Welcome to episode 7 of Behind the Shield. My name is James Gearing and I'm
extremely excited to bring you this week's guest, Sebastian Junger.
Sebastian is probably best known for his book The Perfect Storm which was written
about the fishing boat, the Andrea Gale, and was consequently made into a movie
featuring George Clooney. However, some of his other work I think is is really
what drew me to him as a first responder, as a firefighter. He's written two books,
War and Tribe, that really resonated with me about the effects of trauma on a
human basically and then what happens after they leave their group, their
tribe. And then he's also the man that brought us Restrepo, the documentary
about the 173rd Airborne guys that were on a remote outpost in the middle of the
Korangal Valley in Afghanistan. And those men saw more combat than any other unit
in the conflict so far. And again, he sees what it's like to be a soldier in
this crazy, crazy war and then the effects of their time served after
they leave the valley. The insight that he has on humans, on us as a species, on
the fact that we fundamentally are supposed to be tribal, he talks about
how when early settlers came to the US, many of them were fleeing to Native
American tribes to be a part of something that they felt was was more
organic and almost worthy than our quote-unquote civilized society that we
have. And his view on people banding together during tragedy like 9-11 and
the London Blitz and then the effects of these men and women when they leave the
conflict, they leave the tribe, they leave their army units, navy units and come
back into suburban America or England or whatever country they they demob from.
And the troubles that these men and women have and how this leaving the
tribe affects them and now is when the PTSD and all these other afflictions
start to hit them. So I really wanted to get him on the show, I really wanted to
pick his brains about some of his philosophies and in all honesty I also
want to urge everyone listening to this podcast to go out and buy Tribe. I am not
the kind of person that can pick up a book that is full of fluff and just
fight my way through hundreds and hundreds of pages. He is described as a
very very lean writer and I can absolutely testify to that. I can't
remember the exact page number, I haven't got it next to me but I believe it's
sub 200 pages and it is absolutely jam-packed with just totally engaging
stories that really get you hooked and make you kind of rethink about everything,
about the way we're living at the moment, about gyms where we walk in and
we hook into our iPhones and don't talk to another person,
suburban communities where even though we're surrounded by each other we
barely know our neighbors and how that is so different from the way that we were
I wouldn't say raised but the way our species has evolved for generations and
generations. So I was so happy when he agreed to be on the show, I reached out
to him and when he found out it was to help the first responders of the
world he jumped at the chance and responded immediately and said that he
would come on the show. So I think this will be eye-opening for a lot of people,
I think it really will reprogram the way a lot of you guys think after you hear
some of his philosophy and he doesn't even claim to own it, it's his
observations of modern combat, of the Native American culture, of the
New Yorkers during 9-11 and all these different things that he's observed and
when people have stepped up and become the best versions of themselves and
the strongest communities. So I am not gonna ramble anymore, I really want to
get you listening to him as soon as possible and when we're done with this
if you leave with one thing I urge you to go on Amazon or your local bookshop
and buy a copy of his book, Tribe. It really should be in every firehouse, every
police station, every EMT or paramedic station because it really
pertains to anyone that puts their life on the line, that chooses to serve
others and then sees these horrendous things and is exposed to these
terrible things and then is one day taken away from that whether it's injury,
retirement, promotion, whatever it is and I think that all of you are gonna be
able to relate in your own special way. So I am gonna stop yabbering and get
right on to this interview and I hope you all enjoy it, I'd love to hear your
feedback. So without further ado I give you Sebastian Junger.
Music
Sebastian welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Okay I'm gonna jump straight
in now because I know your time is extremely valuable. You are known for
writing about the working man, the viewers of this show are in the same
category, working men and women. I'm assuming that you wanted to be an author
since you were pretty young but how did you transition to finding an interest in
the working person? I don't know, it's an interesting question. I grew up in a
middle-class suburb and I had a good education and I didn't know that
honestly that many people in those kinds of sort of labor type jobs but my adopted
uncle Ellis who was in my book Tribe, he had done a lot of work in the 50s with
labor rights and he sort of opened my mind to that issue and then later I
had a job as a climber for tree companies. I was an arborist and I worked 70-80
feet in the air with a chainsaw and a rope and I taking trees down and I got
hurt pretty badly doing it and that actually, I for a long time wanted to
become a professional writer and I was writing occasionally for newspapers and
magazines but that sort of galvanized my interest in work related issues and I
started writing about dangerous jobs and the first one that I really focused on
was commercial fishing because I was living in the fishing town of Gloucester
in Massachusetts when a huge storm hit and sank a local boat named the Andrea
Gale and then that story that I investigated became you know eventually
became the perfect my first book The Perfect Storm. Yeah which was an
incredible book they made into a movie became a smash hit I know that. So the
one of your other books that you wrote was a book called Fire which is a
collection of your short stories and the first couple you featured smoke jumpers
out West so how did you get involved with that and what were your experiences
there? Well I had a whole list of dangerous jobs I wanted to look at and I
never was able to write the book that I envisioned which was a whole collection
on series on dangerous jobs one of those jobs was forest firefighting
wildland fire and so I did the research for that and wrote a magazine piece for
it but it never became part of a book and so that was it was also a book that
came out around then called Young Men in Fire by Norman McClain that was a you
know really what I think one of the best nonfiction books in the sort of canon
of American literature and I was a huge admirer of that book as well and I think
that sort of like inspired me I can't quite remember the timing of all that
but it was around then. Right and you actually were embedded with those smoke
jumpers for a small while is that correct? Well no I mean they jump out
airplanes on their fires so I was able to interview them I was I spent some
time on the hotshot crews that are that get to the fire you know on foot usually
but I didn't jump out of any airplanes I mean you you you're written that's not
actually really allowed. Okay yeah I know you were out out there in the wildland
with them for a little bit okay so transitioning then so what steered you
towards becoming a military journalist? Well I you know war reporting was one of
the things that interested me as a dangerous job and in the early 90s there
was a war in Bosnia obviously long before the US got there it was a civil
war and Sarajevo was under siege by Bosnian armed forces and like a lot of other
freelancers I got into Sarajevo with on a UN relief flight and started my you
know in a very sort of like clumsy and uninformed way I started my fledgling
career as a war reporter freelance war reporter. Right and as a civilian up to
that point what was that initial experience like going from living in you
know urban or suburban America to being in the middle of a war zone? You know
life was more normal than I expected I mean people still do everything they do
when there's no war is everything's a little bit harder you know water doesn't
come out of the pipes in your kitchen you have to go get it at a pump there's
no electricity you're burning candles you can't go to the supermarket to get
food you have to grow food in your backyard what have you I mean it
reduced life to a kind of communal very sort of primitive communalism that
actually I found really appealing in some ways I mean the closeness of the
society the closeness of these neighborhoods of these families was
really you know incredibly appealing and and why later much later I went back to
Sarajevo you know a year and a half ago 20 years after the war ended and you
know this one person I talked to I talk about this in my book but one woman I
talked to said that everyone really missed the war precisely because people
were so close and so collaborative during those difficult days. Right yeah
and that's pretty much one of the main topics in your latest book Tribe that
publication that that book I think is gonna resonate so so deeply as it did
with me in First Responders as well as military that haven't read it yet the
the different ways of looking not only at war itself but but at how people are
when they come back from war and then looking at our own country as well so
you in in the book talked about that very thing about how communities that
maybe weren't as strong initially were brought together during times of trouble
for example the London Blitz and 9-11
Yeah I mean human society reacts to to trauma and hardship and threat by
unifying those circumstances don't bring out bad behavior in you in people they
bring out typically pro-social behavior in people group-oriented behavior where
you know we are we're social humans are social primates we survive and even
thrive in the natural world because we function in groups and when we're under
threat we cohere into those groups even more strongly than we do ordinarily
modern society because it is so safe so protected so stable we don't really need
to function in terms of groups in order to get by until there's a crisis until
there's a threat until there's an attack or an earthquake or what-have-you and
then people do that very very naturally it clearly feels good to do that because
people often say that they missed you know the worst events of their lives 9-11
the Blitz in London why would anyone miss those terrible days but in fact
that's exactly what people do because they like the feeling of being needed by
their group they like the feeling of acting well actor-militaristically we
enjoy those experiences they make us feel good about ourselves even though
that there are very unfortunate sad circumstances that require them
absolutely another another thing that you discussed during the book which I
found was fascinating was the number of reported depression cases and PTSD cases
during these times of tragedy now these are people that had these symptoms
before actually declined during these tragic events yeah I mean the British
government was prepared for mass psychiatric casualties during the Blitz
and to their surprise emissions to psych wards went down during the Blitz
psychologists that I found an Irish psychologist that I found did some
really interesting research about depression levels during the what are
called the troubles in Northern Ireland the violence and the murders of the
fighting that happened in 1969 1970 and what he found was that the more violent
the district they lower the depression levels in the society and the only
district that found where he found depression levels to go up was County
Derry where there was no violence whatsoever oh really yeah I it's
interesting talking about Ireland I grew up in a town in England that was next to
an army base and during that whole time in my childhood I had to check under my
car for bombs and that kind of thing because it would be a perfect place to
put one to kind of hit the base from the outside and then when I came to the US
there was a lot of kind of pro IRA feeling until we had some terrorist
attacks on our doorstep and people really kind of were introduced to what
terrorism was really like and realized that there was not some Hollywood version
of a freedom fighter but the same kind of murderous you know horrible character
that exists in all these terrorist organizations around the world yeah yeah
no that's right that's right you know it's really interesting the the role of
stress on a community and how it affects people I was in El Paso Texas and I
talked to a student at the University of El Paso who grew up across the river and
in a very very very violent neighborhood during these outrageous drug wars
that were raging in northern Mexico you know some years ago and I mean there was
such so much gunfire on the Mexican side that the bullets would land on the
campus of the University of El Paso on the American side at any rate this kid
that I was talking to said that he grew up during that time in northern Mexico
and and that he you know he's living the dream right he's a he's got a
scholarship or whatever it was he gained entry the United States he's a student
at an American University having come from the from the very violent
neighborhoods across the river and he said that he really missed that he missed
those days that he was incredibly lonely and he knew he was sort of living the
dream but actually he was much much happier during those days of violence and
and the community that violence forces people to engage in in order to survive
and he really missed that yeah yeah and I think that's I guess what we're seeing
now in the same kind of thing in the first responders I'm gonna kind of come
back to this topic more but you have these these paramedics you have these
policemen and women and then even more so I think the fire department because
we live you know for 24 hours at a time with each other some sometimes even more
and it is a band of brothers and then when people leave that group whether it's
retirement whether it's injury or as I would realize even recently it could
even be promotion we've lost two chiefs in this central Florida area in the
last two months to PTSD so being removed from that that tribal environment it
appears like their world comes crumbling down then that that support structure
was there keeping them up when they were in it but when they were taken from it
you know it everything changed yeah I mean we're clearly wired to survive
adversity in groups and we can obviously do that quite well and if we couldn't
the human race wouldn't exist so we can just take that as a sort of base
assumption that we are highly adapted to deal with trauma successfully and that
we do that best in groups groups of people that were very close to not a
random group of strangers on a subway car but people that were close to
possibly related to possibly not but have a really powerful emotional
connections to and that in that kind of circumstance we can survive almost
anything and again if that were not so we wouldn't exist or another way to put
it is that we're the descendants of individuals in our evolutionary past who
were able to survive trauma fairly effectively within their groups so it
stands to reason that if you take a group of people like firemen first
responders who go through incredibly dangerous difficult things together and
rely on each other psychologically and physically in order to be able to do
those things that you take an individual out of that the residual trauma that
they have that they experienced as a group with people they care about
people they love that residual trauma they're now dealing with completely by
themselves or surrounded by people who really didn't have those experiences and
don't understand like their wife their children their neighbors that that would
be psychologically extremely hard and that's what veterans face when they come
home but you don't even need to be traumatized something like 25 percent of
Peace Corps volunteers you know we spent two years in a closed communal
environment in the developing world which is its own hardship but it's not
necessarily dangerous around 25 percent of Peace Corps volunteers slip into a
significant depression when they come back it's that loss of communality
which is so hard on the human psyche yeah and now you you talk about that in a
lot of detail in the book and I've already read it twice and I'm gonna
read it a third time because I absolutely love it so let's take it right
right back to the very beginning you're welcome and all the other ones as well
I'm halfway through war and I'm gonna be getting fire next and then I just
recently watched Restrepo and Korongal again and you know the look in those
young men eyes the men's eyes you can see in the policeman the fireman it's
the same in a thousand yards there but I want to go back to kind of the basis of
human culture so that we can kind of look at our ancestors and learn from
them and then fast forward to where we are now and understand more about you
know why people are going through this so you your your view on humans as a
nomadic but tribal society could you expand on that a little bit more I mean
it's not my view it's the consensus among archaeologists and anthropologists
that that was our evolutionary past from about 2 million years ago the advent of
toolmaking the use of fire all the way on up through the recent ice age in
Europe and right on up till about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture
in the Middle East that the typical human group was 30 40 50 individuals and
that they were highly highly mobile they married outside of their groups they
subsisted on obviously on hunting and gathering and that they were completely
dependent on the group for their own survival humans virtually no primates
actually survive in nature by themselves if you find yourself alone in nature you
are dead you are a dead primate and so that those those human relations are
important not just to our emotional welfare our psychological welfare but
to our physical survival absolutely and now the the example you use which I
found amazing again was the European settlers in early Western American
history being snatched from you know where their villages were by Native
Americans and then when they were being quote-unquote rescued them actually
resisting and wanting to go back to the Native American tribes that had taken
them could you tell the people more about that story yeah it was this strange
phenomenon I mean strange in a sense that the people at the time were puzzled by
that here you have a quote superior Western Christian civilization bordered
by and this is one of the few times in history this has happened bordered by
basically stone age level nomadic or semi nomadic groups and what was
interesting and people noticed it at the time was that as Benjamin Franklin said
we have thousands of examples of of young people fleeing the colonies
fleeing the settlements and absconding to the Indians and taking up with the
Native tribes and he said we don't have one example of a native person going the
other direction and choosing voluntarily to be part of Western society and how
could that you know really confounded people like we're we're a superior
Christian society like why why are the people should be going the other
direction they should be coming towards us not the other way around but even as
you say even people who were captured in it by an Indian race along the frontier
are brought back to these tribal communities very often when given the
chance to be repatriated during a peace treaty or an incursion by colonial
military forces or American military forces that these people who had been
abducted and adopted adopted these tribes would go into hiding would have
what would avoid being found would do everything they can to not be
repatriated and again that really could have founded the white Christian sense of
superiority that they fell towards what they called the savages and what do you
think was the driving force behind them returning to the Native American culture
you know I think the the basic broad and fundamental egalitarianism that existed
in these in these societies was very appealing I I think hunting is more fun
than plowing fields I think the sexual liberty enjoyed by these people was was
much greater and more satisfying than the you know incredibly burdensome
puritanical norms in colonial society and you know and finally I think just
the experience of a close communal society where people were literally and
figuratively sort of gathered around the campfire that that you know that's
extremely appealing to our evolutionary wiring and and when when given the
possibility many people quote go native we don't interestingly we don't have a
phrase in English to go civilized like doesn't know what apparently no one
really wants to do it if they have the choice I agree with that statement like
you said in one of your other interviews you get to walk around almost naked and
hunt and have sex a lot versus the alternative I definitely go there too
so touching on on the the Native American concept for the moment another
thing you talk about is the art of the masculine role and also the art of
storytelling now I think this is very pertinent right now we as a culture in
in I think any first responders telling telling stories of course that we've
been on is a great way of decompressing and again sharing with that quote-unquote
tribe PTSD as it stands has almost been shamed in our culture which I'm hoping
we're gonna start to try and reverse because it's just ridiculous the
military's already way ahead of us with with that but the storytelling you're
talking about in the Native Americans was it was a kind of a way of boasting
but also a way of showing the physical prowess of what you did and a
humanitarian side what you did for your culture yeah I mean I imagine the same
thing happens in firehouses and emergency rooms and police precincts and
all kinds of other places that there is a kind of recounting of one's ordeals
and exploits before you're the most important community that you're part of
and so in a lot of Native American societies after combat the warriors were
given the chance to through dancing and storytelling and singing sort of recreate
their their feats their exploits on the battlefield and that provided presumably
that provided a kind of cathartic experience for the warrior it also
allowed the community to to morally participate in the violent actions that
were done for them on their behalf which of course is very helpful I think one of
the very difficult things for soldiers is and I guess firemen don't get this
but first responders may not get this but for soldiers they're sent thousands of
miles away outside of their communities outside of their country to do something
that most Americans feel is morally suspect which is killing other human
beings and then they come back and there's it's not really clear like who
they did this for and why and that leaves them in a really profound emotional
distress that's not something I suppose that the fire department has to deal
with although occasionally of course the police might have to yeah now we're
definitely fortunate in fire and EMS where we're viewed more as the the hero I
guess of the community so we're not we're not normally having to make the
same kind of decisions that the military and the police do that that leads me to
a good question though and you've I know I've heard you answer this before when
people say they're against war you what's your view on that well I would
just ask what you know I would ask about World War two I would ask if it was okay
for them to in their opinion would it have been okay for the United States to
stand back and watch the German military machine having killed six million Jews
continue its it's a rampage through the world imposing fascism on virtually all
of our allies would that be all right yeah and if it's not okay then you're
not completely against war what you're against is human suffering and human
misery and killing and that's a different matter altogether absolutely I
spoke to Tim Kennedy the UFC fighter in Green Beret and he had this the same
kind of thing as you know once you're out there you've got a job to do and I
know you've you've said the same thing you know that the soldiers didn't start
the war the politicians did but when you see the suffering by these you know
insane murderers in these different countries now your your goal is to to
stop them from causing more suffering and obviously that the sad byproduct is
civilian loss of life in the process yeah that's correct that's right okay now
touching again on the on the the tribal part of the Native American culture which
kind of relates to this you explained how one of the tribes I think it was in
Navajo you said had the two leaders the peacetime leader and the military leader
although that was fascinating concept your quite yeah there is your quite yeah
there were there were war leaders and peace leaders and the war leaders
immediately took over when there was a declared conflict and as soon as a peace
agreement was arranged between the warring parties the agreement was okayed
by the peacetime leaders and as soon as they okayed as soon as they give their
approval of the treaty the war leaders immediately stepped down and were
replaced by the peacetime leaders peacetime leaders who were occasionally
women and often elected by women as well as men okay that sounds like something
we should maybe try in this country once yeah well speaking of that so so the
other thing is about gender roles you talked about that in times of crisis too
yeah I mean the genders are different and they respond to circumstances in
very different ways and obviously are used by society in very different ways
because of their different capacities if you look at statistics the vast majority
I mean you know 97 98 percent something like that's on that order of people whose
bystanders who spring into action to save someone from an imminent physical
threat a fire in a building someone who's fallen onto the subway tracks with
a train bearing down that kind of thing the vast majority of the people who
spontaneously do that are male young male and they're superbly adapted for it
men are on average 20 percent stronger than women in their upper bodies they
we know that they have quicker reflexes all kinds of adaptations that make them
skilled at hunting and at war and it dealing with in a sort of abrupt
muscular way with emergencies and crises well what women are really good at is a
kind of moral courage and this was found during World War two the decision to
hide Jewish families in one's basement if you were not Jewish if you're a
Gentile in northern Europe during the beginning and during World War two the
decision to hide a Jewish family in your basement if you were discovered by the
by the Nazis to have done so met immediate death and so the decision to
do that doesn't require muscular physical action but it potentially is
just as deadly as running into a burning building to save someone else's children
and women were more likely than men to make that decision that's again as a
kind of moral courage it's an equal form of bravery but it requires different
actions right because you I remember you said that the the gender roles weren't
necessarily filled by those specific genders as well because I identify both
of those roles within areas of first responders for example you know the
fireman that kicks in the door and drags a person out would be probably assigned
more to the the masculine type of those two gender roles but then if that same
person then has to take off their gear and then take care of them medically now
you're almost slipping into the more compassionate female side of the gender
role but within the same human being yeah that's right I looked at a coal mine
disaster in in Canada in the 1950s and these people were these it was all men
they were trapped who my two miles underground by a collapse of the mine
shafts because of an explosion and the first leaders that emerged from these
this group of you know a dozen or so maybe 18 I can't remember 18 men were
these sort of proactive unemotional on on empathic action-oriented individuals
who literally started trying to dig their way past the blockage to to freedom
they did that for a few days and it didn't work and then they had this the
group had to settle into a different kind of survival mode which was waiting
to see if they could be rescued and when that happened a different leader
emerged the first kind of leaders the the more typically male in some ways
leaders took a backseat step back and what emerged were leaders who were very
empathic they were good at keeping the morale of the group up and you know this
is in complete darkness while they're starving and dying of thirst never
knowing if they'll be rescued or even if their bodies will be recovered and
in that horrible horrible circumstance there were men who who emerged who were
they were compassionate and they were caretaking emotionally caretaking they
they wanted people to function collectively in the group they cared
very much what other people thought of their actions and that was a classically
more female role my point was that there are these two gender roles they need to
be filled and it doesn't matter if they're filled by males or females it
doesn't matter at all if a group of women were trapped in a coal mine some
women would step forward as the sort in the sort of classically male role the
sort of action-oriented role and others would fill the other the other more
compassionate role and likewise if for a group of men it really doesn't matter
what sex fills those roles as long as those roles get filled yeah yeah because
I think what they look at the kind of the stereotypical fireman policeman
paramedic as in a very two-dimensional way instead of looking at that we need
you know a spectrum of people because depending on events you know you might
need a door kicker like they refer to him in the seals or you might need the
person to to be the compassionate one in a giant disaster where you've got all
kinds of people you know extremely upset so yeah that could be fit may excuse me
fit by male or female but I think emotionally you need that spectrum if if
you're gonna function well as a group absolutely yep absolutely okay so getting
back to you actually in the Korangal Valley you were assigned to Rastrepro
which was named after Juan Rastrepro who was Navy corpsman is that correct no he
was he was in the airborne airborne infantry he was a he was the platoon
medic I was a platoon medic I'm sorry so I knew he was a medic okay so he was the
platoon medic so when you were there you that group was the saw more action than
anyone else in Afghanistan at the time is that right yeah for a while most of
the majority of the combat in in Afghanistan was in that immediate area
okay and what made you decide to go from writing as your main source of media to
filmmaking oh you know I started shooting video a few years earlier it
just seemed like a good way to capture situations that were moving too quickly
for me to write you know right keep track of in a notebook with a pen and
then I decided if I was going to spend you know a year off and on with a
platoon I wanted to write a book about about a platoon in combat I thought if
I was going to spend a year off and on with a platoon I might as well shoot a
lot of video and see if I could not only would that help in my reporting but maybe
I could make a documentary right and then the documentary focus is not so
much on on the actual events I think the event set the scene but it's more really
that the the guys once they've come home so what were your initial observations
when you first saw those soldiers back in the civilian lifestyle well we I mean
you know Sim and I spent most of a year out there we had one chance to interview
them after their deployment but they weren't home they were in Vicenza Italy
where the one 70 30 space and we had a couple of days to interview all those
guys about about their experience of the prior year they were they were pretty
messed up actually they were having a lot of a lot of psychological problems
right yeah cuz I you could see that I mean being a first responder and seeing
you know my peers like I said we've lost several in the last 12 months that that
look in their eyes and that that look of being lost once removed from which most
people look at the most dangerous place you think you'd want to run you know run
for the hills from that that yearning to be back there and I know several of them
say that exactly that almost with tears in their eyes they wish they were back
with their their brothers in in the Korangal yeah absolutely there was a
real longing to go back I think it felt the proximity of the other men made them
feel safe even though that there were bullets flying overhead and the idea of
being without their brothers alone even in a physically safe environment like
their hometown was a really dreadful prospect and very few of them wanted to
face it yeah now it's interesting yeah the observation of how house quote-unquote
civilization is now because I know what when I've come back from calls before
no problem you know where I've literally had you know child fatalities and come
back to a neighbor bitching at me about allegedly my cat crapping on his yard or
something and it's taking every ounce of strength not to lay him out there in the
driveway so I can't imagine a year's worth of trauma and then coming back to
in my opinion a very selfish society at the moment I can imagine that would
really enhance the the effects of being just dropped back in and removed from
your guys yeah I think it's very hard I mean most of them actually didn't come
back they you know they stayed within the milit in the military and deployed
again and those were the guys who did the best the ones who actually got out
of the military were the ones who suffered immediate consequences
psychologically and really struggled yeah the the observation you made again
forgive me if this is a Navajo or the Iroquois you you said about the
egalitarian system how the selfish I guess cancer that we have at the moment
the kind of I want everything mentality how in a lot of native cultures that
just a nomadically isn't isn't possible because you can't carry all this wealth
with you and be any greed is punished because you're taken away from from the
rest of the tribe yeah I mean if you think I mean forget about the Native
Americans if you just think about our evolutionary past the with it was it was
nomadic we came out of Africa we spread throughout the world as a nomadic
species living in groups of 30 40 50 people and there's no possibility to
accumulate wealth because you have to carry everything that you own so there
were no meaningful economic distinctions between people in those small groups and
certainly wealth could not be passed on to wealth and power could not be passed
on to generations the people who had authority within the group had that
authority they had earned it and they were and it was by and their authority
came at the permission of the group and if you didn't like the way someone was
running your little band of hunter-gatherers you were free to get up
and go and maybe join your wife's clan or whatever whatever it might have been
so what that all changed at the advent of agriculture once you invest years of
time and labor in digging irrigation dishes and you own you own now you only
have claimed your property you invest your resources in planting that
property at that point you can accumulate wealth there are distinctions
of income between people of wealth between people and you can be taxed by
leaders you could be oppressed by leaders because you know there's no way
you there's no way for you to leave you're too invested in your own property
you can then also have authority structures and armies and police and
that kind of thing they impose the will of a leader on the populace so it all
starts to sort of fall apart with agriculture that that brought a
galatarianism so so when you have a modern society like the United States in
the eight seventeen hundred eighteen hundreds butting up right right up against
a stone-age culture that was way more egalitarian than we even are today it's
an it's undeniably appealing and individuals will choose to to flee and
and take up in these quote primitive societies that are actually in human
terms you know extremely evolved yeah I mean we definitely devolved socially in
that respect there's no question about that I think that's again the the
yearning to be back in that group whether it's military or fire or police
or EMS is when you are I'll take my example if you're a fireman and you're
lazy then you will be ostracized you know you'll be known throughout the
apartment as the excuse my language but a piece of shit and you know if you don't
quit then you'll you'll end up you know bouncing around from crew to crew and
never really being happy and so having that bar set high and expecting other
humans to act a certain way and then you retire you get hurt you you whatever
happens and you're in a quote-unquote regular world and you see the
selfishness and the greed I think it is amplified and it makes I know it makes
me extremely angry when when I see that kind of behavior yeah well listen to you
there are very good evolutionary reasons for your anger someone who does not
carry their weight who depends on the work of others and doesn't doesn't put
into the welfare of the group is not only a drag on the group they can even
be an actual danger to the group and it's you know typically dealt with very
very harshly yeah and they can definitely be a danger in those
professions too I mean that's the person that supposed to be dragging you out if
you go down or you know protecting you with their weapon if if you get shot
well speaking of that actually that trans excuse me it transitions well to
the other question you had a great example of an incident I think it was in
Vietnam where you had two group you had a I'm excuse me you had a special forces
group and a lieutenant who was a regular lieutenant and they measured the stress
levels of them when there was an impending attack yeah that's right that
was in my book war and so what happened was when they heard that there was an
attack coming the stress levels as measured by levels of cortisol and in
urine I believe it was urine samples I believe it was the stress levels in the
lieutenant went up in the special forces soldiers that were that he was
commanding stress levels went down he's all of a sudden they had a good they had
enormous confidence in in their skills and they knew what they had to do and as
soon as they got word that an attack was coming they started filling sandbags and
cleaning their weapons and arranging their ammunition and whatever else they
had to do stringing the claymores and the barbed wire and all that stuff they
got busy right and the stress levels went down because they were busy because
they had something to do and then that the window for the attack came and it
went and it became clear that the attack there was false information or that the
plan said the enemy's plans had changed and things quieted down and then the
lieutenant stress levels dropped and the menu was commanding their stress levels
climbed back up to sort of ordinary high levels where they never knew what was
going to happen and so they were continually on edge but there was not
much they could do about it yeah now it's finally very interesting because I
think that really leans towards the importance of training in in any of the
the first responder professions if you have drilled and drilled and drilled and
you're prepared then when the time comes you get that clarity and like you said
the there was almost an anxiety of wanting a fire wanting you know to to
get in a gunfight whatever your your thing is but when when the time occurs
then you're ready and you're focused and in that Zen moment really that's right
that's right now there's a lot of wiring a lot of adaptation for the for us to be
highly functional in those moments and very very anxious when nothing's going
on absolutely so yourself you obviously saw a huge amount of combat you you know
were reporting so you weren't even carrying a weapon you were there getting
shot at and then having to take it when you came back did you have any incidents
of PTSD yourself yeah I I think probably the first time I had problems was after
Sierra Leone in 19 what was it 1999 I think it was yeah I I had some tough
experiences there and I came back pretty rattled in 2000 I was in northern
Afghanistan with Afad Shama suit who was killed right before 9-eleven I was there
a year before a year prior and you know back then the Taliban had you know they
had Migs they had an Air Force they had tanks they had everything and we got
hammered pretty hard a couple of times and I came back not knowing that I had
been affected by it but I kept having panic attacks panic attacks in in in
situations where I was felt for about a control like a crowded subway station
that kind of thing I didn't connect it to combat because there there were no
subway stations in Afghanistan in the fall of 2000 like I you know I just I
didn't it didn't I didn't think it was combat related because the situation was
so different but I later found out that that's pretty typical that that people
have panic attacks in unrelated situations where they don't feel like
they're in control in combat you're not in control you feel like you could be
killed without getting much of a vote in the matter and that feeling of
helplessness is extremely traumatizing and so anything else that makes you feel
helpless I was in the ski gondola once and I completely freaked out and I'm not
a particularly neurotic person but you know that I just completely freaked out
in the ski gondola and then on the subway and it kept happening and that
was I know you know years later I realized oh my god that was PTSD well
yeah it definitely manifests itself in the most crazy ways from from you know
just a mild feeling of sadness all the way through to such darkness that people
are taking their lives so I'm trying to trying to bring that out to the forefront
I want to touch on something or a couple of things firstly the the incident that
happened that took you away from journalism within the military itself
yeah my my friend and colleague Tim Hetherington that I made restrepo with
he was killed in combat in Libya he went over to cover the Libyan Civil War we
were supposed to be there together at the last moment I couldn't go and he got
killed and so I got out of war recording you know within about an hour of finding
out that he had died over there you know you know it gave me a lot of you know I
felt very guilty about his death I felt like I should have been with him that I
could have protected him that it should have been me a lot of classic feelings
that I remember hearing from soldiers that I knew that I never quite
understood why they felt that way and that's something I kind of got it
because I had those same reactions to Tim's death yeah and you said you you
saw the effects of the people that were left behind as well yeah but I got out
of war reporting because I saw the effect of Tim's death on everyone that
he loved and I didn't want to risk the people that I loved I wanted to want to
risk their their emotional welfare on you know a job that I that I was totally
enamored of but it wasn't worth you know it wasn't worth other people's sacrifice
and so I stopped yeah and I think that's another area of PCSD that people don't
recognize within the first responder groups is and I've had a I can remember
a perfect example I had a young man literally dropped dead in a in a dog
kennel and in a place that you drop off your dogs when you're going away for the
day and he passed away we did everything we could and then we were writing the
report after the call what and his family were about eight feet away just
you know absolutely in tears and beside themselves so being left with you know
that the the fallout from the family and just being in this pain by their
reaction of it I think that's another area that affects people they don't
realize you couldn't save that person and that is so frustrating in itself but
then seeing how that does radiate to everyone they love around them I think
is even more heartbreaking yeah yeah you know I know combat men are
very very hard time because I don't like it are they getting traumatized are only
early are they are they in combat are they firing firing their weapons
potentially killing other people but they're also failing to save their their
comrades and their brothers and then and that's extremely hard on them
psychologically yeah that's it's you know it's a very hard thing to come to
terms with because in the movies everyone survives and in real world not
so much now I just want to touch on something and please tell me if I'm
stepping out of line here my darkest time I think during my career so far was
when I was also going through a divorce and I know you were recently divorced
did did the burden of what you'd seen up to that point magnify everything that
happened there you know I think that my experiences in combat affected my
marriage and I think the divorce affected my attempts to resolve the
emotional fallout from combat for sure they both affected each other I'm not
sure in negative ways I mean I mean both things brought out an extreme
emotionality in me and although he was unpleasant and sometimes awkward that
outpouring of emotions I think ultimately was helpful for me it just
didn't feel very good at the time but I think it was something it was a process
that I kind of needed to do and I and I think only trauma was going to sort of
crack me open enough to have these feelings come out and know that the
feelings were derived from my relationship with my wife were derived
from my experiences in combat but of course for all of us there's a there are
deep wells of sort of sadness and conflicted feelings and residual things
from your family I mean you know it's a whole messy swamp inside all of us and
you know we were you know very sensibly and wisely we wall that stuff off as well
as we can so it doesn't affect our daily lives but at the end of the day if
something breaches those walls and this stuff comes gushing out you know in the
sort of long term I think you're well served by that and both divorce and
combat sort of served serve that purpose in my life and I really feel like I
integrate it but at the end of the day I integrated what was deep inside me and
what was sort of on my functional exterior like those two things got
connected and integrated in a way that right now it feels very very healthy and
functional right and do you do you find your writing as a form of catharsis I
did my first ever blog a couple weeks ago I did about PTSD and I did another
one about sleep deprivation and both of them were rattling around my brain to
the point I couldn't sleep and I literally you know vomited them out onto
the keyboard and it felt pretty amazing after so do you have that same feedback
when you write about the the things you've seen I mean I mean sometimes the
thing my writing process involves some pretty puzzling and intense emotions I
guess that's a form of catharsis I never thought about it like that I wouldn't
say that it catharsis to me is an emotional experience that kind of purges
you of that emotion then you're free of it I wouldn't say it functions that way
okay yeah that would be more of a temporary temporary version of okay well
I know that we're getting to the to the end of the time so I've got a couple of
quick questions for you and I will let you get on your way thank you so much
for the time you've already given us firstly so what is your next project
after tribe you know I don't know I'm finishing up a documentary about the
Syrian Civil War and about ISIS and I didn't shoot any of it but I'm acting in
the capacity of director and and after that I'm not I'm actually not sure what
I'm gonna do next okay does that project have a title yet it's called hell on
earth and it comes out with National Geographic this spring they are they
have not announced their day yet okay fantastic and obviously you are a
filmmaker and an author is there a book and a movie or documentary that you
would recommend other than your own work oh my god I don't know how I could
answer that in less than half an hour I mean there's so many amazing books out
there Peter Matheson is it was a longtime favorite author of mine Joan
Didion John McPhee I mean any any books by any of those people are amazing
Cormac McCarthy is a fiction writer he's just phenomenal dispatches by Michael
Hare is a really fine book about war and I mean every year every year there are
amazing documentaries come out I mean I can't even I can't even sort of think
clearly enough to list the ones that have impressed me but you know there's
amazing there's really really good work being done and it's worth paying
attention to I mean documentary film is a sort of very vibrant art form right now
and we communicate a lot of important things that don't quite make it into
the front pages of the newspaper through the two documentary film is a really
important medium yeah yeah I agree completely as a 42 year old man it's
crazy how you see the same story played out over and over again sometimes
subtly sometimes blatantly but they just remake the same damn fictional film so I
think certainly after you've seen that story played out a few times the the
documentary side really is a lot more satisfying than the fictional movies
there's only so many you know Rambo style movies you can take before it just
gets ridiculous yeah absolutely absolutely so and then what do you do to
decompress or if you need a laugh what's your your outlet these days I you know
I've been athletic my whole life I run a lot I box I really like playing chess I
play accordion and I read a lot
right I wanted to touch on that cuz I knew you box and ran and that that's one
of the things that I've guess let me rephrase that's one of the only things
that they've really shown that that is good for that mental trauma is you know
healthy body healthy mind and everyone that kind of really has an aggressive
exercise routine or love of sport seems to have a much better coping mechanism
usually than than the ones that don't so I think that's an important thing to
underline yeah I mean I think I mean I'm a doctor but I think you know intense
exercise probably lowers cortisol levels and there's a whole hormonal response to
to exercise that I think is probably really beneficial all the endorphins and
all that stuff exercising increases your testosterone increases your adrenaline I
mean all that stuff feels really good in your bloodstream so I you know I'm not
surprised that it's no that's part of a sort of healthy regimen yeah and I guess
that also the tribal side I mean I think that's why things like CrossFit and mud
runs things like that have gained in popularity because you're not putting in
a head set of headphones and just sitting in the corner on your own I mean
when you're boxing you're obviously interacting with all the other guys in
the gym too absolutely yeah exactly it's interesting you know like the boxing gym
that I'm belong to it's an old old gym in New York and you know you have
everything from like Wall Street guys who come in take off their suits and
suit you know and work out to you know like kids from the ghetto in Brooklyn
and but as soon as you walk in that door everyone's equal and the way you're
seen by others is completely dependent on how you act in there and and that's a
very very healthy environment for everybody there's no prejudice in either
direction no prejudice against the sort of like elevated Wall Street dudes and
there's no prejudice against the poor people the sort of less fortunate to
come in from poor parts of town like it's you were completely judged on your
actions and that that to me is deeply is a sort of deeply tribal arrangement in
the healthiest in the healthiest sense and probably reflects our evolutionary
past in a pretty accurate way yeah no I'd agree that completely I mean you know
you put on a pair of shorts and a pair of gloves it's pretty uniform from
there on now it's just about who can hit harder so all right well I'm gonna let
you wrap up but if you wouldn't mind just tell people where they can find you
and your work well my website is Sebastian younger calm and you can find
all of my documentaries on my website or on iTunes or on Amazon Ristrepo
Corningal which way is the front line from here and the last patrol my books
are the perfect storm and fire a death in Belmont war and my most recent book is
called tribe about the community and yeah you know Amazon or Barnes and
Noble whatever any any any bookstore has probably all of my books in them yeah
Amazon definitely does because I've got them all on my Christmas list so the
ones I haven't gotten so yeah I highly recommend anyone listening I think tribe
I put a post on Facebook today tribe basically should be read by every human
being on the planet isn't already functioning as a tribe so I think I
think everyone they took that on board I think right there we'd start making
ourselves a more community-based civilization which I think we need to so
on that note thank you so so much for taking time I know you're extremely busy
and you lent your time to this very humble project of mine and I hope one
day we can touch base again in the future but for now I will let you go and
thank you again from everyone the first responder community for you know a your
book and be taking the time to talk to us hey well thank you I really enjoyed it
good luck to you and to everybody who's listening
you