and thought provoking, especially in the "social life and nature of humans" department. Another notable mention is Debt: The First 5,000 Years. The title is pretty self explanatory haha. Either way, I wish you well on your search!