Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
Recommended by: Bill Roos
Posted in: Bridging Divides Social Psychology
Purchase →We are hardwired to desire belonging to small groups defined by clear purpose, a tribal connection that has been largely lost in modern society, leading to increases in depression, suicides, and rampage killings. Regaining this connection may be the key to our psychological survival, according to the author of Tribe, Sebastian Junger.
This packs a lot of punch for a short book. Junger begins by discussing Benjamin Franklin’s observation that white settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians, but Indians almost never fled to white settlements. That native American tribalism, the satisfaction found when pulling together under tough circumstances, Junger finds, repeats time and again in air raid shelters during the bombing of London during World War II, after a devastating earthquake in Yungay, Peru, and in platoons of U.S. military in Iraq.
This book makes you wonder who is rich and who is poor. Humans don’t mind hardship; they mind not feeling necessary, and the America of today doesn’t ask for sacrifice or courage, Junger maintains. According to the World Health Organization, people in wealthy countries suffer depression at up to eight times the rate of poor countries. Must we experience hardship in order to experience group solidarity, or can we band together to do good things for the sake of our community or country, and thereby feel good about ourselves?
To add a few points to Donna Murphy’s excellent review, and to emphasize some very important lessons for Braver Angels that can be found in this book:
Sebastian Junger has spent a lot of time in war zones and with American Indians, so when he writes about tribes and about polarization he is sharing lessons that flow from basic human nature and human experience – particularly human experience under duress – throughout the ages.
Junger examines the loss of a sense of belonging in modern American culture:
“This book is about why that sentiment is such a rare and precious thing in modern society, and how the lack of it has affected us all. It’s about what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty and belonging and the eternal human quest for meaning. It’s about why—for many people—war feels better than peace and hardship can turn out to be a great blessing and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end.”
As society modernizes, people are able, for the first time in history, to live without belonging to any group. Junger points to evidence that this is very hard on human beings:
“Numerous cross-cultural studies have shown that modern society—despite its nearly miraculous advances in medicine, science, and technology—is afflicted with some of the highest rates of depression, schizophrenia, poor health, anxiety, and chronic loneliness in human history. As affluence and urbanization rise in a society, rates of depression and suicide tend to go up rather than down.”
Junger recounts one situation after the other in which people achieve economic success but end up unhealthy, unfit, and unhappy. One example:
“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. Mexicans born in the United States are wealthier than Mexicans born in Mexico but far more likely to suffer from depression.”
A major reason for this is that modern society does not require people to demonstrate a commitment to the collective good. Relieved of most of the challenges of survival, modern people rarely have the opportunity to help someone in danger. Having a purpose to one’s life is critical to mental health.
Writing of rampage shootings, Junger says:
“It may be worth considering whether middle-class American life—for all its material good fortune—has lost some essential sense of unity that might otherwise discourage alienated men from turning apocalyptically violent. The last time the United States experienced that kind of unity was—briefly—after the terrorist attacks of September 11. There were no rampage shootings for the next two years. The effect was particularly pronounced in New York City, where rates of violent crime, suicide, and psychiatric disturbances dropped immediately.”
He is particularly critical of the political polarization which, he says, misses the point:
“The most alarming rhetoric comes out of the dispute between liberals and conservatives, and it’s a dangerous waste of time because they’re both right. The perennial conservative concern about high taxes supporting a nonworking “underclass” has entirely legitimate roots in our evolutionary past and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Early hominids lived a precarious existence where freeloaders were a direct threat to survival, and so they developed an exceedingly acute sense of whether they were being taken advantage of by members of their own group. But by the same token, one of the hallmarks of early human society was the emergence of a culture of compassion that cared for the ill, the elderly, the wounded, and the unlucky. . . . The eternal argument over so-called entitlement programs—and, more broadly, over liberal and conservative thought—will never be resolved because each side represents an ancient and absolutely essential component of our evolutionary past.”
At the same time, a society needs to hold accountable people who damage the society. Junger cites the case of U.S Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who left his combat post in Afghanistan, to be captured by the Taliban, and put many of his fellow soldiers at risk:
“The collective outrage at Sergeant Bergdahl . . . provides a perfect example of the kind of tribal ethos that every group—or country—deploys in order to remain unified and committed to itself. If anything, though, the outrage in the United States may not be broad enough. Bergdahl put a huge number of people at risk and may have caused the deaths of up to six soldiers. But in purely objective terms, he caused his country far less harm than the financial collapse of 2008, when bankers gambled trillions of dollars of taxpayer money on blatantly fraudulent mortgages. These crimes were committed while hundreds of thousands of Americans were fighting and dying in wars overseas. Almost 9 million people lost their jobs during the financial crisis, 5 million families lost their homes, and the unemployment rate doubled to around 10 percent.
“For nearly a century, the national suicide rate has almost exactly mirrored the unemployment rate, and after the financial collapse, America’s suicide rate increased by nearly 5 percent. In an article published in 2012 in The Lancet, epidemiologists who study suicide estimated that the recession cost almost 5,000 additional American lives during the first two years—disproportionately among middle-aged white men. That is close to the nation’s losses in the Iraq and Afghan wars combined.”
But the bankers did not provoke the same kind of outcry as Bergdahl did:
“Not a single high-level CEO has even been charged in connection with the financial collapse, much less been convicted and sent to prison, and most of them went on to receive huge year-end bonuses.”
Further, the two major political parties have not broadly and clearly denounced these men for their betrayal of the American people, even though they were quick to criticize Bergdahl. This failure to apply a consistent standard of loyalty undermines our national unity.
Part of the solution, according to Junger, is in learning the lessons of our tribal past:
Make sure as many people as possible have the opportunity to – and are encouraged to – work, sacrifice for and contribute to society – “a highly therapeutic thing to do.”
Second, ensure those who are truly “the unlucky” are cared for, while those who harm the society are held to account – whether they are traitorous soldiers or fraudulent bankers.
Finally, change how we talk about our differences and similarities. Quoting Rachel Yehuda of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, who has seen the effects of antisocial divisions on returning war veterans:
“’If you want to make a society work, then you don’t keep underscoring the places where you’re different—you underscore your shared humanity,’ she told me. ‘I’m appalled by how much people focus on differences. Why are you focusing on how different you are from one another, and not on the things that unite us?’”