Quotes from Sebastian Junger

For all the temptations of native life, one of the most compelling might have been its fundamental egalitarianism. Personal property was usually limited to whatever could be transported by horse or on foot, so gross inequalities of wealth were difficult to accumulate. Successful hunters and warriors could support multiple wives, but unlike modern society, those advantages were generally not passed on through the generations.

In combat, soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion, and politics within their platoon.

In the long run, early failure is probably just as great a generator of freedom as early success.

Billy's at 44 north, 56 west and heading straight into meteorological hell.

We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is to an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that." One

Here I have no master," an anonymous colonial woman was quoted by the secretary of the French legation as saying about her life with the Indians. "I am the equal of all the women in the tribe, I do what I please without anyone's saying anything about it, I work only for myself, I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again when I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in your cities?

why Western society is so unappealing. On a material level it is clearly more comfortable and protected from the hardships of the natural world. But as societies become more affluent they tend to require more, rather than less, time and commitment by the individual, and it's possible that many people feel that affluence and safety simply aren't a good trade for freedom

Anyone who wants to overthrow an established power--a government, an army, or even a dominant corporation--must, first and foremost, believe they are fulfilling a kind of historic destiny.

author and ethicist Austin Dacey describes as a "shared public meaning" of the war. Shared public meaning gives soldiers a context for their losses and their sacrifice that is acknowledged by most of the society. That helps keep at bay the sense of futility and rage that can develop among soldiers during a war that doesn't seem to end. Such

As affluence and urbanization rise in a society, rates of depression and suicide tend to go up rather than down. Rather than buffering people from clinical depression, increased wealth in a society seems to foster

I wanted the chance to prove my worth to my community and my peers, but I lived in a time and a place where nothing dangerous ever really happened.

The mechanism seems simple: poor people are forced to share their time and resources more than wealthy people are, and as a result they live in closer communities. Inter-reliant poverty comes with its own stresses—and certainly isn't the American ideal—but it's much closer to our evolutionary heritage than affluence.

In the United States we valorize our vets with words and posters and signs, but we don't give them what's really important to Americans, what really sets you apart as someone who is valuable to society—we don't give them jobs. All the praise in the world doesn't mean anything if you're not recognized by society as someone who can contribute valuable labor." Anthropologists

The accumulation of personal property allowed people to make more and more individualistic choices about their lives, and those choices unavoidably diminished group efforts toward a common good.

How do you become an adult in a society that doesn't ask for sacrifice?

Robert Frost famously wrote that home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Bluntly put, modern society seems to emphasize extrinsic values over intrinsic ones, and as a result, mental health issues refuse to decline with growing wealth. The more assimilated a person is into American society, the more likely they are to develop depression during the course of their lifetime, regardless of what ethnicity they are.

As modern society reduced the role of community, it simultaneously elevated the role of authority.

Recent studies of something called "social resilience" have identified resource sharing and egalitarian wealth distribution as major components of a society's ability to recover from hardship.

And as society modernized, people found themselves able to live independently from any communal group. A person living in a modern city or a suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day—or an entire life—mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.

Hierarchical male groups are good at mustering on the street and running into gunfire--another important task--but terrible at creating alliances.

He had survived two days in his underwear on the North Atlantic. Later, when asked how long it took him to warm up after his ordeal, he said, without a hint of irony, "Oh, three or four months.

As modern society reduced the role of community, it simultaneously elevated the role of authority. The two are uneasy companions, and as one goes up

three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others.