12 Lessons from Sebastian Junger
'Tribe' reveals why you need strong community to live a happy life
In episode 004, we’re looking at Tribe by Sebastian Junger.
Sebastian Junger is a New York Times bestselling author, long-time war correspondent and filmmaker. Sebastian's debut film, Restrepo received an Academy Award nomination, and he won the Grand Jury Prize for the film at Sundance.
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12 lessons from Tribe:
Live an honourable life even if modern society tempts you otherwise. “Modern society on the other hand is a sprawling and anonymous mess where people can get away with incredible levels of dishonesty without getting caught. What tribal people would consider a profound betrayal of the group, modern society simply dismisses as fraud.”
Community is good for the soul. Without it, you’ll suffer. “Virtually all mammals seem to benefit from companionship; even lab rats recover more quickly from trauma if they are caged with other rats rather than alone. In humans, lack of social support has been found to be twice as reliable at predicting PTSD as the severity of the trauma itself.”
The only way forward is to become responsible for others and practice self-discipline. “Warriors had to be recognized and were charged with the responsibility to take care of others, to practice self-discipline, and to provide leadership. The social contract was assumed now as wichasha yatapika (man they praise)”
The more attached you become to material possessions, the less freedom you experience. “The question for Western society isn’t so much why tribal life might be so appealing—it seems obvious on the face of it—but why Western society is so unappealing. On a material level, it is clearly more comfortable and protected from the hardships of the natural world. But as societies become more affluent they tend to require more, rather than less, time and commitment by the individual, and it’s possible that many people feel that affluence and safety simply aren’t a good trade for freedom.”
Have skin in the game in all that you do. “Dishonest bankers and welfare or insurance cheats are the modern equivalents of tribe members who quietly steal more than their fair share of meat or other resources. That is very different from alpha males who bully others and openly steal resources. Among hunter-gatherers, bullying males are often faced down by coalitions of other senior males, but that rarely happens in modern society.”
Don’t run from struggles, embrace them. “The positive effects of war on mental health were first noticed by the great sociologist Emilie Durkheim, who found that when European countries went to war, suicide rates dropped. Psychiatric wards in Paris were strangely empty during both world wars, and that remained true even as the German army rolled into the city in 1940.”
Seek to do good towards another. “Humans are strongly wired to help one another—and enjoy such enormous social benefits from doing so—that people regularly risk their lives for complete strangers.”
Sacrifice gives meaning to life. “The beauty and the tragedy of the modern world is that it eliminates many situations that require people to demonstrate a commitment to the collective good. Protected by police and fire departments and relieved of most of the challenges of survival, an urban man might go through his entire life without having to come to the aid of someone in danger—or even give up his dinner.”
Who would you die for? “What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss. It is a loss because having to face that question has, for tens of millennia, been one of the ways that we have defined ourselves as people.”
Don’t wait until wartime to cultivate your virtues. “War also inspires ancient human virtues of courage, loyalty, and selflessness that can be utterly intoxicating to the people who experience them.”
Liberal societies are designed to remove you from your tribe. “They emulated Indians, married them, were adopted by them, and on occasions even fought alongside them. And the opposite never happened: Indians almost never ran away to join white society. Emigration always seems to go from the civilized to the tribal, and it left Western thinkers flummoxed about how to explain such an apparent rejection of their society.”
Become the master of your time. “Notwithstanding the Indian women have all the fuel and bread to procure, and the cooking to perform, their task is probably not harder than that of white women. We had no master to oversee or drive us, so that we could work as leisurely as we pleased. No people can live more happy than the Indians did in times of peace.”
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