Summary

Solnit begins the next section of the book by explaining that her understanding of the millennium can also be defined by a shift from seeing the world according to strict binaries. Instead, the events Solnit delineates in "The Millennium Arrives" section of the book represent people who are willing to approach political and social problems without relying on oppositions to fuel their cause. Solnit provides a personal anecdote from her time working for Citizen's Alert in Nebraska to emphasize why dispelling with binary oppositions is beneficial: one night at a bar, she sits next to a western rancher who wears an anti-environmentalist T-shirt and the two begin talking, eventually finding common ground and "the possibility of a middle way" (88). In the next chapter, Solnit goes on to add that along with binary thinking comes championing of specific ideologies, and she argues that relying...