The Brutal History Of Freedom - Sebastian Junger | Modern Wisdom Podcast 396

1. 0:00 – 0:24

   Intro

   1. SJSebastian Junger0:00

      I mean, you can give up temporal freedom and get a high paying job and make a bunch of money, and then you have economic freedom. You can give up the sort of safety and stability and predictability of living in a modern society and go into the wilderness, and you have the freedom of that, but you're in a fair amount of danger. And if something happens to you, like you have a ruptured appendix, sorry guy, you're dead. You never get all forms of freedom at once. (wind blows)

2. 0:24 – 15:44

   Examining Sebastian’s Near-Death Experience

   1. SJSebastian Junger0:24

   2. CWChris Williamson0:24

      A little while ago, you had a near death experience. What was the story behind that?

   3. SJSebastian Junger0:31

      Yeah, I mean, you know, I'd been in a lot of combat as a journalist with American soldiers and, and, and, and otherwise around the world. And I thought all, you know, sort of danger was behind me. I'm in good health, I'm, I'm an athlete, I'm in good shape, I have- I got a heart rate of 60 and a blood pressure of 120 over 80. I had everything you could want at age 50, 58 last year. Uh, and I felt a sudden, uh, pain in my abdomen. And it was an undiagnosed aneurysm in my pancreatic artery, which is this, like, little artery that nobody thinks about. And it had an aneurysm, and it ruptured. And I started bleeding out into my own, into my own abdomen. And by the time they got me to the ER, I'd lost three quarters of my blood. Um, and, uh, you know, when women, often when women die in childbirth, which tragically still happens, they basically, they're dying the same way. They're bleeding to death and they can't find the, they can't find the, the, the bleed and they can't stop it, and they lose the woman. And that's basically what was happening to me, but it was the result of an an- of a ruptured aneurysm. And, um, you know, by, by the time they were, they were, they were cutting my neck open to put a line into my jugular to get enough blood into me fast enough to save me, by the time that was happening, uh, you know, I was, I was actively dying. And my, my, you know, I'm an atheist. I'm not religious. Uh, my dad was a physicist, but my dead father appeared above me, sort of welcoming me, which is some, an experience I'm still struggling to explain. And, uh, and a black pit opened up underneath me, and I was getting pulled into it. And, you know, it was the, uh, uh, I mean, I guess neurologically the black pit of unconsciousness. I don't know. But it was a very, uh, it's not like falling asleep, it's not like losing consciousness when you're having, about to have a medical procedure. I was getting pulled into a black hole and my dead father was there. And the last thing I said to the doctor was, "You gotta hurry. You're losing me right now." And, um, they, you know, they did their work, their amazing work, and they saved me. And, um, you know, it was touch and go for a while because I need- they needed another eight hours to find the leak inside me. And, um, you know, when you're transfused like that, I had 10 units of blood, and when you're transfused like that, you know, other problems happen. Like, you start to get, you run the risk of organ failure and, and, and things like that. And, and luckily I'm healthy and my body managed to stay alive for eight hours until they, they, they fixed the leak. And I'm very, very lucky to be here. Most people die from this, and I'm very lucky to be here.

   4. CWChris Williamson3:02

      That's an insane story. I have a friend that I met last year in Dubai, and he had, he was put under a, uh, induced coma for three months or so. And during that time, he lived an entire nother life for two years in Singapore. And he could tell you the name of the company that he had, the brand of toothpaste he put on his toothbrush, where his ties were kept inside of his apartment. He would be able to tell you the name of the street that he went to. And he was selling virtual reality software in this other life. And he was testing it on himself. And he had a full team, he had a sales team, he had developers, and he would go into the experience, the virtual reality experience inside of this other world while he's laid in a hospital bed and he doesn't know. He would go into it and he would hear people talking. And at one point, he gets trapped inside of the virtual reality world for two months inside of this dream. So, this is, like, two layers down of Inception. And in that, he can hear people speaking to him and he doesn't know what it is. And then eventually, he gets his fingers into a corner and pries it apart, and that's when he wakes up. But during this other world that he lives in for two years while he's away for about three months, his father dies. So his dad, his dream father dies while his real father's still alive, and they're watching him while he's in bed. Paul, in bed, in this induced coma, and they see that he's weeping. He's got tears streaming out the corner of his eyes. And that's when he's burying his dead father in the dream while his real father watches him cry about the fact that he's had to do it. Crazy.

   5. SJSebastian Junger4:37

      That, that's insane. Did he ever go to Singapore to look up the places he had thought, you know, imagined he was? Like, did he-

   6. CWChris Williamson4:45

      Uh, I don't think he has, no.

   7. SJSebastian Junger4:48

      Wow. That's insane. There's a lot of... You know, again, I'm an atheist. I feel like I have to keep saying this, uh, but there's a lot of things we don't understand. And, and I, I, I'm very open to the idea that there are dimensions of reality that we don't understand or haven't even guessed at. And that in those thr- in these threshold states, like in a coma, uh, or in, uh, in a, um, sort of, um, transported, a, a religious, an ecstatic religious state, or-

   8. CWChris Williamson5:15

      Transcendence, sort of.

   9. SJSebastian Junger5:16

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson5:16

       Yeah.

   11. SJSebastian Junger5:17

       Yeah. That, that we sort of, like, gain some sort of, like, entry and some glimpse into another, another dimension of reality. I, I can understand how that would be true. Um, and I think my father, the physicist, would also say, "Yes, there's things we don't understand, and that means that there are phenomena that we can't explain."

   12. CWChris Williamson5:35

       Even if there isn't some other worldliness going on, even if it's not a different plane that you're tapping into, sheer, the sheer fact that your brain decided to create some sort of, kind of like a polarity thing, it's sort of welcoming. There's something symbolic going on with regards to darkness and father. And then with Paul, this near death experience, uh, in an induced coma is semi-common. It's, it's, like, rarely common. Um, and-

   13. SJSebastian Junger6:03

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson6:03

       ... even if all it was was the brain trying to create some sort of an existence in which he could keep taking over. Even if that's it. Like, just that is pretty miraculous itself.

   15. SJSebastian Junger6:14

       Yup, yup. Well my understanding of the medical understanding of an induced coma is that there's no brain activity at all. So I wonder how they-

   16. CWChris Williamson6:21

       Supposedly.

   17. SJSebastian Junger6:22

       ... you know, I wonder how they, uh, understand it. But likewise with death. You know, like that there's no brain activity and I, you know, I mean I was entering a very strange place and, and when I was on that threshold. And, um, I, you know, I've, I've done some research into it and, uh, and, uh, i- i- i- my experience is a very common one, and it's interesting because they h- there are various neurological explanations like low blood oxygen, um, uh, endogenous DMT in your brain that gets released, um, uh, ketamine, endogenous ketamine that gets released. Things that will produce visions and hallucinations in, in test subjects. But when they, when they expose people to those effects, like ketamine, people have wild hallucinations. They don't see the dead. They don't see dead relatives, right? You have to be dying for that to happen. And, um, and that, that's the part that it's, th- it's very common for people who are dying, and it's not really part of the ketamine experience for otherwise healthy people, and that's where the mystery sort of begins for me.

   18. CWChris Williamson7:24

       Yeah. I am familiar from my days partying, I'm pretty familiar with ketamine and I never saw any of my dead parents coming back even though both of them were alive. Which means, is it set in setting, which is something that psychedelic researchers talk about? Is it the fact that you've been primed because you feel like you're about to die so that there's some sort of predisposition toward thinking that this is the sort of vision that you may have? Or is there maybe something else going on? Is it a blend of other sort of chemicals? Pretty interesting.

   19. SJSebastian Junger7:53

       Well, yeah. I mean, I didn't know I was dying, so, uh, I, I mean, I was shocked-

   20. CWChris Williamson7:57

       Oh fuck, yeah, of course. You just thought that you were...

   21. SJSebastian Junger8:00

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson8:00

       Yeah.

   23. SJSebastian Junger8:00

       No, I mean I said, I said to the doctor, "You're losing me right, me right now." And I meant, I, I felt myself getting pulled away but I had no idea that I was dying. It never crossed my mind. I mean, I, I just had a tummy ache, right? And I felt funny. I mean, I did, and you know my, I was pretty loopy because I had, my, I had a, um, uh, a, I, you know, my blood log oxygen levels were incredibly low. My hemoglobin was 1.2. I mean, it's hard to find that on the internet, right? I mean, almost no one goes that low. That, that's inco- that, that's incompatible with life. Right, is what I was told. 1.2 hemoglobin. Hemoglobin's what transports oxygen. So basically, I mean, I was running on fumes. And, uh, I had no idea that I was dying. The next day, the, the nurse in the ICU said, "We d- no one knows how you made it. Like, you almost died yesterday and no one knows why you're still here." It was completely shocking to me. So maybe there's some kind of body knowledge that understands you're dying on a kind of animal level and produces the appropriate hallucinations. It's entirely possible. Or, there's something weird going on in reality and there's something we don't understand about death in that, you know, dead people have some dimension of existence that we don't, we don't understand and that we, that we ourselves access on the threshold of death. I mean, I, I don't know, you know? But it's a, it's a, it's a legitimate question.

   24. CWChris Williamson9:20

       Didn't you say that there were a couple of things that had occurred, uh, weird embodied senses, sort of subconscious-y things that you'd gone through in the time period, leading up to that incident as well?

   25. SJSebastian Junger9:32

       Yeah. I mean, for many years, uh, for no reason that I can identify and I, I'm a, I was an endurance athlete when I was young. I'm a very, for, for, um, a person of my age, I'm very healthy. I'm sort of high performance human, you know? And, and, uh, um, I, for many, for many years I, I, I, I had this bizarre certainty that I would die before I was 60. You know, and I'm not really eligible for, you know, a heart attack or a stroke or something like that. I'm, uh, you know, I just have a constitution that makes that very unlikely. Um, I, I don't know why. And that's exactly what would have happened but for this sort of miracle. But, but also, like, two days before, um, I was wro- woken up by a nightmare that, that I had died and I'd crossed over and I was looking back at my family and they were grieving and I couldn't go back to them because I'd crossed over. And I was just, like, anguished. I, I, I, I have two little girls, you know, four, at the time they were three and one, and I was abso- and, and, and my wife, and I was completely anguished that I'd sort of screwed up and had died sort of by accident. And, uh, and I couldn't, I couldn't go back again. And I was anguished and it woke me up and that was 36 hours before exactly that happened.

   26. CWChris Williamson10:46

       Crazy. Given the fact that you had such a profound experience, has there been a lasting mindset shift around how you see the world or a change in your behavior in any way?

   27. SJSebastian Junger10:59

       Well, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a, a little bit more open to, you know, what you might call the great mystery of life and of death. You know, a little, a little more open to the idea that it may not be, that we might be something more than purely biological beings and that our, everything that, that we are ends at the moment of death. Uh, I mean, uh, you know, I've seen dead bodies. I've seen people who were dead an hour, I've seen people who were dead a week, I've seen people who were dead a month, right? It's hard to imagine when you look at those individuals that there's anything remaining of that, what, who that person was. Right? I can tell you right now, like, it just, wow, you're some skin and a bunch of bones. Like, you are no longer you, right? So that, but now I'm not sure. Like, uh, I, I just don't understand what happened to me. And people keep saying to me, like, uh, "Well, you know, are you reconsidering your atheism?" You know, like, uh, you know, I'm, and I'm like, "I didn't see God. I saw my father." You know? Like, I don't know if God doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this. But there, the presence of my father does raise questions about the nature of reality in a physical sense and the nature of death in a physical sense. And, um-So, uh, other than that, you know, I would say, I mean it's sort of, sort of cliché but all we know we have for sure is right at, i- i- we don't even know what we have today. We, we know we have this moment, right? This moment that you and I are both in right now, we know for sure we have that, because we're in it. And, m- literally moment by moment, we, you cannot absolutely know that the, even the next moment will come, much less the day, next day will come, right? You don't know. There was a lady about a week ago who was woken up. She, she was asleep and she was woken up because a meteor the size, it was said, it was said, uh, but it seems quite gendered, uh, so it's a sort of funny... this was in the media, that a, a meteor the size of a large man's fist. I just find that, in this modern era (laughs) , quite a funny way to describe a meteor. But anyway, a meteor the size of a large man's fist w- walloped into the pillow next to her head, right? She was three inches from being annihilated, right? And, uh-

   28. CWChris Williamson13:13

       Fuck.

   29. SJSebastian Junger13:13

       Yeah. So, um, uh, or she came to bed and found it there. I mean, I don't know which it was. But at any rate, had her head been there, like, she would be dead. So you don't know, moment to moment that you will... but right in this moment, right now, you do, you know exist, you know you exist, and in this sort of zen sense, that is all we know for sure that we have. And so it makes me just think, you know, be in the moment. Like appreciate the fact that you are alive right now, right here with your little girls or whatever. Like, here you are right now and just have a reverence for that, because it's all you'll ever know that you have for sure.

   30. CWChris Williamson13:50

       If that's what you get out of a near-death experience, overall I think avoiding the near-death experience would probably have been preferable, but that realization's pretty beautiful. Another crazy thing, which is what I said to my friend on the podcast, Paul, about the fact that he'd buried his father once and he was gonna have to bury him again. Um, you're potentially going to see your father and that sort of black pit again, at some point.
3. 15:44 – 20:00

   Starting a Family Later in Life

   1. SJSebastian Junger15:44

      it.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:45

      Talking about freedom today, and you went from someone who, I guess from the outside looking in, is a, a single guy, uh, in his late 40s, early 50s, would have had all of the freedom in the world, but then started a family. Had two young daughters, got married. Talk me through that experience as someone who's done it later in life.

   3. SJSebastian Junger16:07

      Yeah, I mean, I was, so I was married previously, uh, and, um, you know, we, my wife and I, we're still friends. My ex-wife and I are still friends. We broke up on very good terms and, and remain sort of like lo- loyal to each other as friends throughout that process, thank God, and, uh, I'm very grateful to her for that. Um, but during the, the trek that I undertook, I was going through that process of separation and divorce, and it was a very sad, very sad year. And, um, I was w- I should just sort of describe it briefly. So I, me and, and a few buddies, we'd all been in a lot of combat, either as soldiers or as journalists. We walked along the railroad lines, um, from Washington, DC to Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, uh, about 400 miles. The railroad lines in this country are these sort of swaths of no man's land that are really not patrolled, uh, or monitored by the authorities, and, um, you can kind of do what you want out there. And, you know, it's a dangerous environment, right? I mean, there are trains going by at 120 miles an hour, um, and whatever. They're marginal environments. There are some drifty kind of people out there. Whatever. You, you... but it goes through everything, right? The suburbs and the farms and the wilderness and the ghettos and the industrial wasteland. It goes through everything. And we were sleeping under bridges and in abandoned buildings and cooking over fires, and, um, getting our water out of creeks and dodging the police, uh, because it's illegal, of course. And, um, ev- you know, most nights, as I say in the book, fr- my, my book Freedom, most li- nights we were the only people in the world who knew where we were, and that's a form of freedom. And, uh, and one that's not to be sneezed at. And, although there's many other forms as well. But, but, um, you know, after that, yes, I, I, I found myself in a very, very good relationship with a wonderful, wonderful woman, and, um, and we decided to have, try to have a family and we were lucky. We were blessed and that we, that it happened, and we have two little girls. And, you know, I've had all kinds of other freedom-... prior in my life. I, you know, my first daughter was born at age 55. And, um, you know, one of the reasons I try to stay very healthy and athletic is that I, because I want to stay alive as long as possibible, possible for them, and for me, for them, you know. And, and, uh, so I, I, uh, I had felt like I was giving up... Yeah. You're giving up one kind of freedom and you're getting another kind of freedom. But that's always true, right? I mean, you can give up, you know, temporal freedom and get a high paying job and make a bunch of money, and then you have economic freedom. Uh, you can give up, you know, you can give up the sort of safety and stability and predictability of living in a modern society and go into the wilderness, and you have the freedom of that, but you're in a fair amount of danger. And if something happens to you, like you have a ruptured appendix, sorry guy, you're dead, you know? Like, uh, so, there's no, you, you never get all forms of freedom at once. And the form of freedom that I got as, you know, as a father, as a, as a, as a, um, um, husband and father, is this profound emotional freedom of be-, uh, uh, of, of love, you know? And, uh, and, and, uh, you know, in some ways it's the most un-, the most boundless form of freedom there is. And it has no limits, no depths. You know, it's as boundless as, as ... It's only limited by you. And, uh, and that, and then, you know, there's something about that, that, that, uh, you know, maybe it would have been lost on me at age 20 or 30 or whatever, and that's probably good I wasn't a dad back then. But thank God I'm a dad now, because I th- you know, at this point I would have wondered what's life for.

   4. CWChris Williamson19:58

      That's a beautiful story.

4. 20:00 – 26:20

   Tension Between Freedom & Community

   1. CWChris Williamson20:00

      That's a really, really beautiful story to hear.

   2. SJSebastian Junger20:02

      Thank you. Thank you.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:03

      You say that there's a tension between freedom and community. How does that play out?

   4. SJSebastian Junger20:09

      Well, you, you are not, um, you are not safe unless you're part of a group. I mean, just in sort of like biological terms, anthropological terms. Humans do not survive alone in nature. They die almost immediately. We survive, uh, uh, as a biological matter, we survive because we're part of a group. We don't have sharp claws, we don't have sharp teeth, we can't climb trees very well, we can't, we can't run very fast. Uh, although on hot days we can run, run quite far, which makes us different than, uh, from, from most other mammals. But, um, we get our safety, our em- our physical safety, and therefore our emotional safety, from being part of a group. A survival group. And, uh, that means that if you're part of a group, you have to participate, you have to contribute, and you have to abide by group norms. And, you know, if you were in a hunter-gatherer group 50,000 years ago, and you were a young male, that, the group norm probably expected you to be part of the effort to hunt food, right? And to defend the community with violence, with force if necessary, from a predator or from a group of, another group of aggressive humans. That was your job, right? And if you were not willing to do that, you were not fulfilling your expected role in that community, and you were cast out. Undoubtedly you were cast out. And I, so I looked at the American frontier in Pennsylvania in the 1700s, these, the early settlers that went into what was called Indian Territory, you know, escaped the sort of control and oppression maybe of the colonial government, and, uh, uh, and of the, of the church of that era, to the wilderness, right? It, God, God's, God's world. God's great land, right? And, but the problem was the wilderness was enormously free and enormously dangerous. And the way that they re- reduced those risks, the settlers, was by having basically a, a, a mutual defense pact among the sort of families in every area. They would build a stockade, and if there was a sort of like, if there, if there were Indian raids, um, everyone would collect at the stockade and defend it. And if you were a boy aged 14 or over, you were expected to carry a rifle and, and use it and fight in defense of the group. Wo- women had roles as well, uh, of course. Equally vital roles. And, um, they would reload the weapons, they would, they would attend the wounded, they would try to put out the fires that were started by flaming arrows in the rooms in the buil- of the buildings, right? So if you were not willing to do those things, you were not wanted, right? You, you know, welcome to, you know, you are welcome to leave now, like if you're not willing to help defend the group. So, these settlers got a great freedom in the wilderness. But they had to abide by the norms of the group. They were not free to act selfishly within, within the group. And likewise, you know, I would say just at a very mundane level, like, uh, we are a, America is a free country in many important regards, but you are not free to drive on the left-hand side of the road, as you do in, in England. In Amer- in the United States, you drive on the right-hand side of the road. If you drive on the left-hand side of the road, you're gonna kill somebody. Or if you run a red light, you're gonna kill somebody. You are not free to do that. You have to abide by the norms of this particular group, which in this case is a community of 330 million people, all whom agree that we'll all drive on the right-hand side of the road to keep highway deaths to a minimum.

   5. CWChris Williamson23:37

      Is there a parti- particularly unique tension now, that previously the symbiotic relationship between the individual and the group had to work a little bit more hard, because the individual could not survive without adhering to the rules of the group? Whereas now we have a much more fragmented society that's a lot safer. You don't necessarily need to... Yeah, there's some laws that you need to, but there's, the individual has more power as convenience and safety is increased.

   6. SJSebastian Junger24:04

      Well, they, they have, you know, they can in- indulge in the illusion that they don't need the group. But, you know, we're all putting gasoline into our cars, that is drilled by other people. We're eating food that other people grew. We're living in homes for the most part that other people built. Uh, we're, we're dependent, we're outsourcing our defense and survival needs to the fire department and to-... uh, doctors and nurses and, uh, to the police, and to soldiers for that matter. And, you know, e- e- every, every, every survival task that confronted, uh, um, small scale organic societies in modern society has been outsourced, right? So, you don't grow your own food but, uh, you know, you have to be at work at 9:00 AM and you work till 5:00 PM. And maybe you're, maybe you're paid half a million dollars a year or maybe you're paid $30,000. Whatever it is, maybe you're doing well or not well within that system, but that system is providing your basic survival needs and in return you're giving it your time, right? You're not temporally free, right? But you're free from the sort of most immediate threats to your survival, uh, at least in sort of evolutionary human terms. Um, so the idea that you're like, "Oh, I'm, uh, you know, I'm an American citizen and I don't need anybody. I'm blah, blah, blah." Like, just complete nonsense, right? Listen man, the gun you're carrying, that you're pre- you, you're, you're... The gun that you're, like, showing up at the State House with to, to show what a badass you are and how free you are, that gun was made by somebody else. The ammo was made by somebody else. The pickup truck you drove down today, y- y- you know, drove down there was made by somebody else, and the gasoline that's in the tank was made by somebody else. You are not free at all. And humans never have been. We have never existed alone in nature. We live in groups. The group that we all live in in modern society is an extremely large complicated group with a huge supply chain that is so complicated that it really needs some kind of, like, federal oversight and regulation to keep it running well. And countries that don't have that, like Somalia or Afghanistan, the supply chain is very unreliable. There's a black market economy that's extremely exploitative and there's a huge amount of corruption. So, you know, like, if you think you're doing, not doing well in this country with federal oversight, go to Somalia. You, you, you will, you will be blessed with no federal oversight. See how it goes. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson26:19

      (laughs) What

5. 26:20 – 37:58

   What is the Opposite of Freedom?

   1. CWChris Williamson26:20

      do you class as the opposite of freedom? 'Cause some people would say, like, tyranny or something, but I'm guessing that's maybe a little bit rough-hewn.

   2. SJSebastian Junger26:28

      Well, I mean, again, uh, I mean, I hope I'm not sort of hiding behind, you know, anthropology and biology. But in, in, uh, in longstanding human terms, the most immediate threat to your freedom was an enemy group that would come in and kill or enslave you. Right? That was the most immediate, uh, threat to, to the, to your freedom. And by you, I mean you and your community, right? You and your tribe. Uh, you and your, and your loved ones. Um, the word freedom is, is taken from the middle German, uh, friede dom, um, which means beloved. So, in that sense, people who were free were the people around you in your community, the, the, the people who were beloved by you. And strangers, foreigners, outsiders did not necessarily have the right to freedom, right? I mean, if you could kill and enslave them, they were your slaves, right? I mean, they, like, they didn't have... There was no international law, right? There was no human rights law. There was no international standards like that of human rights and human dignity. Basically, the only people you were, you could not morally kill or enslave were people within your own community. The term murder applied to those people. Killing the enemy was not murder, right? That was killing the enemy. And so freedom, the me- essential meaning of freedom is that the peop-... You and your beloved, your community are without an, uh, uh, an outside oppressor, right? Which means you can oppress other people but you yourselves are not being oppressed, right? That's the meaning of the word freedom. So, so, so in the modern world I would say we still have to pay through homage to that original meaning. If you are safe from the predations of an outside enemy group, you are in a very, very important sense free. The way you do that is being a well-armed, well-organized state that can repel the, uh, uh, the attacks of an invader. The, the, the, uh, uh, of an aggressor. But if you're well-armed enough and well-organized enough to, to, to defeat the enemy then an abusive leader has an apparatus, a security apparatus that is well-armed and well-organized enough to oppress his own people. To, uh, basically turn his own people into serfs, which is what the elite of Europe did throughout the entire medieval era, right? I mean, the, the, the era of serfdom that essentially, th- that essentially ended with the Enlightenment and, and then with the revolutions in France and America and elsewhere. That system, um, was one of elite power and, uh, and, and essentially serfdom. Every, uh... People had no legal rights. You couldn't sue the king, right? The king could kill you and you had no... your family had no recourse. Uh, you could rape and plunder and pillage as much as you wanted if you were royalty, right? There was no... Democracy brought an end to that, and the laws that applied to the commoners, to, to everyone also applied to the, to the elites. Um, obviously democracy falls a little bit short on that but, but at least in theory that was, that was the idea. So, that's how you keep... I mean, basically there's freedom from an oppressor and out... There's freedom from an enemy and then there's freedom from an oppressor within your own society. And what democracy tries to do is have a well-equipped state that can defend itself and have a system of laws that defends the populous, populous against an unscrupulous ruler.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:12

      So you've got three, uh, identifiers for ways that people and groups can become free, as in run, fight, and think. But it sounds like coordinating is actually the first thing that everybody needs to do. There's a, there's a pre-step to all of that.

   4. SJSebastian Junger30:27

      Well, yeah. I mean, societies coordinate, right? I mean, that's what a society is. So, that's just taken as a given. (coughs) Um, but, uh, there is no state of human evolution where a bunch of indual- individuals are like, "Oh, this isn't working on our own out here in the jungle. Let's get together and do this." That, that never happened, right? I mean, we, our closest relatives are chimpanzees. Um, we, we split from th- from chimpanzees about six million years ago. Uh, 99%, some, or 98% of our DNA is indistinguishable from chimpanzee DNA. Uh, we're very, very closely related to them. We are social primates and always have been. So, in my book, Freedom, what I wanted to figure out was how do humans, alone among mammals, uh, maintain their au- their autonomy, their freedom, in the face of a larger, more powerful foe? Um, so individual combatants, a smaller man can defeat a larger man. I mean, one of the interesting things about mixed martial arts in its early days is that they had no weight categories, and there are pr- plenty of examples of smaller, uh, smaller fighters who handily defeated larger, larger adversaries. Inconceivable in the primate world, right? In, uh, in th- the rest of the primate world. You know, likewise, smaller coalitions can defeat larger coalitions. The Montenegrins in the 1600s, um, a wild mountain tribe, were invaded by the Ottoman Empire, one of the dominant militaries of the era. Th- the Montenegrins were outnumbered 12 to 1, right? The, the, the Ottomans had cavalry, artillery, you know, all the advantages that America had in fighting the Taliban, and the Montenegrins handed them their hat, right? I mean, they, th- over and over again, they defeated the Ottomans and expelled them from their land, and, um, inconceivable except for humans. So, I t- was trying to figure out how does this work. So basically, the first, uh, a, a, a, a, a underdog group, the first thing that they try to do when they're dealing with an oppressor is outrun them. So, the Apache in the American Southwest, unlike the Pueblo societies that were rooted in place because they were agriculturalists, they were much more wealthy, they were sedentary, they didn't have the option of fleeing, they were rolled by the Spanish immediately. Sometimes within hours of the confrontation, they, they, they, they were defeated or surrendered to the Spanish. Where the Apache maintained, after first contact, the Apache maintained their autonomy for another three centuries, right? Almost to within my, my grandmother's life, right? My grandmother was born in 1900. There were ro- there were bands of free Apache who survived almost until 1900, right? Because they were mobile, they were free. Um, but if you can't outrun your enemy, you're gonna have to outfight him, and that's where this w- amazing dynamic comes in that with humans, um, either on one-on-one combat or, or in coalitionary combat, the smaller group, the smaller individual can actually win, um, which means that larger groups, like the United States, eventually, uh, you know, winds up negotiating with s- with smaller groups like the Taliban. I hate the Taliban. I, they're loathsome, right? No respect for women's rights, for human rights. Um, but I gotta say, if the smaller group always lost, there would no- there would be no freedom in the human experience. Th- the world would be composed of large, fascist mega-states that impose their will on everybody else. That's not what the world looks like. Um, y- and finally, if you're within a society, you know, these, this is how you deal with an e- you know, enemies, right? You run or you fight. But how do you deal with oppression within your own society if you're being oppressed by the government or, or business interests or what have you, how do you, what do you do? You have to outthink them. You're now in a chess game, right? You're not gonna run away, and, and you can't defeat them in outright combat. How do you do it? So, I looked at the labor movement, uh, in the United States about 100 years ago. Uh, I looked at the Easter Rising in Dublin and in Ireland in 1916 around the same era. Um, you're, you know, these, the- these are groups that are completely outgunned by the power, the established powers, you know, military, government and corporate powers, completely outgunned, and yet they managed to eventually, uh, achieve their purposes. And, uh, one way, one very important thing to do, I looked at successful underdog groups, and one thing they had in common is they often incorporate women. Um, not necessarily into the front lines of combat, but into the sort of matrix of the revolutionary movement, the insurgency. Uh, women have lateral networks. Uh, men are very top-down hierarchical. That's very important when it comes to charging machine guns. Uh, (coughs) it's essential. But women's lateral networks are also very important, because they're almost impossible for the, th- the state, for the authority, the authorities to, to penetrate, to infiltrate, um, to decapitate. You can't do it. It's a lateral network, like a spider web. Very, very important. And the other thing is that women o- on a, you know, sort of on a, on a, you know, social movement, you put women on the front lines of a strike or a protest, it makes it very, very hard for the police to use force. They will. Of course it happens. Uh, but there, there is a sanction against violent, using violent, mass violent, public mass violence against women that isn't quite as strong as it is for men. A group of men, uh, protesting in the street look a m- like a mob. A group of women protesting in the street, they look like a social movement, and you open up with the machine guns on them, and it's very problematic for the, uh, for the government, for the dictatorship, what- whatever it may be. And so, this, th- the, in the labor movement in Lawrence, Massachusetts in, in, uh, in 1912, uh, they were confronting National Guard with fixed bayonets, and the men were sort of powerless to confront this show of force. So, they started putting women on the front line of the protests, and these young boys in uniform with fixed bayonets did not know what to do. They're looking at wo- at women just like their sisters and their mothers or maybe their daughters, right? And, uh...And one frustrated police captain said, he said, "One, one, one good cop can handle 10 men, but it takes 10 cops to handle one woman." And they did not quite have the manpower to handle those protests, and that tipped the balance. Um, and the other thing that these underdog groups have in, uh, successful underdog groups have in common is leaders that are willing to die for the cause. Uh, literally willing to die for the cause. And, um, if you don't have that, if you have leadership that's sort of hiding behind the people that they lead, either literally or figuratively, uh, leaders who will not accept blame, who will not take risk, who w- who will, who will not own mistakes, uh, who will not expose themselves to gunfire if it's actually a shooting situation, if you have leaders like that, they're really not leaders, they're opportunists. It does not work.

   5. CWChris Williamson37:28

      Yeah, there's ... You see this echo symbolically in stories and in movies as well. The leader of the goodie side is always the guy that's charging into battle. He'll stay behind to help the wounded man and carry him on his shoulder. Whereas the leader of the baddies, he's always up in some ivory tower commanding people around. And then it't the good guy that will eventually rise up the lift and fight through all of the layers and then eventually get to this bourgeois twat that someone, someone needs to kill. So yeah, you see-

   6. SJSebastian Junger37:56

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:56

      ... this, you see this happen.

6. 37:58 – 46:16

   The Story of Michael Mallin

   1. CWChris Williamson37:58

      What was the story with, was it Michael Mallin that you looked at?

   2. SJSebastian Junger38:03

      Yeah, I mean, Michael Mallin was an I- uh, Irish revolutionary in 1916 who commanded a brigade in Dublin. Um, and, um, you know, was eventually caught. I mean, there was a, after a week of, uh, after a week of combat in, in Dublin, um, the, and bloody combat, and a lot of people died, uh, and, you know, the Brits were throwing soldiers at the problem, you know, by the thousands. And the, and the rebels who had machine guns and were, like, hiding, uh, you know, sort of in, in, in, you know, in sandbagged apartments, you know, they'd figured this out. They were just mowing down these poor teen- British teenagers, um, conscripts. And, you know, but th- you know, this is the same, the same era when, um, you know, they, th- the, the British lost 60,000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, something like that, killed and wounded if I'm remembering my numbers correctly. It's the, it was the population of County Wicklow in Ireland, in one day. That was just the first day, and nobody blinked, right? So human life, you know, didn't mean anything. And I'm sure the Irish rebels were like, "Jesus, if they treat their own people like that, how are they gonna treat us? We don't wanna be part of this fiasco, right?" So, so Michael Mallin was one of the leaders, and y- I think he had four children, and he, uh, was married and had four children, and, you know, he was tried. It was sort of a, a sham trial and, uh, not allowed any representation and condemned to death for treason. Uh, and on his way to the jail where they would, uh, where they would kill him, he passed, the wagon passed his home. And he saw his dog-

   3. CWChris Williamson39:45

      Was that done on, on purpose?

   4. SJSebastian Junger39:47

      I don't know. I don't know. Um, uh, and, and he, uh, he saw his dog in the yard. And he ... There, there are these anguished letters that he wrote in the hours before his death. His family was allowed to visit him in the, on his last night. And, um, then he was left alone, um, in his cell with God, presumably. He was very religious. And in my book, I have, uh, printed in full, is his last desperate letter of, of anguish to his wife and, and children. Um, and the first sign of light in dawn, at dawn, they took him from his cell and walked him down to the stone breaker's yard and stood him before a wall. And, uh, the firing squad leveled their rifles, and on command, they fired in unis- unison and killed them. And, and the medical examiner, you know, they, they killed I think 12 or 14 Irish revolutionaries like this. Um, and, uh, including a man named Connolly, who, who was the commander of the Dublin, Dublin forces that fought the Brits, and, you know, he was wounded twice. I mean, the, you know, the big job that his aides had was to dragging, you know, trying to drag him out of gunfire, you know, because he kept risking his life to command the troops. I mean, he was the epitome of heroic, heroic leadership, right? And he was shot twice, wounded twice. And, and he couldn't even walk to his own death when they executed him. They had to carry him in a stretcher and prop him up in a chair. And, and the medical examiner that was present at, at these executions said that the only people in the situation that were not nervous, that were not shaking, were the condemned, the condemned men. And the firing squads were all shaking they were so nervous. They were the fearful ones. And, uh, um, and, uh, you know, I should, I should say, um, I should say that this, what you said about, you know, the sort of like Hollywood movies about villains being these sort of bourgeois twats in a, in a tower, you know, uh, getting other men to do their bidding. Um, and, and on the good side, there's a, like a, a selfless leader that, um, that, you know, grabs the flag and charges forward as it were. You know, what, what we're depicting in the bad guys is our own society. I mean, that is exactly what our leaders are. They're ensconced in, in safe buildings telling other people what to do. And, you know, I get it, it's a modern society, and no one wants the president himself leading the charge. You know, I mean, it just wouldn't work, right? I mean, it just, I mean, you know, like with, like with Connolly, you know, we, you know, we need those people to, to help run the show, so you don't want them taking a bullet. That, you know, that's for soldiers to do, but I, I totally get it. But-But just to your point about what the sort of bad guys look like, they look like, we, we make them look like us. And they have leaders, I feel like political leaders in, in modern European Western democracies, including America, um, are sort of notable for their, for their moral cowardice. You know, I mean, they, they, you know, they... There is no principle they weren't tr- they won't trample to further their political interests, you know, and-

   5. CWChris Williamson43:06

      But that's the equivalent, the equivalent of not taking the bullet is standing by your word. You don't need to stand in front of the gunfire, but if you are to say a thing, you need to not forget that you said that thing three weeks later and pretend that you said something else and try and spin a different lie now. I think this is one of the reasons why we have concerns about the trustworthiness of the people at the top.

   6. SJSebastian Junger43:28

      Yeah. I mean, you know, I would vote for someone who was willing to, uh, um, lose an election because he or she felt that the truth was necessary to articulate. So Liz Cheney, I'm a Democrat, right? Liz Cheney is very conservative, and she is standing up to the Dr-, you know, this sort of like MAGA Donald Trump world by insisting on reality, right? Insisting on the truth about January 6th and about Donald Trump's efforts to subvert the election. And, and I, you know, I would vote for her, even though I'm a Democrat, I would vote for her. She's an arch conservative. I would vote for her simply because she is willing to sacrifice her career for the sake of the truth and our democracy and our democratic system. I would vote for her over a Democrat who was not willing to tell the truth, in a heartbeat, right? And, but that's the, um, that is now the standard for, for courage, is, are you willing to tell the truth? And I feel like a lot of politicians actually won't even pass that standard. It's pathetic.

   7. CWChris Williamson44:31

      It's a pretty low bar.

   8. SJSebastian Junger44:32

      Um, it's a low bar, right? It's absolutely pathetic. And if there weren't such enormous financial rewards for being in government, I mean, Mitch McConnell has $10 million in the bank. Where the hell did Mitch McConnell get 10 million bucks, right? I mean, I'm not sure he got, saying he got that illegally, but there's a, a sort of aspect of unseemliness that you have people who are exploiting... Dianne Feinstein, uh, a Democrat also, like, has completely violated ethics rules about insider s- stock trading, right? And, um, uh, uh, I mean, 37, I think it was 37 congressmen and women have violated, uh... And I'm getting this from Russell Brand, by the way, so you can go check it.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:13

      (laughs)

   10. SJSebastian Junger45:13

       You can go check it. But I just interviewed with him a few days ago, that I looked up some of his visi- videos. So assuming that he has his facts right, I'm sure he does, 37 American congressmen and women have violated their own ethics standards about insider stock trading. Their own standards, that, a law that they themselves passed. 37, right? That's not ethical, right? That's immoral. And that, and people like that, forget about being able to benefit financially, they shouldn't be anywhere near offi- uh, uh, uh, uh, public office if they're willing to do that. I mean, that's what... Okay, you don't have to take a bullet. That's, you know, politics don't involve literally fighting the enemy in the trenches, right? But at the very least, you can go forgo the opportunity to admit yourself for four years. At the very least, you can go do that for us. And they're not even rising to that.

   11. CWChris Williamson46:01

       It's a severe distance from the philosopher king of the Marcus Aurelius era.

   12. SJSebastian Junger46:07

       Yeah. (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson46:07

       You know, you, you think about somebody who's concerned with virtue above all others that will sell the inside of the palace wares to try and pay off the debts of the nation.

7. 46:16 – 1:01:44

   Why Politicians Fail at Leadership

   1. CWChris Williamson46:16

      Yeah. I mean, I think this is why, for me, politics feels like such a wasted endeavor, that the understanding of how to limbically hijack the electorate has taken precedent over people actually doing what is good. Like, being able to manipulate cognitive biases means that someone who isn't good can appear more good than someone who is.

   2. SJSebastian Junger46:40

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson46:40

      That's, that's unfortunately the, the situation that we're in.

   4. SJSebastian Junger46:44

      Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, when, if, if you live in a sort of small scale organic survival group of 30, 40, 50 people, as humans have done for most of their 200,000 years of existence, it's very easy to detect fraud, to detect that kind of duplicity, that kind of dishonesty and cowardice, and it's usually punished by death. I mean, there, there's a anthropologist named Richard Boehm who looked at the application of capital punishment within hunter-gatherer societies, right? And the most common reason for killing one's leader as a hunter-gather- in a, in a hunter-gatherer community, um, in modern day hunter-gatherer societies and what is known from the last 100 years of anthropology in these societies, the most common reason by far was abuse, uh, when leaders abused their position of power and, and, um, and, and worked to benefit themselves ahead of other people. Um, I know that there were tribes, native, native tribes in, in, in, in America, uh, you know, 100 plus years ago, um, where cowardice... You know, a warrior who was, who, who was cowardly on the battlefield, um, was killed by his oth- his fellow warriors. Like, "You were a coward, man. You didn't defend the tribe. Sorry." Like, "We're gonna do you a favor. You've dishonored yourself. We're gonna do you... We're gonna spare you having to kill yourself. We're gonna do it for you." Right? That's leadership. That's selflessness. That is acting on behalf of your tribe. And, and lead- you know, political leaders now, that's not even on the menu, right? So how do we mo- how do we patrol that, that behavior, monitor that behavior? We're not in groups of 30, 40, 50 people or 100 people or 500 people. We're in groups of millions and millions. And, you know, it used to be, there was a great thesis that the modern... That the, that the monotheistic god was invented-... during the advent of agriculture, when surplus food allowed great numbers of people to live together, basically there were communities of strangers. Uh, uh, uh, they were, you know, a- anonymity was possible, right, after the advent of agriculture. And that was when the monotheistic god was sort of invented to ... an all, all seeing, all knowing, punitive god who would punish sin, right? So the community might not know who you are and you steal a loaf of bread and you get away with it 'cause no one knows who you are, you know, whatever. But God knows who you are, the monotheistic all knowing god. That was invented to control, to, to, to encourage good behavior in an, a society that was so large there was anonymity. Well, now we're basically a godless society, you know, 'cause I'm an atheist, so I, you know, I get it. So what do we have in its place? You know, we have CCTV. You know, basically it's very hard to p- commit a public crime, um, without it being captured on video. And thank God, right? Because there are lots of very, very bad people (laughs) doing very bad things, including the, the, uh, you know, the London Underground bombers of 2004, you know, who were cap- you know, one of them was captured because they, he was seen, he was seen on, uh, on CCTV cameras. So they're a good, you know, they're a good thing. They've taken the place of a monotheist- theistic god. So what ... but what do we do now as the electorate? How do we, how do we get people to act that way? We get them to act that way by penalizing at the, at the, at the, at the polling booth, penalizing selfish behavior, dishonest behavior. You know, we have to call it out, and we have to call it out in our own party, because if we call it out in the o- other party, everyone's gonna ignore it. We have to call it out among ourselves, among our own. And that's something that the Democrats and the Republicans are uniquely bad at. Uh, and, and the, the, the country, it's not gonna be an honest system until those two parties decide to apply some real morality to their own people.

   5. CWChris Williamson50:39

      Yeah, again, theoretically it doesn't sound like a good strategy to stop focusing on the enemy and start focusing on the inside, but that's without the luxury of a god's eye view. If you were to say, "Look, I want the best sort of world community nation that I can do, you need to hold everybody to account, not just the opposition, to try and get yourselves back into power." To do what? To have m- four more years of shitty power? That's not going to get you very far.

   6. SJSebastian Junger51:01

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson51:02

      Thinking about the, uh, people riding into battle, I heard a story about a Spartan soldier who was incredibly proficient, he was one of the finest soldiers in the army, and he went into battle naked. So he stripped off all of his armor, stripped off all of his clothes, just went in shield, sword, and spear, and when he got back, he was punished. He was punished by the, uh, commanders of the army because he'd endangered a Spartan asset, himself. He had endangered one of the assets of the army by being so reckless with the way that he went in. So even somebody, um ... That's another control measure. What we're talking about here are, uh, control measures, whether they be monotheistic gods that cause you to emergently try and act in the way that you think that you should, whether they be CCTV cameras that dictatorially tell you that if you do not act in the way that you're supposed to, whether they be cultural norms that are kind of this embodied, sensed, communitarian version of this. And you even have, when somebody oversteps their mark or when somebody utilizes their skill or their prowess and is-

   8. SJSebastian Junger52:08

      Yep.

   9. CWChris Williamson52:08

      ... wasteful with it, uh, in a society like Sparta where it was all about trying to get the most done, trying to squeeze everything you could out of a small society, even those, uh, soldiers-

   10. SJSebastian Junger52:19

       Yep.

   11. CWChris Williamson52:19

       ... were told, "You can't endanger an asset, even if it's yourself."

   12. SJSebastian Junger52:23

       Well, listen, I, I tell you, I w- you know, I've been in a lot of combat with US military, and I, we were in a situat- very bad situation at one point up on a ridge, and the Taliban were on either side of us. There was nowhere to hide, right? And they were about to open up on us. And, uh, there was no good place to be, right? And the only chance we had was ... by we I mean the soldiers I was with, w- w- it was to unleash so much firepower back at them, you know, I mean we sort of hide by o- behind our own firepower, but eventually you run out of ammunition, right? And so it was extremely exposed place, uh, everyone had run out of water. It was very hot, so everyone was black on water, it's called black on water, they'd run out of water, they're drinking the fluid in their IV bags, so were people wounded, they wouldn't have IV fluid. It was a desperate situation and we were getting ready to get hit and it was gonna really suck. And the lieutenant stood up in this sort of awful mom- moment of quiet before we were gonna get hit, and we could hear it on the icons, on the radio chatter, from the enemy, like, "Okay, we've got them. They have nowhere to hide. They are done." Right? And we were waiting for this hurricane of, of lead, right? And the, the lieutenant stood up, uh ... I mean, the only place you can be is, like, on the ground, as close to the ground as possible, so standing up in this situation, I can't tell you how hard that would be to do, right? And the man stood up to look around to see where his heavy weapons were, were positioned to make sure that they were in the best possible position. Again, think Connolly in Dublin in 1916. He stood up to see where the heavy weapons were, were placed, the 240s, uh, particularly to make sure they were placed right. And the s- the staff sergeant that was right next to me said, "Sir, please sit down. We need you. We need you to stay alive. It's your job to make decisions. It's our job to get shot at." And the s- the staff sergeant stood up and he said, "Tell me what you need. Well, tell me what you need to know and I'll find it out, and you take, please take cover." And so that's exa- that is leadership, and when corporations sometimes bring me in as a consultant to, like, how to make their corporation, like, feel more like a tribe so that basically there's more, like, group loyalty by the workers so they'll produce more and everyone gets richer, right? Particularly the leadership. Uh, when they bring me in for that consultation, I say, "Look-You have to be a leader. A leader makes sure that they may deni- they may benefit disproportionately when things go well, no problem, right? Leadership should be rewarded disproportionately as higher responsibilities, takes more experience, et cetera, et cetera. But if there's a downturn and people are gonna make less or people are gonna have to be fired, the leadership of this company has to experience the negative consequences before the people they lead, or at least with them, right? So before you fire anybody, you have to get rid of your year-end bonus, right? And if you don't, that's not leadership. That's, you're j- you're just running a company at that point. You're not leading a company, you're running a company. If you keep your year-end bonus and fire people 'cause there's a downturn in the market, you're just running a damn company. You're not leading it. If you wanna lead it, if you want loyalty, you need to lead it. And if you lead it, you will make it clear that you will suffer consequences right alongside the people that are trusting you. Not a welcome message in the corporate world, I should add.

   13. CWChris Williamson55:59

       Yeah, I bet it's not. I should, uh, uh, it makes me think about an example. So I run nightclubs. I have done for a very long time. I've stood on the front door of a lot of them, and part of that, me and my business partner have been the directors of this company since we were 18. We've always been the top of the tree, and then we've just added in people below us all the way up. Every single night that we run an event, one of us stands on the front door of the nightclub, and we're in Newcastle, which is the Winterfell of the UK, right? It's the final city before Scotland. In the winter, it gets brutally cold, it's wet, it's c- it's dark, it's miserable. We stand on the front door of the night. Every single one. There has never been an event that we've operated where somebody hasn't stood there. We have always been there right next to the boys, right next to the event managers, right next to the door staff that kick people out, and we'll freeze our nuts off on the door along with them. And for a long time, people have asked, "What is it that you do?" We don't do that much. The whole purpose of us creating a business that runs in a slick and organized way is that it's so self-sufficient that everybody knows the jobs that need doing beforehand. And there are a lot of nights where we stand there and I feel like a spare part. I'm like, "Well, I'll just, I'll just make sure that the DJ's drinks are topped up again." You almost end up doing th- the most sort of surplus, ridiculous jobs-

   14. SJSebastian Junger57:12

       Right.

   15. CWChris Williamson57:12

       ... because there isn't anything for you to do. But it's less about the fact that you're there to do a job, and it's more about the fact that symbolically you are there with the rest of the group. Look, it's freezing, it's cold, it's gonna be a shit Thursday in the middle of January. It's, we're gonna do 400 people tonight when we should do 1,000. And that's what, break even's 500 people, so we're gonna lose money, and I'm gonna get out of bed at 10:00 PM at night, and I'm gonna stand on the front door of a nightclub with you for five hours. And there's gonna be drunk people, and they're gonna complain, but we're all gonna do it together. And a big part of that that we see as well is in small businesses like ours that's quite hierarchical, uh, there's lots of different little layers that we create so people can progress and it feels like they're being promoted and stuff, the guys that get the most respect are the ones that people have seen enter the company at the absolute bottom. They started flyering and doing street PR and giving out guest list bands, trying to get people in. Then they were the guest, best guest lister, then they became a junior event manager, and they smashed it at that. Then they become a full event manager, and they smashed it at that. Then a senior, then a city manager, and people see this lineage of them going up bit by bit by bit, and they know that they've earned their stripes.

   16. SJSebastian Junger58:14

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson58:14

       They know that they have the chops to be able to do the thing that they are telling you to do. They've done it. I've done thousands and thousands of knocks on doors. We got to the point where my knuckles were bleeding during my, uh, gap year because I was knocking on the doors of so many different halls of residence to say, "Hey, are you coming out tonight? Hey, are you coming out tonight?" So I've been there, but the only reason that I can tell my boys to go and do that is because I've done it as well. I'm like, "Look, this is a fucking rite of passage. This is what you do." If you want to get to the stage where you can have your own company or where you can be paid the sort of money that you want to be paid, like, step into the fire.

   18. SJSebastian Junger58:49

       Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I mean, right. You're signaling that you're part of the group. You're not outside it, you're not above it. And I was thinking, uh, this morning actually, I was sort of, what's the definit- you know, I wrote a book called Tribe, and it was, it's hard to define what a tribe is. And, and (clears throat) , um, some people think that, "Oh, if you're a, you know, a football fans, football fans are all, like, one tribe." But th- they're not a tribe, right? I mean, they ha- they're a group of people that have a common interest, but they're not a tribe in, in a meaningful human sense. And so the, the definition I sort of came up with this morning was, um, the idea of what happens to you happens to me. We're in the same tribe because that's true. And you were saying that to the people that were working for you, like, "If you gotta stand out there in the cold, I'm gonna stand out there in the cold. Now, I may be completely useless." And if they say to you, "Listen, sir, why don't you get in, go inside and, and get warmed up? It sucks out here. We got this." Like, the lieutenant in my story, you're, you then, you, you can honorably step down, right? You can honorably say, "Okay. I, I understand. Thank you. Appreciate it." Right? Um, uh, I mean, there's no merit in being stupid either, right? But-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:00:04

       Isn't, yeah, isn't it interesting that that kind of has to be gifted-

   20. SJSebastian Junger1:00:07

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:00:07

       ... from below? It's not the sort of thing that you can bestow upon yourself.

   22. SJSebastian Junger1:00:12

       Lea- lea- I mean, real leadership is, i- i- is, is given from below, right? It's, it's by con- by, it's by cons- the consent of the led. Um, imposing leadership really isn't leadership, right? I mean, that, and we know when, when it's sort of imposed from above, and that's the problem with inherited wealth. It's not earned, and you have a huge amount of social and economic capital that can be imposed on other people, and it hasn't been granted by them, and it ha- and, and, and, and it, and it hasn't been earned. And so, but when the people that you're leading ask you to take care of yourself, like, "We need you," right?... then you're good, and it's because you have signaled to them, "What happens to you, happens to me until you tell me otherwise." Right? And then I will step inside and have cup of coffee-

   23. CWChris Williamson1:01:01

       Warm up.

   24. SJSebastian Junger1:01:01

       ... or whatever.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:01:02

       Yeah, exactly.

   26. SJSebastian Junger1:01:02

       Or what- whatever it may be. And, you know, in the, in the Marines, um, there's a, there's a motto, um, "Officers eat last," right? Well, in a situation like that, what you may well have is enlisted men saying, "Sir, you know, please get a plate of food." Like, you know, like, "We understand that officers eat last. We appreciate it. Now, can you please feed yourself? You know, we, you know, we respect and admire you, and we want you to eat." And, you know, so that's the, that's the honorable way to do it. And likewise, Connolly in Dublin, you know, his, you know, his... It, it took his aide sort of dragging him out of gunfire, uh, you know, to keep him safe. He wasn't gonna do it on his own, uh, but he would do it for, for others.

8. 1:01:44 – 1:11:54

   Dealing with Covid as a Community

   1. SJSebastian Junger1:01:44

   2. CWChris Williamson1:01:44

      One of the things that I've found that's been quite interesting is how, uh, stresses from the outside, uh, cause groups to stick together. So when freedoms get threatened, a community suffers a collective trauma or whatever, people usually bind together. What I've found really interesting is that I don't think we've seen that up against the global threat of COVID over the last 18 months.

   3. SJSebastian Junger1:02:06

      Yeah. I mean, the problem with COVID is, is that there was a lot of mixed messaging by political leaders. Um, I mean, my political leader at the time, Donald Trump, started by saying it didn't exist, that it wasn't a threat at all, right? And then he continued to have very confusing messaging about masks and vaccines, and, you know, to the point where it's completely hypocritical. I mean, the entire administration was vaccinated and so was all of Fox News, and yet the messaging coming out of those groups was that vaccinations were somehow a plot by the left to take... you know, whatever. I mean, just complete nonsense, right? So when you have, uh, political leadership and very powerful people that are actually, um, endangering the public for their own political benefit, um, you're not gonna have a healthy response to, to COVID, right? You don't-

   4. CWChris Williamson1:02:58

      So I get, I get that for the USA, but I don't think I've seen a particular wonderful sense of belonging and coming together really anywhere on the planet. Maybe you could argue that the, uh, the USA are culturally so influential that if they cough, everybody else catches a cold of COVID, of misinformation-

   5. SJSebastian Junger1:03:17

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:03:17

      ... perhaps. Um, but there was... Do you remember that video, I think it was in Italy, and there was someone singing on a rooftop, and there was balconies all the way around, and they were all watching. And there was another period where, maybe in Spain or Italy, again, somewhere in Europe, someone was doing a workout routine on their own rooftop, and all of the people on their balconies overlooking that were doing it as well. Now, that, to me, that was one of the moments where you go, "Wow, that's sort of human spirits really binding together. Everybody is in this."

   7. SJSebastian Junger1:03:47

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:03:47

      We know, I know what it's like to be locked down in the UK. Yeah, I don't live in New York the same as you. Yeah, my life situation is different to yours. But I kind of know what it feels like to be locked in my own house because of this pathogen-

   9. SJSebastian Junger1:03:58

      Yep.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:58

       ... that's outside. So we have more of a shared experience now-

   11. SJSebastian Junger1:04:02

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:04:03

       ... than we probably ever did before. And it's the same for people-

   13. SJSebastian Junger1:04:05

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:04:05

       ... that are in China and in Vietnam and in Australia and everywhere. There's always been the argument made if Earth was threatened by an alien species, imagine how quickly our differences would be forgotten because we would bind together, and you get that, I think it's called... is it the globe effect that astronauts get once they've been out to space and they view the-

   15. SJSebastian Junger1:04:23

       Right.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:04:23

       ... Earth without borders and they come back and they realize we are just one race, one species, blah, blah? Um, I hoped 18 months ago that COVID was going to be that thing, and it just hasn't, it doesn't seem to have occurred anywhere.

   17. SJSebastian Junger1:04:37

       Well, it's not an existential threat, right? Uh, I mean, I mean, it's, it's way worse than the flu. It's a deadly disease, um, and it's communicable, uh, you know, unlike s- unlike some things, but, but it, it's not, it's not an exis- existential threat to society. And, you know, I think what the sort of skeptics were saying is that the, the protections against COVID are an existential threat because it'll cripple the economy, blah, blah, blah, and that's where the debate happens. But look, the Black Death in Europe, um, in, what was it, 12, 13, 1300s, 1200s, 1300s, killed one out of three people, right? That's an existential threat, right? And if COVID were killing one out of three, thank God it wasn't, but if it was killing one out of three, I think you might have seen a, sort of different reaction. But even to the extent... We lo- we've lost 600,000 people in this, i- in this country, right? Um, but, you know, if you lose 600,000 people during an alien attack, it will traumatize the nation for, for a century (laughs) , right? Like, I mean, that gets your attention. The problem with the 600,000 is it's spread out, spread out over a couple years, and it's happening invisibly in ICUs around the country, and it's, you know, in some ways, it's sort of theoretical, sort of abstract. And, but even despite all that and despite the fact that we had to stay away from people in order to protect people, which is deeply antithetical to sort of human, human reflexes during a crisis, but even so, I think there was actually a fair amount of sort of solidarity of the, of the, of the sort that you described. In New York City, people were, I think it was at 5:00 PM every night, people were leaning out of their windows banging pots and pans for the healthcare workers that were working in the, in the ERs, in the hospitals. So, you know, I think, um, for a modern society that's very, very fractured and alienated, there was actually a fair amount of sort of, like, communal sentiment around all of this.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:06:31

       Yeah. It makes me realize why false flag events by governments have seemed alluring over time. You know, you look at trying to do a thing, trying to have some catastrophe occur that forces... That's what they're actually doing. They're trying to artificially inseminate this sense of binding together. "Here is the threat. There is something happening out there, and we need to bind together. We need you to come together as one." That's what they're trying to enact.

   19. SJSebastian Junger1:06:56

       That's right. And the problem is, they are, r- at least in my country right now, um, they are d- politically, they are doing that with half the country. They're saying half the country is a threat to this country, that if you're a Republican, the Democrats, the socialists, communists, godless, like, Black Lives Matter, Democrat anarchists are a threat to this country, right? So they're, what they're saying is that half of the country are literally the enemy, right? The enemy. They're not the beloved, right? They're not the, the definition of, you know, freedom. They're not... They don't deserve freedom. They don't deserve to be free. They are the enemy, right? They're not one of us. The Democrats, I don't think, view it in the same way and not as, uh, and not as sort of virulently as the Republicans have lately, but they, they have a bit of that as well. And so when you, when you cast your own people as the enemy of the state, you're, you are creating civil war. You are c-... That is one of the steps to fascism, right? I mean, that's a classic, uh, wa- a classic step in the fascist playbook, is take the political opponents and say, "Not only do I disagree with them, not only are they not nice people, they're actually an enemy of this country and they must be eradicated." And that's how you get fascism. It's a classic, classic move in the fascist playbook, and that's one of the things that really bothers me about the last few years in this country. We have a very robust democracy and we have a, an, uh, a military which is absolutely loyal to democratic ideals, whether it be a Republican or a Democratic president, they don't really care. Um, my father grew up in Spain and left when, when Franco came, uh, Franco and the fascists came in, and Franco succeeded because he had the military behind him. That will never happen in this country, and therefore, in my opinion, fascism will never come to this country. But boy, it's awfully ugly to see these sort of preparatory steps in action, uh, even if it'll never come to that.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:08:54

       It's crazy when you create in-group, out-group dynamics within a nation when there's other things that need to be worried about. And this is, I think, why the people that have done research into China and into Russia and into sort of long-term trajectories and concerned about what's happening to the globe, that's the ones who are, you know, standing in the middle of the street with a megaphone desperately saying, "Look, there are bigger fucking problems out there. There are really bigger problems." There's this quote from your book that says, "If the enemy is not going to show mercy, you might as well fight to the death. Freedom as a supreme value was born out of the fact that there were really no alternatives worth considering, and the result was that the freest people were the most warlike." What that sounds like is kind of a race to the bottom, or a, a race to, uh, extremit- uh, extremity, and when you have that enacted against a, another nation, you end up securing your own nation. But when you start to play this self-referential game within a country, what you end up with is ever escalating tensions, ever more malicious, uh, strategies in order to be able to manipulate people and make the other side seem like the bad guys, and make you seem like the good guys. And that's why it doesn't surprise me, again, that we don't really know what politicians think or what the truth is, or what's going on.

   21. SJSebastian Junger1:10:12

       Yeah. Yeah, and, and you can read the w- the word warlike to mean, uh, best able to defend themselves, right? And, um, if you can't defend yourself, you're not gonna be free for very long, because an enemy will come along and dominate you. And, uh, that was, has been true for, I think, all of human history, um, and there's plenty exam- of examples. But the w- the, the great thing about democracy is that it, a- and international law is it's sort of has taken care of that problem, right? There are coalitions of nations that, that have treaties, m- you know, mu- mutual defense pacts. So you, you know, you, you would, you attack Belgium, you're attacking the whole EU. You attack Belgium, you're attacking NATO, right? You're atta- you know, all of a sudden, you're attacking half the world, and so it keeps, you know, it has a sta- those treaties have a stabilizing effect. Um, and, and, uh, you know, I would, I would say that the, um, when you, when you cast, when you cast people as an enemy now, um, d- we're in a situation, at least in America, we, we, we really cannot plausibly be in- be invaded by anybody, right? So when you cast people in, as an enemy, it's a pretty much a sort of naked attempt to just reinforce your political base. There really is not a threat to this country, not from the other political party, not from Black Lives Matter, uh, not from China. I mean, there are economic threats, but you know, whatever. But they're, but they're not a, a threat in the sense that enemy is u- the word is usually taken, and it's a, it's a naked political ploy. And, uh, you know, it really should be called out, because it is, it is the beginning of the end of how dem- of, of democracy. It's, it's gonna destroy

9. 1:11:54 – 1:13:06

   Where to Find Sebastian

   1. SJSebastian Junger1:11:54

      it.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:11:55

      Sebastian Junger, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom will be linked in the show notes below. You are not on social media, so there's nothing else for people to keep up to date with. Do you have a blog or a website or anything?

   3. SJSebastian Junger1:12:06

      Um, I have a website, sebastianjunger.com, J-U-N-G-E-R is my, is spelling of my name. Uh, my publisher started s- some social media accounts for me. Um, I have a flip phone. Here, I'll show it. I'll prove it. I have a flip phone. I'm not interested in social media, but, um, uh, I ca- I, I've just got... (laughs) And I, I hate the idea of tweeting meaningful things 140 characters at a time. But I have taken to posting sentences from my book, Freedom, on Twitter with, with photographs, uh, and sentences that often involve the concept of freedom, just for people to share and debate. So I do do that a little bit. I'm pretty easy to find that way. So, um, thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you. I really enjoyed it.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:12:47

      Me too, man. Thank you. What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:13:07