Tribe by Sebastian Junger
by Parker · 22 things on Twos
- Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary
- “We had no master to oversee or drive us, so that we could work as leisurely as we pleased”
- Indian clothing was more comfortable, Indian religion was less harsh, and Indian society was essentially classless and egalitarian
- Many people feel affluence and safety aren’t a good trade for freedom
- The accumulation of personal property allowed people to make more and more individualistic choices about their lives, and those choices unavoidably diminished group efforts toward a common good. And as society modernized, people found themselves able to live independently from any communal group. A person living in a modern city or suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day—or an entire life—mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone
- People in wealthy countries suffer depression at as much as eight times the rate they do in poor countries
- Human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others
- Social bonds were reinforced during disasters, and the people overwhelmingly devoted their energies toward the good of the community rather than just themselves
- Modern society has gravely disrupted the social bonds that have always characterized the human experience
- Disasters create a community of sufferers that allows individuals to experience an immensely reassuring connection to others
- Humans are so strongly wired to help one another—and enjoy such enormous social benefits from doing so—that people regularly risk their lives for complete strangers
- What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves
- To help another human being who is sitting or standing or laying close to you is the basic human instinct
- The very worst experience is having a friend die. It is far more disturbing than experiencing mortal danger oneself
- “You had fifteen guys who for the first time in their lives were not living in a competitive society. We had no hopes of becoming officers. I liked that feeling very much ... it was the absence of competition and boundaries and all those phony standards that created the thing I loved about the Army”
- Adversity often leads people to depend more on one another, and that closeness can produce a kind of nostalgia for the hard times that even civilians are susceptible to
- “I must admit that I miss those days of extreme brotherhood... which led to deep emotions and understandings that are above anything I have felt since the plague years”
- What people miss presumably isn’t danger or loss but the unity that these things often engender
- Whatever the technological advances of modern society the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit
- “We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is to an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that”
- It makes no sense to make sacrifices for a group that, itself, isn’t willing to make sacrifices for you
- If you want to make a society work, then you don’t keep underscoring the places where you’re different—you underscore your shared humanity