Resilient Americans: We May Not Have It All Together, But Together We Have It All

Synopsis

Anything that alienates and divides us leaves us weak and exposed to disaster. If we know nothing else about a disaster event, we should know this: experiencing a disaster will almost certainly mean taking care of ourselves, our family and our neighbors for a period of time and relying on them to do the same for us. Our communal goodwill is our best plan for coming through. Simple human compassion is more essential to our national resilience and strength than most of us recognize. Shallow values won’t suffice as the foundation of our social and cultural infrastructure.

With anecdotes and unexpected stories about growing up during the 60s and 70s in Los Angeles and from her work in disaster recovery, Diane Burden Cox illustrates the importance of our relationships with each other to our national resilience. If we want a resilient infrastructure as a nation–clean water supply, buildings, bridges, roads, energy grids, health and education systems–we need to recognize it rests on the strength of our interactions with each other. Resilience isn’t just one more thing to put on our national to-do list, it’s something we can actually enjoy and have fun cultivating together.