After dedicating most of his career covering war and spending a year embedded in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, author and journalist Sebastian Junger returned to the United States with an unusual theory, linking a societal loss of community with depression, disconnection, and even PTSD. Junger joined Margery Eagan and guest host Jared Bowen on Boston Public Radio to discuss his latest book, TRIBE: On Homecoming and Belonging.
“What’s interesting about soldiers, for me, is that they come from this society,” Junger said. “They experience something radically different, they’re in a platoon of 30, 40, or 50 men—the unit I was in was all men— in a remote area, doing everything together, eating meals together, sleeping together, relying on each other, trusting each other with their lives… it’s basically our evolutionary past. It’s what we evolved for, it’s what we’re wired for. They have this very intimate communal experience, and then they come back to modern society, so the way that they experience that re-entry says a lot about our society, things about it that are invisible to us, because we’ve never left.”
According to Junger, TRIBE is also an examination of how all of us-- not just soldiers - yearn for closeness and meaning in our lives, and how as a society we’ve abandoned these values.
Junger will be at the Porter Square book store at 7pm on Monday, June 20. To hear his full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
