Joe Rogan Experience #1034 — Sebastian Junger Transcript

Transcript

0:00 four three two welcome back man hey thank you good to be here great to see you again yeah I But when you're out, you don't want to mess with it. You'd get along very well with my friend Ari. and I don't want to feel like I think those people feel. What if there was a drug that didn't kill you, but it just sucked up all your time and It's that. Like something's going on.

2:59 Perhaps maybe with some discipline they can be used in some sort of a way But I do like the fact that I can ask my phone questions. of human knowledge in your front pocket. Yeah. Accessible at every moment. Like, I do understand I mean, we were talking the other day about we were at the airport. I mean, it allows, it gives people a platform for the most mundane, uninteresting aspects

5:32 Oh, murder. Do you think that that's correlation equals causation though? You know what I mean? Like, Those issues were on hold until 8 a.m. the next morning, right? what online was back then. You weren't leaving any traces you were just going out looking at stuff. I think that's the reaction to the first of everything. invent this stuff. And it doesn't mean that it's good. I mean, we evolved over hundreds of thousands

8:28 connection between us and electronics. Like we're going to have it installed in our bodies. doing is just being caught up in the momentum of all this innovation and instead of like using discipline or using some sort of a rational objective analysis of like what it takes to be happy and then maybe pushing some of that stuff aside and engaging in actual physical activities, going out and doing things and making that almost like a prescription.

9:58 Right? we would have been if we hadn't evolved. and when your health is going to fail and then you're going to die, Does that exist still? is it buffers us from real consequences in the physical world, which is what's great about it, That's what makes people feel good and safe and like they're leading meaningful lives. this. He lived, Jim Norton lives in this enormous apartment building. He goes, I don't know anybody

14:14 You can be totally isolated. And I grew up in that environment. It was crushing. And, you know, I mean the metrics by which we measure human fulfillment, human happiness, mental health, they suck in the suburbs. A lot of them. And there's literally no physical fear for anything. If you introduce a disaster into that environment, if you introduce the Blitz in London or an earthquake or what have you, a flood, a tidal wave, a war, people wake up out of their dream.

16:50 days after the earthquake, during the blitz. I mean, from generation after generation that goes We're the descendants of those people, inevitably. that makes us feel meaningful and fulfilled, how can we have that and have the benefits of modern society? I mean, to me, it's a country in kind of – I mean, those things are all a symptom of a country that's in the kind of psychic pain.

18:45 I mean you're literally getting dopamine shots every time you check your feed. Afterwards, you're full, but you didn't get any nutrients. climbers and runners get it uh jujitsu it's huge jiu-jitsu community of course you know um and uh i experienced it I started late in life. Right? But in the boxing ring, out hunting, you know, whatever, there's a million things like this.

21:17 and would you put the group, the welfare of the group, ahead of your own welfare? jujitsu, right? As long as you have that basic respect and hard work ethic and being freed from You are almost never out of contact with, I mean, out of physical proximity with other people that you know I mean, the diet, obviously, it's a very pure diet. I mean, I saw an article, and I didn't read the article,

24:33 It was artificial intelligence they were talking about. And that the electronic thing is going to go, thanks, we got it now. unlikely. That even the universe would exist. You would barely notice anything happened. So keep in mind that all those emotions, everything we are had survival value in our past or we wouldn't have those things, right? war and they're getting rewarded with dopamine, which is exactly what should have been happening

28:06 a video game by yourself you're really not by yourself but a lot of kids what they're doing He'd just kill everybody. Right. or that activity makes people withdrawn and depressed. It will illuminate life, illuminate America, illuminate the world in some way that's important. a sort of surrogate uncle named Ellis, Ellis Settle. He was Lakota Sioux and Apache. He was

31:32 And this wasn't even the modern world. although that certainly has its charms for some people, but it's community. It's that And even when people were kidnapped on raids by the Indians, kidnapped from their log homes along the frontier and abducted and forcibly adopted into these tribal societies, And how many people had done that, where they were kidnapped, and then they said, we like

34:11 And one of the things about tribes is that they're sort of inherently egalitarian. So it's very egalitarian. There's no advantage to being wealthy or powerful when it comes to those basic human qualities. So what happened in New York? these veterans hospitals would be absolutely furious if they thought someone was faking gets scammed and PTSD benefits are no different. But it really is traumatizing. I mean, seriously

38:19 suffering seeing someone who's scamming the system and angry whereas like say if you had a hurt knee I mean, if you're in combat and you lost your best buddy And there's, you know, in some ways incentivized not to find out. But I can tell you from like the real deal combat vets, that happens. You know, I was a mile away and you're traumatized? other, we're extremely good at smelling out misrepresentation and fraud. We're really,

40:37 Like, we all have basically the same rights in the group. You're looked at as someone who just can't be trusted. And if everyone does that, everyone's safer. And I'm a Democrat, so I sort of know those people pretty well, right? all sociopaths. You're going to the movies to see these very ancient human concerns of who's loyal In war, that happens every day, right?

43:54 that I did that didn't actually make it into the book. I couldn't quite fit it in, but I, figure that's connected to him that sort of takes place of the community that's being defended, Always dies. This isn't the studios trying to make the public force feed the public like gender roles and whatever. and the woman with the bandage, But the other character

47:16 It's really just playing out these ancient archetypes. I mean, two miles down an angled shaft. Pretty soon they're just sitting There was too much rubble to dig through. They were two miles down. So they dug and dug and dug. We got to solve this problem. The female role would be the person sort of like trying to keep the group emotionally together and functioning.

50:10 So the gender roles that society needs to survive in adversity, in war, in nature, in a collapsed coal mine, it needs both gender roles, but either sex can fill those roles. How did they survive? I mean, barely. I mean, not everyone survived. Right. It's intense. the only way for any group of people to survive is to act collectively, right? Humans don't survive

52:51 So when you look at the politics in this country, you need both conservatism and liberalism, But what liberals do quite well is to try to figure out a sort of system of fairness within the group that gets – you know, just tries to equalize things and get everyone to sort of participate and to be valued and taken care of. figures out how to do that, we're going to be in this sort of awful partisan strife that eventually will destroy us. Like bullets are not going to take down this country, words will. And

55:27 So, you know, I love evaluating my own side's problems because they drive me. in a country that didn't have conservatives in it right even though i disagree i mean because i But one thing I wanted to bring up because I actually made a mistake. a liberal because you absorb that way of seeing the world. And I'm a Democrat. Had I grown up in a conservative family, I think I'd be a conservative. And I actually think,

57:52 You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. So that's how they know this. When they look at Those are all encoded in our DNA because they had survival value. That assertion is completely contradictory to evolution. How much have you examined these ideas? I mean, you would never stay in a marriage where your spouse treated you the way the political parties treat each other right now.

1:00:30 Like this is a new thing where the political parties talk to each other. And I think if you really take in the reality, this truth, And Congress plays on this, right? And when there's no enemy, groups naturally disperse War quite a lot. The democratic reforms that were coming in the 30s, you know, just land when, uh, Trump was running, that was the big thing, right? The enemy that she,

1:03:16 There's not, right? Right. And so, I mean, it is sort of a binary. I mean, our brains are sort of binary in that way. to act so abysmally with each other. And I really think that if you want to save the, if you want to people say that. And likewise, when Donald Trump, when Citizen Trump was accusing They let people say it. spoken out. And I think some kind of bipartisan commission in Congress that would call out

1:06:43 But it seems to me like this is like the perfect time, And then all of a sudden he's a Republican and hundreds of thousands of dollars for bullshit speeches that they would give to banks. And, you know, Hillary was absolutely part of that on the rhetoric as well. I mean, but I feel like there should be norms where freedom of speech is an absolute. You don't think he thought it was true that Obama was actually born in Kenya?

1:09:49 He's like, enough people believe in this, that this is working for me. Maybe he doesn't. And he figured that out. Don't do it. No one says this is fucking outrageous. you know, I mean, those were at least the highest ideals, right? In my lifetime, they went to, And the thing about Donald Trump, he's speaking his mind. He doesn't have these awful poll-tested opinions like Hillary did and Jeb did and all those guys.

1:12:27 Well, it is definitely a first. got to say, like, it worked. And I wrote an essay, and I was talking about different kinds of courage. the opinion is going to be. He has extreme confidence in who he is. Or he doesn't give But the thing I do kind of have to tip my hat to is that he's not a moral coward. and he has it. And I just, I wish he used it to unify the country, and he's still splitting the

1:15:08 lot that I don't agree with, particularly in the way he flip-flopped about whistleblowers That's right. That's right. No, I, no, I agree. And I, you know, there, there are things I didn't Someone who genuinely wants to help the country, not help their party, not help themselves, like, is Jesus coming back? Like, who's going to do this? Right. Who is going to do this?

1:17:50 But our own words can destroy our democracy. Now, when you write a book like Tribe, and you outline all these issues that people have, So it was foremost an analysis. at each other in the bedroom and saying unforgivable things to each other. And that's what this country potentially is. and then he could just brush that off as locker room talk. worst behavior and evaluate them on that basis. So if I look at the worst of his behavior,

1:21:47 Like that. If it was the only example, then I wouldn't be thinking about it. I'd walk around, I'd get up, I'd walk around the table. I didn't vote for George Bush, but I'd love to have that guy at my dinner table. He said literally he had to get up in the middle and go outside and smoke a joint just to just relax himself. Yeah. I was talking about it. I think

1:23:43 into place and it will see that very clearly in comparison. don't think it's moral to force someone to fight a war that they don't believe in. what I would say, there's a downside to national service, which is the government's telling people Wherever they fall on the political spectrum, they all have that shared experience, they could treat you the same way the IRS treats you if you don't pay your taxes. They just lock

1:26:55 That's the government telling people what to do, right? you have to do all these things, I mean, you can't, you're not going to get 60-year-olds in national service, right? The truth is, like, if we wanted to unify communities, you'd ban the car. It's a good opinion. for the government. It's for your neighbor. It's for your fellow citizens. Everything you,

1:28:54 And if you don't give it to them, they'll lock you up. they're not on the damn plane they're searching our stuff for us likewise with the government Yeah. And you talk about that in the book, about how how you know uh how well you slept in this very And that's our evolutionary past, I mean, I'm not religious, but I understand church to be a profoundly communal activity.

1:33:04 for people. And when people don't fulfill that requirement, those seem to be a requirement for people. Right. to feel better. Another thing that seems to make people feel very fulfilled is creating things, working with their hands, creating anything, whether it's furniture, art, just making something, doing something where your mind is involved in an actual task of bringing forth something into existence that didn't exist before.

1:35:01 feels bad. And your survival chances go down, right? There's something deeply satisfying to people that are painters. into a group, like, oh, we all believe in the same thing, right? So art is a great binding force. And so you have a group of people that are unified on all these different levels. And it works extremely well. So generosity feels good.

1:38:14 person comes like, oh my God, that's an incredible bison. There's not like you did something that the You know, I noticed that in my children. I mean, look. Yeah, that's right. between you all and the divine, right? And I'm going to play these chords. Mean, that's the power of the shaman Right. people react to ristrepo yes right i never got to see people react to the books i've read because

1:41:28 you can really communicate information, right? Very sophisticated ideas. And they're permanent, So it's a different experience. Um, when is this available? I never even thought about that. I made it with Nick Quested, my partner, and all the films that I've made. And we all know what ISIS is. Did you go to Syria? I mean, the numerous kidnappings and beheadings,

1:44:21 that was living in territory under ISIS control and surviving. and the decision to leave Wow. And now they're in Greece and they're actually doing really well. stop allowing Muslims, stop allowing all these people to come over from these, the Civil War, and then he fled France because the Nazis rolled in. He came to this country. Of course, every country does that.

1:47:10 And that sounds, it's cruel and anti-human to not want people to have a chance. You know, I asked myself two questions, and I didn't mean to ask them, and I'm just being honest in telling people this. that didn't feel good these are patterns. Like you're controlling turf. It's totally nihilistic. Every country has crazy people in it, in them, right? We are the only country that does this to ourselves. And we do it only in a certain kind of community,

1:50:21 My theory is that the deep alienation of the suburbs, of sort of small town Yeah. Right? Right. So all these people are on drugs, but really what's happening is that, and this is true, suicide, depression, PTSD, anxiety, alienation, all of these things are going up in society. That doesn't happen. that aren't real. Right. If you incorporate that into how you feel about shooting,

1:54:01 Absolutely. I mean, look, there's a TV program called Active Shooter, right? What is it? a couple of days later, we're having the one in Texas. So he was in a position. In Colorado, right? I don't know. was, but you know, just the staggering numbers of broken individuals that are committing these And that communal connection, I mean, literally meeting people on the landing of your apartment

1:57:37 And that's where national service or a congressional commission five minutes of my life, begging me for mercy. Well, Well, you know, one of the things I think is a problem is that if you love this country, there is a certain pressure to think it's the best started, we're the only country that does this regularly to ourselves. And regularly to the That's the question that I think might begin to lead to an answer of why there's such high

2:01:10 and our community. Look, I mean, Somalia has got a lot more guns than we do, right? And there's I think the one thing you can—there are oppressive societies that are very low violence, and there are full democracies like us with lots of violence. I really appreciate your book.