Tribe

I came across an interview with author, filmmaker, and journalist Sebastian Junger. He was promoting his new book Tribe on ‘On Point’ with Tom Ashbrook. It was very, very interesting. This idea of a ‘tribe’ is something that was brought up by a friend of mine about 7 – 8 years ago.  He was telling me about how I needed to find my tribe and that until I did I would always be restless and be trying to fill a void. Junger makes a similar point but in a different way and relates it to troops coming back from combat.

Junger refers to a letter written by Benjamin Franklin about how hundreds of colonialists went native and virtually none of the natives went civilized.He gave a great example, if the members of Wall Street were part of a tribe back in 2008, they would have been kicked out or killed. They hurt the tribe, severely.

Military units have the same type system. You live together, eat together, fight together and so on. When those troops return home, they return to a very individualized society. One where the metrics of success are individual based and not tribe base. They miss the tribe and that, in part, is what causes what we refer to as ‘PTSD’.

There is plenty of other things that Junger touches on and I highly recommend giving this episode of ‘On Point’ a listen. I just bought the book and can’t wait to read it.

On Point with Tom Ashbrook