Cooperation after Disaster
"...Compassion, which is a disposition suitable to creatures so weak and subject to so many evils as we certainly are: by so much the more universal and useful to mankind, as it comes before any kind of reflection; and at the same time so natural, that the very brutes themselves sometimes give evident proofs of it."
These lines were written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), one of the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, and the one who is perhaps most associated with the belief that human nature is… good.
This is as opposed to his predecessor, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who believed that we are all in our core enemies to one another, only waiting to ravage each other should the social order collapse. Rousseau believed that in our natural state, we are creatures designed for cooperation, solidarity and compassion and it is modernity and technological innovation which removes us from nature which sets us back.
In his writing, Rousseau was heavily influenced by what is known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake, which was a series of earthquakes that struck Lisbon, Portugal on November 1, 1755. The earthquake and resulting tsunami killed between 60,000 and 100,000 people and destroyed about 20,000 homes.
While many people at the time viewed the disaster as a punishment from God, Rousseau blamed human hubris for building modern cities with disregard to nature.
However, despite that criticism, Rousseau also believed in the ability of people to come together in the aftermath of a disaster and for their cooperation to grow and not diminish.
Such a positive view we can also find is our portion this week - Shemot.
Shemot is the first portion in the book of Exodus. After recounting the dynasty of Jacob and his children, it immediately begins telling the story that some of you may know as the Passover story or the Exodus story, the story which begins with the enslavement of the Israelites by the Pharaoh in Egypt.
The new and infamous Pharaoh is worried that the Israelites, a foreign nation among them, has grown too big and might not be loyal to the crown in a time of war. He therefore decides to make their lives miserable by enslaving them. To his surprise, the more he enslaves them the more they reproduce and grow.
The Pharaoh’s next plan is a particularly evil decree, instructing the midwives to check Israelite infants’ sex at birth and in the case of male, kill the newborn.
The midwives disobey the king’s order:
“The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live.”
In Hebrew the word “Vatechayena,” translated here to “they let the boys live,” can mean more than just letting someone live or choosing not to kill them. This word in Hebrew can also mean to nurture someone and make them more lively.
Commentator Or Hachayin (Moroccan Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar (1696-1743) suggests: “The Torah tells us that not only did the midwives not do what the king had ordered them to do, but that they did not even do anything similar to what the king had demanded of them.”
Or Hachayim suggests that the midwives not only did not kill the babies but rather the opposite, they went well above and beyond to keep them alive and healthy. In this grim crisis of morality, they stepped up toward their “Good state of nature” as Rousseau would put it.
American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit published a book in 2009 called: “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.” In it she shows how people, when faced with a massive disaster tend to come together, corporate and strengthen communities, connections and institutions rather than fall apart into chaos. She refutes the Hobbsian idea that when our governance is weak or is failing, we would pretty much be reduced to a state of war in which only the strong survive.
She also researched the emotions which were invoked in people in the aftermath of disasters, calling them “graver than happiness but deeply positive.”
Remarkably, Solnit's ideas stretch much further than our ability to overcome and rebuild — she proceeds to describe that positive feeling as “...a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become.”
This, in my opinion, is very important for us to pay attention to nowadays.
Being engaged in conversations with people in the past week, some who lost homes, schools or places of worship, it’s hard to ignore the sentiment that people share about the systems and institutions around us which have failed us and are still failing those who are in dire need of help.
People quickly realized that the hope, comfort and support which they have received in the immediate aftermath came from grassroots organizations and the spontaneous initiatives taken by ordinary people who were and still are volunteering their time.
In an interview with “Bomb Magazine” in 2009, Solnit described the premise of her book as follows:
"What happens in disasters demonstrates everything an anarchist ever wanted to believe about the triumph of civil society and the failure of institutional authority."
May we be wise to learn from our current crisis to build community infrastructures which are based on true cooperation and accountability. Like the midwives in our portion, let us step up towards our greatest “state of nature” and go beyond recovery into truly and fully nurturing life.
