TRIGGERnometry - Why Modern Society Makes Us Depressed - Sebastian Junger

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

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We're way out on a limb here with this individuality. I mean, humans have never survived as individuals. It's not possible. You take someone, you put them down to the wilderness by themselves. They die almost immediately. As a species, we are social primates, and we owe our lives to the group, and we have to participate. We have a duty to the group in order to stay alive.

That's what being human means. If you can simultaneously understand that you are part of a community of humans, you're lucky to be so. What do you owe them? Because the more you give them, the happy you will be, the more affluent in society, the higher the levels generally of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction. Sebastian, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much. It's great to have you here.

We want to talk about your book and the broader questions that come out of it. But before we do, tell us a little bit about who you are. How are you sitting here? What's been your journey through life? I grew up in Boston. I moved to New York in my 30s. I was a freelance war reporter for many years. I also wrote a number of books. My first one was the bestseller of The Perfect Storm. But as soon as that came out, I went back overseas and I covered the civil wars in West Africa. I was in Afghanistan in 1996. Then again, in 2000 with Massoud and then later with American forces.

And eventually, I had the great good fortune to work with a British photographer. over a name Tim Hetherington. And he and I shot and directed and produced a documentary together called Restrepo about an outpost in Afghanistan that we were at off and on for a year. And then we were nominated for an Oscar, and a few weeks later, Tim, we were going to go on assignment to Libya to cover the Civil War.

Tim went on his own because I had to delay the trip, and he was killed outside of the city of Masrata. And after he was hit by shrapnel from a mortar fired by Gaddafi's forces. So after that, I got out. I sort of had my film. Like, I couldn't imagine going back to war, not because I was worried about being killed.

I was worried about other, I mean, I was sort of worried about how it would affect my family, my friends, right? I suddenly realized watching Tim's family, like, what, I was actually gambling with their lives in some way, their happiness. So I stopped and I got married. I had two children, two little girls who are now nine and six. and now I make my living in quieter ways.

So was a writer. And the last book that came out was called In My Time of Dying. After all that war reporting, I'm healthy. I'm an athlete. I've never thought that I would ever go to the ER for anything other than a car accident or a chainsaw accident or something. I had an aneurysm in my abdomen that I didn't know about an eruption. And I lost half my blood, and I came extremely close to dying.

and I didn't know I was nine, but I got to the hospital in the last phases of hemorrhagic shock, you know, convulsing on the table and stuff like that. And they barely saved me. But one of the last things I remember was that they were working to put a large gauge needle through my neck into my jugular to transfuse me. And as they were doing that, I'm an atheist, right?

My dad was a physicist and an atheist, like atheist squared, basically. And the universe kind of cracked open underneath me, and I started to get pulled into it. And I was terrified. I didn't know I was dying. I was terrified of the darkness. And then my dead father appeared above me to comfort me. And said, it's okay, you don't have to fight it.

You can come with me. I'll take care of you. I said to the doctor, you've got to hurry because I'm going. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was leaving. And so that, you know, I'm still an atheist, and I'm happy to talk about that. But that really rearranged some of my assumptions about the nature of life and consciousness and time and life and death and all those big things.

And now here I am. Well, it's really fascinating. But coming back to the war correspondent years and that side of things, what did you learn from doing that for a very long time? I imagine it's a very unusual experience that most people don't have. And I imagine it draws quite unusual people, too. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. In other countries in the United States,

the military is filled, I mean, in some ways, it's our most democratic and diverse organization, right? I mean, it's kind of extraordinary that way. Combat itself is a very select group. It's all male. I mean, the combat infantry is all male. Probably 70 or 80% white, sort of working class, middle class kids, right? And they really, unlike during Vietnam, they really wanted. to be, I was with the 173rd Airborne.

You don't get sucked into the 173rd Airborne by accident, right? Like they really wanted to be soldiers and to be in combat. And, of course, they traumatized them and all kinds of other things, but it was really interesting. So we were out at Restrepo, which was an outpost size of this room practically, I'm not a little bit bigger, but it was very small, 40 men behind sandbags. For the first few months, there was no generators,

no electricity, there was no cooked food, there was no running water. There was like nothing. We were in combat almost every single day. And high casualty rates, absolutely brutal existence. And the boys were out there. Tim and I came and went every month or so. But the boys were out there for 15 months straight.

And no contact with the outside world. Nothing, right? And when they got back, they got back to Vicenza, Italy. This is what I learned about war. When they got back to Vicenza, Italy, after the partying that you can imagine, happened after that phase, most of them wanted to go back to Restrepo to the outpost. They missed it. They didn't fit in anymore. And what they missed was each other. They missed being in a close circumstance where they were dependent on each other for their lives. And that is,

you know, as an anthropologist, former anthropologist, that's basically our evolutionary past. And I resonated very deeply with them. And they were very confused. Like, what's wrong with me? Why would I want to go back to that place? But I do. And in my book, Tribe is about the sort of anthropological reality that produces that kind of reaction. Is it partly an addictive existence whereby you experiencing huge highs, huge lows, in the way and a sense of camaraderie that you simply don't get in real life? Yeah, it is. But you know what I would say is the adrenaline junkie thing is a little overstated.

I mean, you can skydive, you can rock climb. There's lots of ways of like getting adrenaline in this. But those are all quite sort of self-serving or enterprises, right? They're for you, right? I'm going to skydye. But the thing about the military, the thing about being in combat is when you're in combat, you don't feel like you're there for yourself. You feel like you're there for everybody else, right?

And that sort of that brotherhood is that actually the end of the day, I think that is what's intoxicating. I think that's what pulls up our sort of evolution. past and and I think you could maybe you could say it's addictive but it's certainly something that once you acquire it it's hard to let go of it feels like oh this is this is what this is meaningful back home it's not meaningful there's no there's nothing at stake now everything's at stake for all of us one guy said to me he said you know there's guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other but we would all die for each other imagine how secure

that feels it's not even independent on your feelings it's just I'm part of this group I'm good I die for them, they die for me, we're good. Like, it's extraordinary feeling. Especially when you think about in society at the moment, we're talking about the crisis and meaning, where even ordinary people who've never experienced that type of intense bond or extreme situation is looking at their life and going, I don't know what this means. I don't know what my purposes. I don't know what my role is. So it must be even more of a contrast if you've experienced war to what we're going through now in the civilian population. Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you think about most of our evolutionary past, the fighters, the warriors that came back, the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Comanche, the Apache,

when they came back from their combat, they were coming back to a close community that was also, that was also living on the edge of survival, right? So there wasn't that transition from survival to ease and luxury. It was all survival, right? And everyone was involved in all of it. And that's how, in evolutionary terms, that's how it should be. In our society, I mean, there are a lot of blessings here. Let's not forget. To live in a society where our safety and our daily survival needs are basically mechanized and taken care of and outsourced is a huge blessing, right? I mean, you know, let's acknowledge it, but there are downsides, even to blessings. And one of the downsides is that people can feel very alienated because they're not needed by their group and vice versa

until there's a crisis. So the Blitz in London, I write about this in my book, Tribe. It shocked the authorities because they were prepared. I mean, this is quite famous, this is quite well-known, right? The authorities were prepared for mass psychiatric casualties when the German Air Force started bombing London in other British cities, right? And in fact, the admissions to psych wars went down during the bombings because people had a purpose. They had something they had to do.

They were digging people out of the rubble. They were sleeping side by side in the tube stations. They were doing all of the sort of urgent survival things that our human ancestors have always done. And in circumstances like that, there's a great relief in being able to forget about your own concerns. Our anxiety comes from our own concern. And when we're in situations where we're concerned about others and others need us, it's almost like a painkiller.

It's like, oh, I feel no fear. I'm good. But I just have to make sure everyone else is good. It happened in New York on 9-11 after 9-11, right? Hurricanes. An earthquake, it was an earthquake in Italy that I looked at in, you know, 1916, I think it was. And it killed something like 95% of the population in a minute, right? It was like a nuclear bomb. It hit that area, Avadzano, Italy. And the people that survived had to make it another four or five days until help could get there. And this guy wrote, he said, during, I mean, one of the amazing things about crises like this is everyone's the same. So all these awful social strata, sort of like rich, poor, white, black, whatever, every conceivable category just goes away, right? And so this guy said, it's such an amazing sentence. He said,

that the earthquake had produced what the law promises but cannot, in fact, deliver, which is the equality of all men. Wow. And as I was listening to your book, it made me think about something, and I'd love to explore it with you, which is, in civilian life, it's very difficult to become a hero for the average person. The average person doesn't get the chance to be heroic, particularly the male, which is important to us to be the hero. Oh, yeah.

But war, particularly something like the Blitz, provides the ordinary, regular, everyday person with a chance to be a hero. And that's very important for us, isn't it? And what I would say, in those circumstances, you're absolutely right. But I would say the word hero is like a civilian concept, right, in combat itself. No one thinks of being a hero. They just, you know, I mean, the people that have received, and I know some of them that have received the Medal of Honor, our highest medal in this country, they're like universally. Like without exception to, like, I didn't do, I just did, I did the minimum that I was supposed to do for a brother who was in distress, in danger, right? I'm not a hero.

I did the minimum, right? And it brings me to this idea that I've been thinking about, about duty. The duty is sort of this grim, onerous term. Like, actually, I think it's a kind of secret to something good. So, and duty is not purpose. It's not a mission. It's not a passion. It's not a calling.

It's actually what you owe your community, right? Whatever that may be. And so, you know, Bronze Age England, your community would have been some 100 or 200 people. In, you know, modern America, it's, you know, 340 million, right? But what do you owe? And I think we're the first, and what's their duty to you? And that reciprocal arrangement of duty is core. to making people feel safe.

I mean, humans have three main questions. Every other question is sort of like unimportant compared to these. Is my group safe in the world? Am I safe? Am I accepted within the group? Because if I'm not, I'm screwed, right? So is my group safe in the world?

Am I safe in the group? And are my children safe with me? And duty, this charging of duty to the individual and from the society and to the society is at the core of answering those three, questions in the affirmative, right? And so if I, when I say to people in this country, what's your duty to the country? Like, no one has an answer. Right? And I think we're probably

the first society in history, I mean modern Western society, where people don't have a ready answer for that very obvious and ancient human question. I think you go back a thousand years, five thousand years, you ask, you know, a Native American in 1750, what's your duty to the Urquois, your tribe. They'd be like, are you kidding? I mean, my duty doesn't end. Like, it's just I wouldn't be alive without them. I have to, I protect them. I do this, I do that. It would be very obvious. We can't answer that question. I think until we can, all of us individually will feel unsatisfied and in some ways fearful because we don't have a safe place in the world. Well, one of the fascinating things is, I think on the flip side, if you ask people what they're

entitled to, they will give you a list as long as their arm. Absolutely. Which is a relationship that seems to me to have become distorted because you are as a member of a group, of course, entitled to certain things, but that is the flip side of the duties that you have to that group. And we now have a long list of entitlements and very little idea of what our duty is. Yeah, I mean, Western society, it's a mass society. They had to scale up and come up with answers that aren't very finely tuned.

to like actual human needs. But basically, you pay taxes, and then the society's duty to you is to basically keep you safe from harm, to render aid if you're in a crisis. It's all sort of makes sense, right? And I think the conversation, and the conversation between liberals and conservatives,

is where is that line, right? The idea of a society that owes nothing to the individuals is barbaric, right? I mean, someone's dying in the sidewalk, and there's no... ambulance to call, right? Or they kick him out of the hospital because he can't pay the $10,000, you know, for the appendectomy is the poor parac, right? On the other hand, there's a, you know, there's a real consequence for society when people sort of game the system and

try to take, you know, more than, I'll just put it more this way, more than they should, right? You know what? And I've looked at the sort of origins, the human, the origins of moral behavior in humans, right? Which they just sort of start in, you know, we're social primates. And you can see some sort of moral behavior in chippensis, but really with the advent of language, people could really talk about what is right and what is wrong. And there were two main, there's a wonderful anthropologist called Melvin, I think his first name, Connor. And he wrote a book called Moral Origins. And he said there's two main crimes that survival groups are on the lookout for. One is abusively leadership, like leaders that abused their position and enrich themselves, advantage themselves,

hurt other people, right, that are lower than them, right? And those people, that was one of the forms of, that was one of the things that would elicit capital punishment. So there are rock drawings of one guy bristling with arrows and ten men standing around and with their bows, right? Clearly an execution by the men of a group of the theory as an abusive leader. The other sort of crime that survival communities are constantly on the lookout for is free riders. People that really aren't contributing to the pot, right, to the survival, and they're taking

more than their share of the chestnuts or the meat or whatever. So but you know, we live in societies where leaders can be very abusive, right, can think they're above the law, right? That they're beyond the reach of ordinary justice. and enrich themselves, right? So I mean, you could, so I sort of understand the mentality. I mean, it's destructive at both sides. I can imagine, I can understand people saying,

you know what that, like, he, look what he's doing, right? I'm going to jail because I stole a $100 sneakers. Like, he ripped off the government for $500 million, and he's fine. Like, so I think part of the problems of freeloading, which is real in our society, and it's very damaging to the, to the freeloader psychologically, emotionally,

super destructive to them, right? Terrible for their self-esteem. But part of the problem is that, you know, we have, we have sometimes leaders in our governments that are, you know, clearly corrupt and unethical and self-serving. Well, no one would argue with that, I think. If you're on gold, you probably bought it for the same reason I did, because you looked at what central banks are doing to currencies

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and I wonder how that connects with the things that you're talking about. Because I imagine if you optimize for the... individual, actually you are taking away many of the things that you're talking about as being necessary for human flourishing. The 2006 Chevrolet Equinox awarded the most dependable compact SUV in the U.S. by J.D. Power is designed for your everyday. And with available all-wheel drive, you can handle your to-do list with total confidence. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Details at jd.power.com.

Yeah, I mean, look, we're way out on a limb here with this individuality. I mean, humans have never survived as individuals. It's not possible, right? You take someone and you put them down to the wilderness by themselves. They die almost immediately. And so within Western society, none of us are surviving without the supply chain, right? Without, you know, lots of other people that do the stuff that we need done to survive while we're doing one thing that we're good at that other people need to survive, right? You're an eye doctor, you're a dentist, you're a construction.

It's just how it works. So the idea that, like, oh, I'm just an individual and I don't need anything from anyone. and so stay away from me and I don't want to pay any taxes whatsoever and blah, blah, blah. Like, it's a fantasy, right? Human society has never worked that way. And you can go to a, you know, there are some tribal societies, current day, that I thought to represent very closely what our evolutionary origins are.

And, you know, the idea that in those, in those, just the Hadza in East Africa, for example, you're very well-studied peoples. You know, they would just say it's absolutely absurd, like the idea that you could could survive on your own or would want to. Like, and so in America, there's this myth of individuality, but actually all these people, all these sort of cowboys, they think they're like these rugged individuals,

are enormously dependent on the supply chain and the government that oversees it. So it's a fantasy, right? It's a kind of immature fantasy. And what's fascinating to me is that hyper individualism, which I like aspects of, if I'm honest, you know, I do enjoy the freedom to do what I think is the right thing, you know, within limits, of course, seems to

to be paired with a hyper-tribalism increasingly when it comes to things like politics. Is there a connection between those two or are the separate issues? I mean, you know, I'm not a political expert, but just as a citizen of this country, one of the things that is odd in both the left and the right, I vote mostly Democratic, okay, but I'm enormously frustrated, even outraged by the left, occasionally terrified by the right and very disappointed in them as well. So I'm sort of nicely in the middle, and I have friends on both.

Perfect guest for our show, because that's how we feel too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I have good friends on both sides, right? But one of the things that's quite odd is the, particularly on the right wing, the sort of insistence on individuality, but as you say, also on an insistence that conservatives are the tribe that's right about things,

and the left are the sort of forces of, you know, evil, and dissolution that has to have to be fought against. And so they're both being hyper individualistic, but also acting collectively as a tribe in ways that I think are kind of frightening. Like January 6 was terrified, right? The left has their own bullshit, right? I mean, you know, they would never organize January 6th, right?

It would never happen. But some of the, I just some of the awful stuff on campus, right, of this hyper, hyper-liber liberal thought where you really, it's dictated to you how you must speak and how you must think about things that are very complicated and nuanced that really no one is in consensus about, but the dictating your thoughts that you only find on the left. And it's, and it's absolute to me. I mean, I grew up in the 60s and 70s where left-wing thought, those were the rebels. The conservatives were the like...

Can't say that. Can't say that. Can't think there's a session. Yeah, the conformists, right? The conservative, the left wing with the rebels, right? Oh, I think what you want, blah, blah, blah, is completely changed. Like, the left wing is now dictating your thoughts to you. And I think it's just absolutely horrific.

Does it worry when you look at this country through the lens of tribe, where you go, we simply can't hold this amount of people together in one coherent tribe? Well, I mean, there's always gonna be stresses in within a community, right? And there's stress, is within the community and then there's outward pressure to keep it together.

And when those stresses get to be too much, it can fracture, but there's huge downsides to fracture it. Right? Both sides are more vulnerable. So there's a lot of sort of pressure to keep it together, even as you're fighting like cats and dogs, right? Like, I mean, likewise, the marriage or any kind of, all kinds of groups are like this, right? Listen, yeah, this, this is, this is intense, but we'd both be worse off if we weren't

with each other. So let's try to keep this together. That's where America's at right now. But what I would say is that you can conceptually say my strongest identity is as a citizen of this country. I happen to be of Italian origin or I happen to be female or black or whatever you, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, right, or trans or anything. But first and foremost, I'm an American. And, you know, one of the great virtues of this country is that when people are come here, what's offered, what's on offer to them is that you actually don't have to bring with you your tribal identity from your other, from your homeland, your country of origin. You can really become American.

You know what? At our best, we're not going to care where you came from or what you are. Just work hard. Don't commit a crime. Be a good citizen, you know, and you're good. Whether you're an Irish immigrant or Somali or, you know, your family's been here since the Mayflower, it doesn't matter. It's how you act right now that matters.

And that's true in a platoon in combat, by the way. Oh, your dad's in prison, but you're a really good fighter. You're good with us. You're brave and courageous. You're like good looking and rich and you suck in a firefight. I don't have anything to do with you, right? So there is a little bit of that deal offered in this country, which I think is extraordinary.

My father was an immigrant. He came here during World War II, right? So, and I think one of the challenges is in this country now, and in our country and right the way through the Western civilization as a whole, is we talk about tribes, But we don't really acknowledge that there's now digital tribes. And that's the real danger, isn't it? I think, yeah.

I mean, I think the ability of social media and the algorithms that drive people's opinion towards greater and greater extremes is tremendously dangerous. And we were talking before, you saw my flip phone. And we just, I have a flip phone because, you know, frankly, I think smartphones are dangerous. They're dangerous like handguns are dangerous, right? Just like they're easy to misuse. They're miracles.

They're important in some moments like handguns. like handguns, but they're also very, very dangerous. And so I just want nothing to do with them. But I, so I think that's part of what's been happening in Western society and in the United States recently. But what I would say, I said, I never finished this thought, but you can conceive of a greater identity

than your natural political affiliation. You can say, I'm a Democrat, right? But after 9-11, we were attacked and we had to band together, and those differences stopped mattering for a while. And there is a way to do it. And I'll just, if I could, give you a quick anecdote about someone that did that in the moment he did this thing that was totally extraordinary as an example of that kind of intellectual courage of espousing a national identity. And it doesn't mean you're without criticism of your country at all.

But is, do you have a duty to it? What do you have a duty to? You have to articulate what your duty to your country is or you will die an unhappy person. right, in my opinion. So with this guy, I was outside of a hotel in Norfolk, Virginia, and this guy came out, he was in a wheelchair. He's in sort of very handsome 75-year-old guy, right? And his right leg ended at the knee,

and it was swaddled in bandages. Like he had just lost half of his right leg at age 75. And he came out on his own, and he tried to get into a car that happened to be in the passenger seat and was locked. So I went over to him, I was like, hey, can I help you? And I was like, all right, now I just have to wait until my wife gets here. And I said, it seems pretty complicated what you're dealing with.

He was like, well, takes him getting used to. He'll be all right. And so I tried again. He's like, you seem really brave about it. And he said, he said, there's people in this country missing both their, there's young people in this country missing both their legs. This was during the war on terror. He said, there's young people in this country missing both their legs.

Don't tell me I'm brave. right that's someone who's thinking not thinking about himself right and so there are there are small symbolic but powerful ways to act as part of this amazing country any amazing country right you have to vote right you live in a democracy you're one of the few and the privileged in history to live in a democracy where you have power over your rulers through rule of law right and elections. So don't stay home, right? Don't squander that.

Millions of people have died trying to achieve the rights that you have, right? So vote. You have to serve on jury duty. Jury duty is what separates us from authoritarianism. No one person with a jury system. No one person can decide the fate of another person. Only a jury of your peers. No sheriff, no president, no general, no nothing.

Only a jury of your peers. And if you're accused of a crime and you don't serve on jury duties, you'll still get a jury, right? But you won't deserve one, but you still get one. So serve on jury duty. And finally, give blood. We cannot manufacture blood. We all need it to live.

There are fathers, there were daughters, wives, grandparents, like, who are dying, who will die if there isn't blood to put into their veins at a crucial moment. I needed 10 units to stay alive, right? We cannot manufacture it, and it makes you part of this human race. Then wonderful thing about blood, one of the many wonderful things, First of all, when you donate blood, your body replaces it within a week or two. So it's a total free lunch, right? And it doesn't care who you are or what you are.

Rich, poor, white, black, gay, straight, does not matter. We all need blood. And when we get wounded, blood comes out of us. We're all the same in that way. And it's really quite a profound thing to do, and I do it regularly. And we're talking about the rights. And I think a lot of what we're talking about as well is being grounded in a reality, accepting that you, there are things that are greater than you.

And one of the ways that we can do that in society is through sport. Yeah. And that's where the tribe thing gets, the tribe phenomenon gets activated again. And it's fascinating to see. Yeah. And how much overlap is there between sports and the military and so on? I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing that a lot of the, I mean, I was in a unit that was all male,

so I'm going to say the boys, the guy. because that's what I would that was my reality but you know I think probably most of them were either involved in sports in a lot of bar fights or both bar fights are kind of a sport right so you know they were those guys right I mean we all know those guys right we avoided them in the playground because they were tough looking guys that's the military right they're amazing kids right and but you know sports is a reenactment a practice for combat it's all I mean, you know, this isn't my idea. This is well established, right?

It's all trains people for combat. And a lot of child's play trains them hunting, right? I mean, you know, hide and seek and all that stuff. Like, it's all, you know, very, very clearly we're sports are a way of grooming children to step into adult roles of hunting and warfare. And playing house, you know, and kids play house too. You know, they're all in training, right, for the things that they'll be doing as adults. And, but sports, I know I read that with young women who are part of a team, soccer team,

lacrosse team, longitudinal studies have shown that they do better in their lives, more stable marriages, professionally they do better. Emotionally, psychologically, they do better is a, it somehow, that experience somehow changes young women in ways that are very, very positive. And I think young men as well. And it's also the element of ritual within sport. Yeah. That is super important, and that you also see within the military as well.

And I think one of the problems of our society is now that a lot of us are atheists and we have a secular society, we've forgotten the importance of ritual. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm an atheist and I'm not in the military and I don't play a team sport and I'm aching for ritual, right? I mean, I would love a ritual. I mean, I go to, you know, I don't believe in God, but the experience of church for me is quite pleasant. And sometimes I'll go to church just because it feels good, right? And you don't need to believe in God to enjoy church, particularly if there's music, they were in a really good speaker, a really good minister, right?

And you can be a total stone-cold atheist and really enjoy that hour quite a lot because it's about community. It's about connecting laterally, not to God, right, for some it is, I suppose. But you don't even need that. It connects, it makes everyone the same, you know, in a church, everyone's the same. They're all the same before God or before each other. And that's like a super moving thing to experience.

I mean, one of my favorite quotes is there are no solutions only trade-offs. Do you think that the fact that we've been able to solve so many of our basic need, material problems, is one of the reasons that we're actually struggling for the spiritual side of things, meaning and purpose and so on? Yeah, I mean, the word spiritual is sort of a tricky one, but I... You know what I mean. Yeah, I take your point, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the, the, it's adaptive. For humans, it's been adapt for hundreds of thousands of years. It's been, it's been adaptive to contribute to the common good, because if the group is good, you're good.

And so it's adaptive to have that sort of affiliation, that desire to have a duty, to be of service, right? And all evolution is sort of selfish, right? And so those behaviors are self-serving, even though they look altruistic, but they're altruistic in a self-serving way or they wouldn't exist, right? And so I think that's just I think, yes, I think the trade-off of modern society is that all of a sudden, we are not individually

needed by our group. And in fact, we can't even identify our group. What's your survival group? Like, what is it? Right? Like, it's your neighborhood? Probably not. Right?

You're what, like the PTA, the parents organization at the kids' school? No? Like, I don't know. Who would you die for? Like, your family, maybe, right? And so there's an enormous loss of connection there. And, you know, they've done studies where they've shown that the more affluent a society, the higher the levels generally of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, right?

So affluent Western society has incredibly high levels of all those things. And really poor societies, I think the comparison was rural Nigeria to North America, I think was the study that I read, now 20 years old. But I think it was rural Nigeria, the poorer the community in rural, Nigeria, the more collectively people had to act, right? There was, as it were, one well and one, you know, they everyone got, or literally one well, and everyone had to get their water out of, the poor of the community, the, the, the, the, the, um, better off psychologically people were, even though there are great, great stresses to poverty, despite that. But those afflictions of

depression, suicide, anxiety, like just, you know, when people are banding together to survive, You know, suicide in some ways is a selfish act, right? Depression is isolating. You know, you're not functional. Anxiety likewise. And when you're needed, those things sort of go away. And so in so always the trick is to be in a community that is struggling enough that you are needed on a daily basis.

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I taught in a very exclusive all-girls grammar school where every kid came in, wanted to learn, every lesson was easy. And the moment you walked into the staff from, the teachers were at each other's throats. But when you taught in a terrible school where every day was, it felt like war, except the kids had the upper hand because they could throw chairs at you and you couldn't do anything. The camaraderie was never better amongst the staff.

That's how, I mean, listen, that's adaptive, right? I mean, you think about humans, like, that we have behaviors that allow us to survive. Of course, as things get better, we act. As things get worse, we act better. If that weren't true, we wouldn't be here. Yeah. Right?

I talked to a woman who had survived cancer, like bad cancer, right? And she barely survived. And thank God, you know, and she said, but, you know, the one thing, she said, the one thing about it is that I miss the cancer ward. She missed being in the cancer ward with her fellow sufferers because she had never felt closer to anybody. Right. So if you have a young woman who misses being, having cancer, because it connects her to other people who have cancer, it's clear that our society, for all of its wonderful benefits,

and I'm happy to run through the list with you guys if you want, but it's clear that our society is not providing enough human connection to keep people happy. And one of the things you talk a lot about in tribe is, and you've addressed already a little bit, is the importance of being necessary to other people. I'm curious if you've thought about the impact of AI and other things that are coming down the pipe, the new technology, that is increasingly going to make human beings less necessary and how that's likely to impact our society. I mean, I'm not a tech expert, but just as a human being, it sounds horrible. It sounds terrifying. It sounds dismal. It sounds depressing. It sounds bewildering. I mean, I just, like, a friend of my house, like, oh, it's okay, because then AI will make all the money

and then, you know, everyone, no one will need to work and we can just sit around. I'm like, oh, that worked great with welfare, didn't it? I mean, you know, the psychological consequences of uselessness, of not participating are devastating. I mean, the suicide rate goes up when people retire. Right? When men retire.

When men retire, particularly, yeah. Yeah, I think it's much more likely for men than for women. Women, I think, are fine with retirement. I think they're not okay when their husband retires. Right. Yeah. He's at home a lot more. Yeah, right.

That's really annoying. Right. No, but it's, no, it's a danger point, right? And so I was in Sarajevo in 93, 94, during the siege, right? And Sarajevo. Sarajevo, yeah, Bosnia, right? So during those terrible years, the older people stayed in the apartments, which were unheeded and there wasn't enough food, but there were big.

There were things that needed to be done at home. And in that society, grandparents are crucial for helping run the household, right? And they have been for hundreds of thousands of years until Western society invented the nanny, you know, or whatever. But so it started with the role of the grandparents was crucial. And during those terrible years of the war, you know, in the cemetery, as you see the gravestones,

they're all young people. Because they were out. They were getting water, they were in food, they were working, socializing, a mortar would come in and was more likely to kill young people. likely to kill young people than old people who stayed home, right? And the people, the old people were needed at home. As soon as the war ended, you started seeing gravestones for older people, people in their 60s, 70s, 80s. Basically, the war ended, they weren't needed anymore, and they didn't need to stay alive any long, and they died. They were not needed. And very different from suicide,

right? This is just they hung on long enough to be of service. And then when they weren't of service anymore, the war ended and conditions improved, what it seemed to me from the gravestones was that they checked out. They're like, okay, I got my family across the finish line. I'm good, right? And the danger, but the danger of having an entire generation, an entire community, entire nation, not be needed is, that's new territory for the human race.

Like, no one knows how that will go, but I have my doubts, they'll go. And all the people go, oh, you know, you'll be able to be so creative and you can finally, I think there's a big difference between doing something because you enjoy doing it and be able to be. being absolutely necessary, if you're a man, providing for your family. Yeah. Like that, you know, you take that away from a lot of guys.

I don't think it goes well. I really don't. No, I mean, listen, our wiring, our neurological wiring, our emotional, psychological wiring, is, you know, from the Stone Age. I mean, we have not changed at all in 20,000 years, right? I mean, we are adapted to living in groups of 50, 100, 150 people, maximum. fighting and hunting, fighting for our survival and hunting and being totally interdependent in a group and getting our meaning from that.

That's it. That's what we are, right? And modern society hasn't changed that at all. You know, clearly the amount of disaffiliation from the group that we've already experienced is taking is hard on our mental health when we're just not needed at all. I mean, I think that's when despair will will, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, will come in. I mean, that's when the sort of big questions of what is life for?

I mean, when you start, if you're depressed and you start asking, what is life for anyway, like you're at risk of suicide. Well, that's how you get Russian literature. Yes. I'm from Russia, hence the joke. And do you think that there's anything that we can do to mitigate some of the effects of modern society

on us and on our community? So this is apart from AI, just like right now? Well, I think AI, but also where we've already got to. Because I would argue, I don't know if you'd agree with this, Sebastian, that, I mean, in some ways, we already have AI. I mean, algorithms that drive our content consumption patterns are kind of AI. And I would argue a lot of where we are societally and politically is a product of those technologies that are now driving, you know, political polarization, anxiety, all of this other stuff. Yeah, they're all stressed. Those are all stressors on our society and our connectedness.

Yeah. But being rendered obsolete. Next level. That's still next level. That's still in the future. And we'll see if it happens, right? I mean, I hope it doesn't in some ways. But what can we do?

Well, I would say, first of all, the smartphone is a dangerous object, right? Psychologically dangerous, particularly for young people. I mean, the statistic, Jonathan Haidt, I'm sure you... Who was sitting at this very table last time we were here. Okay, yeah. So I don't need to run through his brilliant. arguments, but I think it's pretty much accepted. And people talk about social media in terms of addiction.

They say, oh, I went cold turkey. I didn't look at my phone away. I mean, they talk about it like addiction. So it's an addiction. So I think the first thing we need to do is protect the children and the young people from the effects of this. And I think we need to really reorient society so that the phones and that way of thinking is not the focal point of every single person for almost all of their waking hours.

I mean, it's a moonshot, right? We can do it, but we have to think about, I think there should be courses in grade school, middle school, high school, college, about how to use social media and technology safely and how to protect yourself from it. I mean, you need to take classes to drive a car. You really should have, as a young person,

take classes in order to have a smartphone, just for your, to protect you and your generation. I think there probably are ways to design buildings and communities, and communities that are more inward-facing and encourage group connection. I think there should be a sort of public awareness campaign of this, as there was with smoking

and all drunk driving and all these other ills, of the damaging effects of alienation. Like, I mean, I think you can really raise the public consciousness. And when you do, people will act in more affiliated ways. Like, they're capable of it, and they're all dying to. That's the tragic thing, is there everyone's ways. to be like called, to be needed to serve, right? And I think national service in this country,

like mandatory national service, not the draft, not a, you know, I mean, national service with a military option, if that's your scene, right? But national service for young people, I think would be incredibly good for them. And I'm glad we're talking about the issue of young people, because at the moment, we've got a population crisis happening in the states and right the way through the Western world.

Yeah. People are having fewer and fewer kids. What do you think about that if you look through the lens of tribe? What does it mean for a tribe? I mean, there's the obvious when we're not having enough kids. What does that show about, what does it display about the tribe? What's going to be simplistic and sort of vassal here, but I'm going to say, you know, having children is an act of belief in the future and that people have less children.

I think on some level, like future, is there really a future, right? I mean, you know, we're armed with the teeth with nukes. the climate is changing in terrifying ways. And whatever, there's five different scenarios that could bring all this to a halt. And I think it's unconscious thinking, right? And like, why would we do that? And also, I think that just the experience of community

brings out an ethos that values children, right? And the more and more fractured our communities, I think that ethos just never really has a chance to arise. And it makes me very sad. And, you know, having children, I didn't have children until I was in my 50s. And now I'm like, but whoa, and I'm finally alive. Like this is what life is, right?

And I had a great life till then, right? Oh, but this is the real thing. And I think when people experience community, the hurricane, the Blitz of London, the earthquake and Avizano, whatever, right? Like, oh, this is life. This is real life. This is what people are talking.

This is why we're alive to experience. experience this, right? And I think we have to figure out how to reintroduce people to that way, to that reality. And then we can do it, but we have to go out of our way to do it. Because I think a lot of the problems that we're seeing in society is that people don't have kids, they don't have families, and therefore they lack purpose. Why would you go to a job that you hate, so you can pay money to a landlord for your flat or whatever it may be? And after a while, after you've done the whole single thing and you've been dating, I mean, what's the point unless you're doing it for someone?

Right. I mean, what I would say is that there are people that didn't have kids that decided to devote their life to the poor in Tanzania or whatever. You know, it's like, God bless them, right? I mean, they found their duty to the human race, right? If you're not doing that, I think there are people that fall into despair because they don't know what their servant, right? And so, you know, I just wrote an article on my substack.

and it's about disconnection, right? I wrote a piece called Breathe With Me, and then I wrote a piece about its opposite, right? And what I found was that, and this has been in the papers and stuff, the size of the average American home has grown, it's doubled in my lifetime. And what they found was that the bigger the home, the more likely the people were that lived there to be depressed

and that great empty spaces in a house, which is all the trend right now. were correlated with depression. In 1900, 98% of homes had more than one occupant, right? Apartments, houses, whatever, more than one occupant. Sometimes strangers slept in the same bed, right? I mean, they're boarding houses and sort of rough places for working men where they sort of were crowded into camps and stuff.

It was a bed of time. Yeah, right. So people live collectively, right? And now one-third of American homes are occupied by a single person. and another third are occupied by a childless couple or a single parent. Right? That is a, the piece is called the Great Abandonment. And that is, that's the tragedy of, you know, in some ways the tragedy of affluence has allowed us to live far apart from each other.

And the consequences, particularly for children, are devastating. You know, it's such a good point because I remember reading an article about Kurt Cobain, the very famous rock star from the 1990s. And a lot of people said that when he became successful, he moved into this mansion, it's when he really started to fall apart. And he literally lived in one room of his mansion because he simply couldn't cope with the isolation. Yeah, I mean, he clearly had struggles as well. But that, I mean, that isolation can tip the balance on someone who's already struggling.

Then you take Kurt Cobain and you put him in the infantry and send him in Afghanistan, whatever the downsides of that are, and they're easy to list, right? The upside is that, you know, you don't have room to be lonely. You don't have room to be selfish. You don't have room to be depressed. Like, no one commits suicide in Afghanistan. Some do when they come back, right? But one of the theories is that they do that because they have lost the community, right?

It's not the result of trauma. It's the result of a loss of connection. But over there, it never happens because, you know, however much you're struggling, everyone needs you. It's like the grandparents in Sarajevo, I'm needed. I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, and that sense of purpose. I remember, I think it's Rambo when there's this scene,

and he says, you know, I used to operate million dollar equipment and stuff. I think purpose is a thing that's been so not appreciated in our society. And now, of course, you see, you know, people looking for purpose, and a lot of the time it's in all the right places, But sometimes it gets kind of misallocated to places where it's not adaptive, as you say. I'm curious, by the time this episode goes out, who knows what the hell will be happening with the war in Iran and all of that. But with your experience of covering different conflicts being there, I mean, one of the things

that a lot of people have argued is a lot of this meaningless has come since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The West had an enemy. There was a purpose collectively. there was something we were dealing with. And now, G, G, G, G, and now, it doesn't seem to be like that now. Now, when there is a war, even the war on terror, that communal effect didn't last very long, did it?

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that people back in this country like, oh my God, they're they're coming for us, right? In the days and weeks afterwards, we did feel that way. Oh, yeah, for sure. And there was a collective taking of responsibility in New York that was really quite amazing to see. I remember walking down the street. It was maybe a week later. I was overseas when 9-11 happened, and it took me a while to get back, maybe a couple of weeks. So I got back to New York,

and I'm walking down the street by Penn Station. It's a crazy midtown, you know, sold this kind of area, right? And you could still smell the, you know, the burnt smell in the air, and it was a wartime city still, right? And there was this guy, he was a suit, right? He was as, like, white guy in a nice suit with a briefcase, and he had frozen on the street corner.

And, you know, he worked down, I'm sure he worked downtown, right? and whatever it happened on 9-11, like he had frozen. He was just like frozen on the sidewalk, thinking. I mean, he clearly was having a moment, right? And this young black guy who was a bike messenger, back when there were bike messengers and fax machines and stuff, he was a bike messenger, right? And he was like on his bike and he saw this guy.

I mean, the two were completely from completely different communities in New York City, right? And he saw this guy. And he went up to him and he said, Hey, man, he grabbed his arm. He said, are you okay? You all right? That was New York for a while, right?

It ended when the threat felt like it ended. Right? And, you know, Hurricane Sandy brought some of it back. Half the city went dark, and downtown was pretty scary. And, you know, some of the poorer buildings organized sort of watch groups to watch the building from robbers. I mean, I live in the neighborhood like that. I mean, quite a poor neighborhood in the Lower East Side.

And, you know, the community, the community spirit, the community, action during Hurricane Sandy was quite extraordinary, right? And so it comes back in a heartbeat, right? But it doesn't last longer than it's needed because it's cost in evolutionary turns. It's costly, right? It costs you opportunity, it costs you energy, it costs you, you know, so you don't want to do it longer than you need to. Like, in sort of evolutionary terms. Do you think, Sebastian, we just, every now and again, we just need to be reminded that we're human?

Every now and again, I think. I mean, you know, I think if we were reminded of that all day long, we'd be a lot better off, a lot happier, a lot more productive, a lot safer. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's just the acknowledgement that we are mortal? I genuinely think that's one of the issues, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that people treat the next day as if it's a given, when the reality is it simply isn't. Yeah, I mean, so as a species, we are social primates, and we owe our lives to the group, and we have to participate. we have a duty to the group in order to stay alive. That's what being human means, right, is to be part of a group.

We're the only species where an individual will die protecting a same-sex peer. Not their kids, not their mate, but a young man will die protecting another young man from harm, right? No other species does that. Even chimpanzees are closest relatives, right? Only humans. And so that is what we are. and if you participate in that reality, it takes the focus away from you, right?

It puts it on others, and there's a blessed relief in that. I mean, the problem with our society is that there's enough safety and leisure and convenience that we can indulge in thoughts of our excessive thoughts of ourselves. It's called rumination, right, obsessive rumination, and it leads to depression and anxiety. It's known to, right? and PTSD. And the other part of being human is that, yes, we are biological beings and we will die. And not only that, we could die, we could be dead by dinner from natural causes.

And I know this from personal experience, right? I was in mid-sentence with my wife. I'm not a walking heart attack, right? I'm a really healthy guy. I had something going on in my abdomen I didn't know about. It shows mid-sentence to rupture. I was losing a pint of blood into my abdomen every 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and I barely, barely survived. And it was an utterly ordinary day. So if you can, if you can simultaneously understand that you are part of a community of humans, you're lucky to be so. What do you owe them? Because the more you give them, the happy you will be, the more meaning you will get out of life. And also, all you get is right now. Like really right now, Right? The past is gone. It's irrecoverable. You have no idea if you're going to have any sort of future whatsoever, even 10 minutes from now.

So what is it like to be alive now and now and now? That's all you ever get. And for me, the point, how I answered that question was like to be alive now is I need to be with people I love. I need to be with my family. That's the point of the whole damn thing. Right. And if you can, when you get distracted from, you know, that truth is when, in my opinion, at least for me, life starts to seem tedious and puzzling and maybe not quite worth the effort. This episode is brought to you by Activia. You might already be eating yogurt, but not all yogurts are created equal. Activia contains over one billion probiotics per serving to survive and reach the gut alive. When it comes to gut health, Activia is the number one family doctor-recommended probiotic yogurt brand.

Choose Activia, feel good from the inside out. Visitactivia.ca for more details. It's such a profound moment to end the show, Sebastian. It's been a pleasure having you on. Before we go over to our substack, the final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Before Sebastian answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure you head to Trigopod.com.uk,

where you'll be able to see this. What do you think about uncontacted tribes like the send? 190 Lees? Is there a moral duty to bring them into the international community? Can humans survive about all the modern technological clutter? What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? We survive as nations, modern society survives as nations, and nations come with laws that protect everybody, and they insist on decency by their leaders. we have forgotten, I think that Western society has a little bit forgotten those truths.

And I think what we're not talking about is how we can function in a healthy way as a nation. America is not doing so right now. And that is not a political conversation, right? That's not a left versus right. That's a conversation about human dignity and democracy. And we need to go back to that conversation in ways that are nonpartisan because literally our survival depends on it. It's such a profound point because I saw a clip that the White House released, which was like a cartoon almost about the bombing in Iran. And whether you were pro or anti-Republican or Democrat, you think to yourself, people are losing their lives over this.

Is this really the moment to release a cartoon of a kid sending a bowling ball down an alley and getting a strike? Is this appropriate? I mean, the immaturity that this administration is capable of, is pretty stunning. And I think everyone knows it, even people that voted for Trump, I think they kind of, I'm guessing, they don't, very few people are really thrilled with that move.

Well, right, for them, it will be part of the package and the other package was worse for other reasons. But I take your point, I won't speak for the US, but in the UK, that sense that the caliber of person, forget about their politics, just the caliber of human being, who now leads our countries has plummeted so sharply. It's terrifying, actually. The piece that I wrote, Breathe With Me, on Substack,

I talk about this extraordinary photo of Bobby Kennedy when he was shot. I was shot in 1968 during the presidential campaign, and it's a black and white photograph. I can't remember the photographer's name. It's a famous photograph. Bobby Kennedy is on the ground, And a young Cuban emigray named Juan Romero. He's 17 years old.

He's kneeling by Bobby Kennedy. You know, Bobby Kennedy is this beautiful, you know, he's handsome, amazing, amazing leader dying on the floor, right? Bleeding out like I was. And Juan Romero, 17-year-old from Cuba, is cradling his head. And the last thing Bobby, so leaders must put themselves last. they must put everyone else's concerns first, or they, or they're not leaders, they're just managers, but our leader puts everyone puts themselves, their own interests last, right? So think about

that in this context, the last thing Bobby Kennedy said. He looked at everyone standing around him, paralyzed. And he said, don't worry, it's going to be okay. He made his best case for the presidency in the last thing he ever said. He was not thinking about himself. Those people are out there. The guy with the amputated leg who said, I'm not brave. There's people missed. Those people are out there. Right. And the question is, how do you convince them to serve the public good because it's such a nasty environment?

You know, there's such good people. You almost don't want to do that to them. Well, that's what I was going to say. Maybe you stop throwing shit at them all the time because I hold us responsible. I hold the electorate responsible. I hold the media responsible for that. Because if you create an environment where only ego-driven narcissists will tolerate that horrific amount, tolerant of shit you have to put up with to be in politics, then that's who you're going to get. Yeah.

You know, I agree. And there's a process here, and it's being accelerated by, you know, algorithms and AI and all this other stuff. You can't even believe videos you see anymore, right? But I think humans veer between disgust and inspiration, right, and courage. And, you know, I think we're heading, I think we're heading towards a moment of collective disgust that I think might bring people back. I'm going to get his name wrong. Teller Rico, I think his name is in Texas.

You know, he's sort of espousing a politics of love, which sounds kind of corny. But in his words, it's a pretty powerful message, right? And he said, you have to understand that everyone is human. And, you know, is addressing Democrats, liberals. He's like, including Donald Trump, everybody. Right? I know you don't like this. But, you know, we have to engage people with love, even people we hate.

Right. And, you know, I think he is maybe the beginning of a change of a change of mentality in the public where we're just disgusted where this is gone. And it might swing back in kind of quite profound ways, I think. Well, that's a really hopeful message. And because it's amazing how quickly this has happened. Because whether you agree with his politics or not, you can't deny that Barack Obama had that approach. That was his approach to politics.

Now, you might say he had terrible policies, and some people will think that. But in terms of his posture towards the world, it was not about demonizing other people. It was about appealing to people's sense of what. America could be. And Obama is not really that long ago at all. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I've got some problems with his policies, but I met him, met him. I was in the same room with him once, and it was at a Medal of Honor ceremony, or a guy from the unit I was with, he was the first living Medal of Honor recipients since Vietnam. While there was a woman in the audience who was the mother of a young man who was killed in the same

firefight, right? She lost her son in the same action that produced this Medal of Honor. So during this ceremony, this woman was brought forward and was Hugo Mendoza was the young man's name who lost his life. And his mom, I don't know, I can't remember her first name. Mrs. Mendoza was brought forward to meet the president. And she was right in front of me. And I saw her shoulders start to shake. She was starting to cry. And the president just put his arms around her only in a democracy, like fascist countries don't produce touching between the leader and a commoner, right?

Right, the kings and queens of Europe would never have done such a thing, right? The totalitarian regimes, Genghis Khan, the works, right? This is a democracy in action, right? A beautiful democracy in action. He just wrapped his arms around her. And she, he held her for five or ten minutes. everything stopped. He just held her until she stopped crying

as long as she needed. And eventually she got herself together and then she hugged Michelle Obama and then stepped back in the line. Now that's a leader. That's a democracy. That's a beautiful thing. And we have to get back to that. I can't imagine Hillary doing that.

I can't imagine Kamala doing it. I certainly can't imagine Trump doing it, right? You know, whatever. The whole cast of characters, no. That is the minimum. the minimum requirement for leadership is that your heart be capable of that. You want to do that for someone who's suffering and who incurred a grave loss for your country, the country you run.

Like, come on. And that's what we need. We need someone like the guy in the wheelchair who lost his leg. We need someone like Bobby Kennedy. You know, I'd be fine with a Republican Bobby Kennedy. I don't. I really don't. As long as it's that caliber of person.

Sebastian, thank you for coming on the show. Head on over to Triggerpod.com.uk. Where we're going to ask, Sebastian, your questions. Why are the UK, EU, and to some extent, the US, suppressing our own tribalism, stroke nationalism, and promoting nationalism in the third world? Is there a historical precedent for such bizarre behavior? Guys, let us take a minute to recommend another podcast.

Did you know the average podcast listener has six shows in rotation? So, you're most likely, Not just listening to trigonomy. Wait, so we know you're cheating on us. This is a disgrace. Francis, it's okay. The Jordan Harbinger show is a perfect complemented trigonometry. Really?

Absolutely. Just like trigonometry, Jordan hosts weekly mind-broadening conversations with some of the most fascinating people in the world. But a key difference that I'm a big fan of is that Jordan is focused on pulling actionable growth-orientated advice from his guest. I'm looking at his episode list now. There's an episode here where Jordan talks to a hostess. negotiator from the FBI who lays out his techniques on how to get people to do what you want

them to do by making them like and trust you. Sounds just like me. Except, you know, I'm more S-A-S-S. You can't go wrong with adding the Jordan Harbinger show to your podcast rotation. Search for the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's H-A-R-B-I-N-G-E-R on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.