Small books by Sebastian Junger

I just finished two short books by Sebastian Junger - Tribes: On Homecoming and Belonging and the just published Freedom. Both address similar themes - our modern life is awash with material wealth and technology that pervious epochs would consider us gods. Yet something essential is missing. Junger claims that our rampant pursuit of individuality has left us with without community. This state of being rich and alone is the source of our existential dread.

Junger taps into deep research and personal experience of living with native Americans and as an embedded journalist in the war in Afghanistan. In doing so Junger brings heft to his thesis that would otherwise have a neo-militaristic and masculinist tinge. This leads him to some deeply unfashionable conclusions - war for all it dehumanising hellishness has the redeeming quality that it provides connectedness for the soldiers that they deeply miss when returning home. Another is that the surge in mental illness particularly pronounced in men through the lack of conflict in modern society. Mental illness actually goes down when a country is at war, natural disasters or during economic depressions. These moment of hardship are a great equaliser (the rich and poor are as vulnerable as one another) plus they are a force for cohesion - people feel less alone.

It is the questions that Junger asks rather than the answers that sets him apart. Other writers of this moment see our society decline as the result of income inequality, democracy less that truly realised or systemic corruption. Junger discards these as symptoms - instead it is the essential characteristics of modern Western society that has caused this unsatisfied yearning.