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

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)

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

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.