← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Must-Know Tactics for Safeguarding Your Freedom and Financial Independence | Sebastian Junger (Archived Episode))
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- [00:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Nine out of the 10 largest banks get it. They get that. VantageScore, the modern credit score, is the
- [00:06]
Sebastian Junger
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Tom Bilyeu
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- [00:49]
Tom Bilyeu
Everybody, welcome to another episode of Conversations with Tom. I'm here with somebody that I think is going to melt your brain. He is a best selling author, war correspondent and Academy Award nominated documentarian. Sebastian Younger, welcome to the show.
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Sebastian Junger
Thank you very much dude.
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Tom Bilyeu
Super excited to have you on the book. Freedom is really, really interesting. You talk about a topic that I've been steeped in my entire life as a child of the 80s growing up in America, but never really thought about the way that you talk about in the book. And I think before we get into what I will say is the most fascinating question from the book, which I will spill in a second. But first, define freedom for people that probably are doing what most of us do, which is confuse it with rights.
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Sebastian Junger
Yeah, so I mean there's a lot of ways of defining it, but there's a lot of different kinds of freedom. I should say there's emotional freedom, physical freedom, but for my purposes I'm talking about freedom as a core human value that humans have fought for tens of thousands of years. In that sense it means that you are not unfairly controlled by a greater power that you're self defining within the limits of course, of the laws that bind all of us. And for a lot of human history that wasn't always a given. There are many oppressed peoples. There are many cultures and regimes and governments that make a practice of oppressing people and enslaving them and killing them. And so freedom is the struggle against that, sorry, human reality that's been part of our history for so long.
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Tom Bilyeu
Okay. So now that people have that sort of North Star orienting idea of what freedom is and I think that will ring really true to people. The thing I found most interesting in the book is this idea that you will never be free unless you can effectively defend yourself. And I read a quote one time that I found really sort of on its surface, when you don't have society enveloping you in its loving embrace to be sort of self evidently true, but also at the same time really horrifying, which is that the weak. Sorry, the strong do as they will and the weak suffer as they must. And I was just like, oh God. So what do you mean that you will never have freedom unless you can defend yourself?
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Sebastian Junger
Well, I mean, it's sort of fairly obvious, and history shows that, that powerful groups often subjugate or enslave or annihilate less powerful groups. And you can see instances of that throughout human history and archaeological evidence of it from prehistory. Just as a quick example, the Yamnaya of The Eastern Steppe 5,000 years ago, during the Neolithic era, they were a nomadic, very aggressive group that fought from horse drawn chariots. And at a time when horses really weren't in widespread use. They fought with battle axes, they traveled in all male groups. You could think of them as the first sort of motorcycle gang. And they carved, they carved their way through Europe and they, and they invaded the Iberian Peninsula 5,000 years ago. And in about 100 years, they killed all of the men in Iberia. All the men, right. And they wiped male Iberians from, from the, from the human gene gene pool and mated with the women. Of course, you could say that the Iberians, because they couldn't defend themselves, experienced a radical loss of freedom. So if you're vulnerable to predatory groups like that, you may not remain free for very long. But if you can defend yourself, you and your group have a chance of being free. But then what you have to guard against is internal oppression, which is a whole different matter. Basically, if you're well armed enough, militaristic enough, aggressive enough, and well organized enough to defend yourself against a group like the Yamnaya, you are vulnerable to an errant leader using that militaristic machinery to oppress his own people. And that's the eternal human sort of balancing act, is to defend themselves, but then not wind up being oppressed by their own leaders.
- [05:23]
Tom Bilyeu
So this is a really fascinating sort of super high level concept for me, is that so many things, the magic is in the friction between the two things. And even when you take the political parties that we have here in the US and I'm not a political guy, but it's fascinating to me that you talk about this intrinsic desire for freedom. And then I will say that one of the core theses in the book is what we just talked about, which is Sort of as a natural state, like people are going to dominate those that are weaker. You get this idea of other versus in tribe. But the idea that I'm talking about is the friction exists between, let's say on the left you have people that really lead with compassion, and then on the right you have people that lead with sort of responsibility. Now, if you only have compassion, your society is going to devolve into madness. If you only have responsibility, your society is going to devolve into tyranny. And it's like you need this friction between the two. You need each side to sort of respect each other. So how do we, or how do you think about the balance between those two in a modern context as we try to move through life?
- [06:36]
Sebastian Junger
Well, there's a fair amount of data that our basic political orientations are partly genetically endowed, that they're inherited and which, which sort of makes sense. Like if you have a human group, picture that a primordial human group of 30, 40, 50 people surviving in the natural world. If you have half of them that are genetically oriented towards maintaining a sort of hierarchical system that's faced, sort of outwardly faced to protect against enemies, a classic conservative viewpoint. And then half, half of the group are genetically predisposed towards regulating the internal dynamic so that it's basically egalitarian. And that one, you know, that leaders don't dominate and, and sort of carve out extra rights for themselves. If you have those groups in sort of a rough balance within the, within the society, within the law group, you're probably going to do pretty well, you know, likewise, if you have basically equal numbers of men and women in a group, men and women bring different assets, different sensibilities to the table. It's a very good, it's a very good combination. So, you know, what I would say is that in any society, the nation of 330 million, or a sort of human survival group 50,000 years ago, that when you have these two things in balance, they're in a dynamic tension where there's probably a sort of low level of argument and conflicts, but neither side completely dominates. And that's where, I think that's where humans are like very well tuned up for their environment and do very, very well.
- [08:19]
Tom Bilyeu
And how do you think about it at the personal level? So if I recognize that human history has been this long parade of people clawing their way to power, steamrolling over people with less power. You know, thinking back to, in fact, this will set this question up perfectly. What is the root of the word freedom? Like from an etymological standpoint.
- [08:44]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. So freedom comes from the Middle German vridom V R I D O M and it means beloved. And basically the term means that the, the people who are considered to be eligible for freedom, who cannot be arbitrarily killed or enslaved are the people in your immediate group, the people you care about, the people in your clan, in your tribe, in your community, in your family and everybody else. And just ask the Yamnaya, everybody else is eligible for whatever horrors you can visit upon them. And if you think in terms of adaptive behavior, it's very clear that armed aggression is very adaptive, that it helps the aggressive group survive and thrive. The Yamnaya's genes are still in the Iberian population. The original genes of the male Neolithic population have been wiped out. Right. So there is. Aggression can be very adaptive. Although in our society we think that's not true, but clearly it's a very commonplace thing in the world. If it weren't adaptive, it would have died out. So, so just from the definition of the word, it's clear that the word that the idea of freedom is really only refers to the people within your own community. And yet what happened with. As Western society evolved, the medieval system of royalty and serfs eventually broke up. Eventually there were international norms and international laws that protected even small societies from the aggression of larger societies. And certainly after World War II, after the World suffered, what the fascists in Spain and then in Germany tried to do to Europe, there was an agreement that we must all defend, all of us, against predatory aggression by an armed state. And, you know, that's a fairly modern development.
- [10:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. What's interesting to me is that the way that we do it is ultimately to build up a strong military, to get tough, to find strength. And you talked about, I don't remember if this was in the book, but I've heard you talk about it where you were like, you know, my, my sort of left leaning nature found it very surprising. Maybe I'll let you speak for yourself. But this idea that we were protecting these freedoms and saving people by having jets with really big guns and bombs, you know, fly in, and that wasn't sort of the liberal fantasy that you had. How do you think about that tension?
- [11:22]
Sebastian Junger
Well, I, you know, I think people have, are well wired for survival and I think if mainland USA were invaded by a, by a massive armed force, I don't know what that would be. Maybe the Chinese or I don't know what, but you'd have to use your fantasy here. But I think, I think people would understand the need for an armed defense regardless of their political views. And I think where it gets tricky is where administrations, both Democratic and Republican administrations, say, oh, you know, we're defending ourselves by flying 10,000 miles, you know, to the other side of the world and dropping bombs on mountains. You know, like, that's, that's a little, that kind of defense is a little bit more theoretical. And I think it's, it's understood in a less visceral way. In the Yom Kippur war in Israel, there were Israeli soldiers that were literally defending their, their own villages from attack by the surrounding Arab nations. And the sort of moral, the moral reason reasoning behind using violence and killing other people when, when you're defending your own town is much more obvious than even an incursion into Lebanon. Right. And there were, there are threats. I mean, I have absolutely no allegiance to either side of the Israeli Palestinian debate. So I'm completely, I know nothing about it. I'm completely agnostic on that. But just from a sort of logical standpoint, like even, even if there are, even if the Israel can identify, absolutely identify armed threats coming from, from Lebanon, just going into a foreign country to defend oneself puts the military and the whole society on more precarious moral grounds. And that's where the big argument happens about use of force. And certainly for the U.S. flying, you know, like fighting a war 10,000 miles away in Afghanistan, you know, it's a tougher sell to the population, particularly as we get farther and farther from the horror of 9, 11.
- [13:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Here's where all of this gets interesting, and the reason that I wanted to go through that is I want people to understand that a lot of the things that are playing out in our lives are the result of something that is an evolutionary adaptation. And so it plays out on sort of this bigger and bigger scale with bigger and bigger weapons and certainly more terrifying consequences. But the reality is, if you look at the human animal as an adaptation machine, something that's changing in response to, like, what works, you get this sense of now bring it back down to the individual. So I am very compelled by the idea that we have subconscious processes running in our brains that come from an evolutionary place. And one of those is to be capable to defend yourself. Because if you weren't, I mean, you've already talked about literally being wiped out of the entire gene pool. So now you've got the subconscious process that only has reward and punishment, so pain and pleasure to move you towards a behavior that's going to Be, you know, positive from moving on in the gene pool perspective. And so people that don't take time to either get. Courageous may be the right word, certainly to develop some kind of physical strength. I think there is a sense of unease or dis. Ease that comes with that. And I don't know you well enough to know the answer to this question, but your neck tells me that it's true. Do you work out?
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Sebastian Junger
My neck's always betraying me. I don't lift weights or anything, but I, I was a very, very competitive long distance runner when I was young. I ran a pretty, pretty good mile time around 412 when I was a kid and 221 marathon. So I was a long distance runner. And then recently, meaning about 10 years ago, I started boxing. And yeah, I just very, you know, and I have to emphasize on a very, very friendly, casual level, I'm not visiting gyms around the country and asking who wants to spar. Right. I mean, this is an extremely, like, relaxed level, but it's an amazing, amazing workout. The training and the sparring and so, so I've. So, yes, I work out and I've been an athlete my whole life and it's saved, it has saved my life, I think, several times, including about a year ago. We can talk about this later, but I had a undiagnosed aneurysm in my pancreatic artery and it ruptured and I lost 90% of my blood into my abdomen. And my, you know, there's almost a zero survival rate from that. And I survived like my heart kept beating.
- [16:02]
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- [17:02]
Tom Bilyeu
That is a crazy story. We'll definitely talk about that. First, though, I want to. I want to see what you think about this idea that if you are doing something, so you break down the fight for freedom basically and run, fight or think. And those are basically the ways you address your enemy. So it's interesting that you're a runner. Equally interesting that the other thing that you do is boxing.
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Sebastian Junger
It's the thinking I have trouble with.
- [17:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, right. As the guy writing these extraordinary books, I have a very hard time believing that. But do you, I'll ask point blank, do you think that people need to do something to feel secure in their ability to defend themselves physically that will play into their mental wellness?
- [17:47]
Sebastian Junger
I mean, the first thing you need to do in order to feel safe is to be part of a group that has a kind of common agreement to defend itself against any threat and in turn to treat all the. The group members equitably and fairly. That's the first thing you need to do. Humans die immediately on their own. They do not survive alone in nature. They die and we thrive.
- [18:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Get that at a country level. Association.
- [18:13]
Sebastian Junger
Well, I mean, by group, it could mean a survival group of 30 people in 50,000 years ago, or it could mean an armed nuclear state like America. I mean, regardless, we get our, we get our security, our safety from being part of a group. And if you're in a platoon in Afghanistan and you wander off as Bowe Bergdahl did, I think you probably remember that story from 2009 or 10, you can't defend yourself.
- [18:43]
Tom Bilyeu
What happened?
- [18:44]
Sebastian Junger
Bowe Bergdahl was a soldier who left. He left the wire right by himself. He left an outpost in Afghanistan and just started wandering around and was taken captive by the Taliban and was eventually, five years later, the Taliban gave him up, gave him back to the United States. But, you know, he was by himself, wandering around Afghanistan. He couldn't protect himself. In a platoon, he would have been safe. So our safety comes from being part of a group that can defend itself. And, you know, I think there's. But that's. There are other issues. I mean, in human society, there are lots of people. There are, you know, there are women who are pregnant, for example, There are children. There are old people whose job is not. It's not to be a warrior, defending themselves personally. They're part of a group and there is a division of labor. And typically it's young males that take on the physical defense of the group, although young females often do that as well, more on an individual level. But, you know, the ability to defend yourself by yourself is not something that humans have needed to do very much of because we're social primates and we live in groups. And so the ability physically to defend yourself in a complex modern society is actually becomes relevant again because you're walking around in a world where most of the people you encounter, I live in New York City, are complete strangers. So every stranger is potentially an enemy who might hurt you. And that's where being an individual and being physically capable of running away or fighting or whatever it may be can become important. But I think that is actually the incidence of sort of aggression like that, random aggression visited upon people who are walking down the street is quite low. You know, I don't think, I think obesity and things like that are way more of a threat to your, to your life than that kind of aggression. So I'm all for exercising, but I think it will probably pay off more in terms of your health and longevity than anything else.
- [20:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, no, I'll definitely agree with that in sort of a highly tactical way. But when I think about what's going on in your brain, your brain is trying to, from an evolutionary standpoint, and this is, my hypothesis, is trying to move you towards certain behaviors and away from others. And for the vast majority. So first of all, I'm not like a super tough guy. I'm not a trained fighter by any means. But that's part of why I've thought about this and what I have focused on though is lifting. And so while I'm never going to win any strength competition, when I think about how strong I used to be versus the level of strength that I have now and the times in my life where I've sort of gotten too busy or allowed myself to get too busy and wasn't working out consistently versus when I am. I feel very differently when I have physical strength versus when that physical strength begins to wane. And one of two things is true. Either that's just a societal thing that's reinforced and I've glommed onto that, or there is something that, where I get a reward for improving my levels of strength at a subconscious self worth level that I find utterly fascinating.
- [21:50]
Sebastian Junger
Well, it's not either. Or I mean, I think size and strength are noted by other people and there's a whole very unconscious subtle dominance thing going on in society in every subway car and every, on every sidewalk where humans are constantly sort of assessing each other for, for potential threat. And you know, as, as you get bigger and stronger, you become a potential threat, which means that other, particularly other Males are sort of conflict averse and, and there's a very subtle conversation that happens on the unconscious level, particularly between males who are assessing each other. And being larger makes you, gives you a different, gives you a different role in a different conversation. Right. And if you're small, it's a, it's a, it's a different matter entirely. I should say that they did a study of, they looked at these sort of matchup videos. Like they have boxers that they, you know, before a fight, they sort of stand chest to chest and glare at each other and, you know, whatever. It's a whole little ritual which is kind of interesting, right. And one of the things that people do, they are called appeasement cues. If you want to avoid a conflict that might be costly to both people, you give a little signal like, hey man, I'm not a threat, we're good. Like, you don't need to mess with me, I'm not going to mess with you. Like. And those appeasement cues are often like, not stare, not looking the person in the eye. So if you get stopped by a police officer, for almost all of us except the sociopaths, the, the default reflex is look away, do not look the officer in the eye because that's a physical challenge, right. And the other is a quick smile, right. And sometimes it's very fast and unconscious. So what they found and they studied these videos is that if someone smiled in these matchups, they were way, way more likely to lose the fight than the guy who didn't smile.
- [23:50]
Tom Bilyeu
That's so crazy.
- [23:51]
Sebastian Junger
If you're feeling big and strong and tough, you're less likely to smile. You're less likely to sort of emit an unconscious appeasement cue so that the other big guy in the room doesn't, you know, whatever it's like, keeps things sort of from, from escalating. But the other thing is that I believe lifting weights produces more testosterone, which feels really good. Testosterone makes people feel great. And so when you, I know when you do short, like uphill sprints and stuff like that, there are violent, explosive activities that will raise testosterone levels, particularly in men as they get older. And so, you know, a number of different things are going on when you, when you bulk up. But I should also say finally. So my book divided into three sections, Run, Fight and Think. And the easiest and the most reflexive way to avoid a dominant power is to run away. The Apache are a great example of a society that just was so mobile that even the US Cavalry could not quite corner them. And Catch them. But then if you can't outrun your antagonist, you're going to have to out fight them. And really interesting thing about humans is that a smaller fighter or a smaller group is capable of defeating a larger fighter or a larger group. That size and strength are not the ultimate predictor of victory in combat. And that's both true on an individual level. If you look at boxing or the MMA and what have you, the smaller guy even, or woman, even though he doesn't have the advantage of strength, he has the advantage, he has a kind of cardiovascular advantage because those huge muscles use up a lot of oxygen, but it scales up very well. So in Afghanistan, the Taliban had no, they were the equivalent of a very small fighter in a boxing ring. They had no air force, they had no artillery, they had no tanks, some of them didn't even have any boots. And they fought the US military to a standstill for 20 years. I mean, the most powerful military ever in history. And we left on their terms. Right. Inconceivable in primate, in other primates or in any other mammal.
- [25:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that one to me is not only crazy, but it's predictable. Like if you look at how many people, what did they say? Afghanistan is where empires go to die. It's like so many people have tried to conquer them and have failed. I'm super curious. So you obviously have spent a lot of time embedded with military personnel. You spent time in Afghanistan, if I'm not mistaken. And what is it other than just like mobility? Because obviously there's more than just they're better at running when they fight. They must be doing something right or they're recruiting more people. So it's like no matter how many people you defeat, they just keep coming. What is it that makes them so impossible to, quote, unquote, break?
- [26:42]
Sebastian Junger
Well, insurgencies, like smaller fighters in the ring require fewer resources, so their effort is sustainable in the long term. So if you have two guys in a ring and one weighs 250 and the other weighs 180, God forbid the big guy get the small guy in a headlock, the fight is over with. Right. And if that fight is taking place in a, in a shower stall, that's where it's going to wind up. But once there's like real room, real mobility around the fighters, every movement that a small fighter does uses up less metabolic resources, less oxygen than the same movement by a large person. Right. So if you, you know, at the end of a three minute round where both fighters are moving sort of an equivalent amount, the Large fighter might be completely winded and the small fighter not. So the, so the, the analogy for Afghanistan is for every year in Afghanistan that the Taliban doesn't lose, they don't have to win, right? The small guy in the ring does not have to win. They just have to keep not losing long enough for this, for the larger entity to run out of resources. And as it turns out, in the United states, that took 20 years. I mean, we just can't sustain the level of spending. I mean, tactically, we could stay there for another century, but the nation itself actually can't sustain that level of, of monetary expenditure. Or the equivalent would be that level of, you know, muscular activity that's, you know, putting us into oxygen debt. In the case of a single fighter, we can't sustain that indefinitely. And the Taliban can. They're, they're a fighting force that is part of the society that it's from. It doesn't, it just, it's not fighting halfway around the world. And the assets that the US has, like air power, work very poorly against, you know, a handful of men scattered across a mountainside. I mean, you will, all us will always be able to kill a dozen guys in any fight, but those numbers don't really make a difference in the long term. And what you get is this. Someone asked me once, you know, if the Taliban take over Afghanistan, it's hard to see that freedom, you know, that freedom will have been increased. Right? I mean, the Taliban, I, you know, I loathe the Taliban. They're an awful, repressive regime with no respect for human rights. And I said, well, it depends how you define it. But I would say that the free, the Taliban, freedom will have been increased because they have gotten the, you know, the invading empire out of their backyard, like we're out of their business. And so they will be able to be self defining, right? That's the key. Like, are you able to be self defining, defining? The Taliban will be able to be self defining. So all the Taliban have to do is to keep not losing and recruiting men, recruiting fighters by saying, look, your freedom is at stake. The honor and the dignity of your women, of your families, of your heritage. It's all at stake. It's worth dying for, right? And increasingly, I think it's hard. Clearly it's hard. It's been harder and harder to convince Americans that winning in Afghanistan is worth dying for. Right? I mean, I'm not talking about soldiers who are trained to do what they're told to do. I'm talking about the American Public, like, is that situation worth dying for? In the days and months and Even years after 9, 11, it clearly seemed worth dying for because we'd been attacked by a group that was hiding there and they killed 3,000Americans and brought down the Twin Towers and crashed a plane into the Pentagon. Like that's an easy case to make. Like this is worth dying for because it could happen again. But now it's been 20 years. It's a harder argument to mount.
- [30:31]
Tom Bilyeu
Wow, that's crazy, man. You just brought up some really, really interesting, wildly controversial ideas. Okay, so the freedom in the sense that the Taliban is a horrible, repressive regime that in country, I'm sure there are some people that don't love that idea of that continuing on if they're the people being oppressed. But there is some level of freedom that goes up. I'm not sure what to do with that. That's very interesting. So how do you probably process through that? Is it a net good?
- [31:11]
Sebastian Junger
Well, I mean, it's not a net anything. I mean, we're trying to understand a word that we have that describes a state of being. And the state of being is a free person is someone who can say, I am not unfairly controlled by an outside power. And you know, this is. No, this isn't. I'm not approving of the Taliban here. I'm just saying that a Taliban fighter can now say, because the US Is leaving Afghanistan can now say, I cannot be controlled by an outside power. I mean, that's a state of freedom for that person. I wish it weren't so. I wish the Taliban would disappear. I think what they're going to do to Afghanistan is horrific. And there's other people, women come to mind in Afghanistan and ethnic minorities come to mind and who will experience a horrible loss of freedom. I'm just saying that if we understand what the definition of freedom is, a Taliban fighter can now, with real justification, say, I am freer because the United States is gone. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done
- [32:46]
Tom Bilyeu
right. Wow. Super interesting thing. I know in the book you. Well, in your interviews you talk specifically that in the book. This isn't a philosophical book. Like, this is a really sort of concise exploration of what freedom is. Very interesting philosophical conversation to be had along those lines. I want to talk about the culture in Afghanistan, which I, you know, I'll plead wild ignorance, but are they a herding culture? Is it an honor culture?
- [33:15]
Sebastian Junger
Well, yeah, there are, yes, there. It's a mixed agriculture, agriculture and herding society. There are ethnic groups that practice herding. I think most villages have herds of goats and. Etc, but they are not necessarily migratory, they're not necessarily mobile societies. So a lot of the villages in Afghanistan that I've been in, they had fields with crops, rice and wheat and things like that. And also herds of mostly goats.
- [33:51]
Tom Bilyeu
I've heard. So I've heard multiple people talk about this idea of honor cultures rising up when you have a hurting society because there's, you know, it's hard to like, maintain where your animals go and so they may cross over into somebody else's area. And I've heard you specifically speak about this and how when you've got the animals just sort of wandering everywhere, you better be a pretty badass person for people to be afraid to swipe your animals. And the way that, that plays out in a larger society, one, I'd love to get the sort of color and nuance around that idea and then to put it in the context of is that part of what makes them so difficult to deal with is that at a cultural level, they revere people that, you know, are willing to fight.
- [34:35]
Sebastian Junger
If it's hard to monitor your resources, having a reputation for violence helps keep people from messing with you, right? So just as a very mundane example, you know, we all, at least on a sort of like mythic, mythic level, understand the, the potential for violence of, say, the Hell's Angels of a motorcycle gang, right? You see those guys go by on the highway. You're like, whoa, I'm going to get into the right hand lane because I don't want to get. I don't want to have a problem with those guys. There's 30 of them on motorcycles. They all have beards. Like, I'm just going to stay out of the way. Well, likewise, when they park their bikes on the street, I mean, a motorcycle, you know, expensive motorcycle parked in New York City is, is. It is vulnerable, right? I mean, every car in New York City is dented. Right? You know what I mean? So, so what happens when you're parking and there's a motorcycle behind you? Are you really, really careful? You don't tip that thing on, you know, onto its side by backing up into it. Yeah, you're really careful. You're probably more careful than you would be with like a Volkswagen or whatever. Right? So. And their reputation for violence is the thing that protect, that makes people careful around that motorcycle even if they're not there looking at it. Right. So that's a very important sort of like way. It's a tactic that, that people maintain sort of control of their belongings just by being scary and intimidating. So in case you're even thinking, you know, don't even think about it, guy, you know, because I will freaking kill you if you dent my bike. Right. Well, likewise pastoralist societies that have these herds that roam over mountainsides and valleys and etc. And it's very hard to keep track of 3,000 sheep. Right? But if you have a reputation for ferocity, the opportunity to steal those sheep might be less appealing for someone because they know that they and their entire community will be, will be killed, will be attacked and killed. Right. So that's the theory behind the aggressive nature of pastoral societies. I should say that there is also mobile societies that are materially poor, but they have a lot of, they're highly egalitarian within their group and they're very highly autonomous. Like it's very hard to sort of pin down and force consent, forced cooperation from a mobile society because, you know, the king tries to tax the shepherds, the nomads, and the next morning their tents are gone and they're in the mountains. Right. And so those kinds of societies are often very, very arrogant about their superiority. Even though they have, they're less wealthy than the farmers, Right. But they're more militaristic and they're more able to be self defining and autonomous. And they, it's very hard to sort of trap them in a, in a, in a hierarchy where most people are sort of like under the thumb of a ruler. So there was a group named the Yomut in northern Iran and they lived side by, they were pastoralists, they were herders and they were very warlike and they lived side by side with these wealthier sedentary agriculturalists. And they had this saying where, which was, I'm quoting from memory here. I do not have a mill with willow trees. In other words, I'm not a farmer. I do not have a mill with willow trees. I have a horse and quirt. A quirt is a kind of whip. I have a horse and quirt. It will kill you and go. Right, so that's the threat. That's the sort of abiding threat of a mobile society to make sure that you don't steal any of their precious livestock.
- [38:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, societies get more of what they incentivize as with anything. Like, for instance, if you look at Europe or South America with the soccer teams, they're just unbelievable because, you know, your dad played soccer or loved it, and so you play it and love it, and, you know, that just goes on for generation after generation. One of the most fascinating examples of this to me is in Japan, how they have given birth to these manga artists who are just unbelievably talented. And as somebody who publishes that kind of material, it is ridiculously hard to find those same artists here in the US because that style has just for, you know, whatever, a hundred years, been going on in Japan, and here in the US it's really only gained, like, widespread popularity in, say, the last 15, 20 years. So it's not refined over multiple generations. And I'm curious, you know, when you look at a culture like Afghanistan where it's, you know, at least partly a herding culture and they're more militaristic and so you would revere the greatest warriors, do you see that in different societies where what they're rewarding just like they become sort of diamond hard at that thing?
- [39:39]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah, well, I mean, the. Yeah. There are aspects of Afghan society that are definitely very suspicious of outsiders. And if you mess with them, you incur a blood feud that can go on for generations. Albanian, traditional Albanian society is the same way. And they're very dangerous societies to mess with. I mean, the Pashtuns of the Afghan Pakistan border are just infamously warlike. And if, you know, you're sort of poking the hornet's nest if you go in there and the Taliban were primarily Pashtun. Right. And, you know, like, likewise. I mean, there's many groups around the world that are like that. The Albanians or the Montenegrins, for example. Nearby. Different society, nearby. Very, very warlike society. These sort of wild mountain people. And the Ottoman Empire invaded them in the early 1600s and outnumbered the Ottoman. The Ottoman soldiers outnumbered the Montenegrin warriors 12 to 1. Right. And they had. The Ottomans had artillery and cavalry, and the. The Montenegrins fought like wild men and killed one third of the Ottoman force and drove the rest of them out of their country. Right. So, you know, those are, you know, they were very, very warlike, autonomous, proud mountain people. And, you know, when you invade people who basically have an ethos of, you know, we will protect our communities and our women at any cost from outsiders. And we rather, all of us die than live under the thumb of the oppressor. I mean, that's what happened famously in 73 AD in Masada. The Romans had besieged the city of Masada, that was up on a plateau on a mesa, and they very slowly breached the walls. And it seems like, I mean, this is partly shrouded in myth, but it seems like what we've been, what we know from what's been passed down is that the entire population of Masada, men, women, children, everybody basically committed mass suicide rather than live under, rather than be enslaved by the Romans. So when you have societies that would rather die than be captured, you have a very, very costly fight on your hands.
- [42:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that certainly has. Sounds like it rhymes a bit with World War II Japan. I know that in Iwo Jima. And I'm sort of getting all of my history from movies, so forgive me if if this is, like, wildly inaccurate. But, you know, that sense of that, that you, you literally fight to the death, you are not going to be taken alive. And it doesn't matter if you're losing. Like, you're just, you're. You're going out with a bang for sure. All of that, to me is. Is incredibly fascinating when you put it then in the larger context of. And, and in fact, maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe this is just because this is where I grew up. I'm curious to see your take. So you've got these societies, they're rewarding this sort of militaristic fighting, like wild men, underdog, they still win. Why is it then that at least from my perspective, sort of the, the big sedentary society seems to win,
- [43:03]
Sebastian Junger
Right? Well, the, that, I mean, that's maybe one of the tragedies of human history. Agriculture is a very, very effective way of accumulating wealth, accumulating, storing food. Meat can't really be stored unless it's on the hoof as a herd. But grains can be stored. And once you can store food, you can feed enormous populations, right? You can have city states, you can maintain armies of tens of thousands of people. And one of the first cities in the world, Some, I think 10,000 years ago or so, was the city of Uruk. And they had, I think, 40,000 people within the walls of Uruk and enormous, enormous standing army. And so it's very easy for a group like that to control territory against a. Much. Against a mobile society which just has fewer people. And so, you know, what you have is these massive City states, these massive empires that practice agriculture, which started about 10,000 years ago, able to control a huge percentage of the world's population. And I can't exactly remember the figures, but starting, you know, 5,000 years ago or so, an enormous percentage of the human population was controlled by these mega states. They're just very good at controlling territory. But, but what the mobile society has to do isn't control territory. They just have to stay out of reach of the U.S. cavalry. In the case of the Apache or what have you, they just have to not, not be rounded up and caught and slaughtered or enslaved. And mobility is, is this key factor. And if humans weren't so mobile, wouldn't work. Right. I mean, chimpanzees don't run very fast. They don't, they can't walk very far. Humans are amazing at moving over territory. Right. I mean, the, the human record for 1,000 miles is 10 days, right. I mean, a horse couldn't do that, right? Yeah. 100 miles a day for 10 days. Right. And back at, you know, at the other end of the scale, the human record for a quarter mile averages to around 20 miles an hour. Right. I mean, design a machine that can do all that. Humans can do it. And it means that it's, it's quite easy for a lightly armed group like the Apache. The Apache warriors were expected to be able to run 70 miles a day. 7 0. 70 miles a day. They could outrun US cavalry in broken country.
- [45:53]
Tom Bilyeu
That's crazy.
- [45:54]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. The whole society was able to move not at a run, but at a sort of walk, jog all day long. Men, women, children, everybody. And so when, when. And the Taliban were the same way, they were very lightly armed, lightly dressed. So where the American soldiers might be able to squeak out a mile an hour in steep terrain, you know, the Taliban were, you know, moving at running pace and they just ran circles around the American soldiers.
- [46:20]
Tom Bilyeu
So here's where this falls into the land of the. Fascinating though. So you've got the Apaches doing an amazing job. They make it, I mean, to some pretty modern times before they're finally, you know, overcome by the westward expansion. You've got people that are. They either flee western society, you know, this is back in whatever the 1800s, early 1900s, or they get kidnapped by tribes of Native Americans and they don't want to come back. So they take this more sort of old school tribal approach to life. They prefer it. They don't want to go back. I forget who it was. Maybe a president who was like, we have People that leave to go live a native life, but we don't have any natives that come to live a modern life. And yet, my friend, at the end of the day, it was modernity that took over everything. So if we have this sort of. And by the way, to really drive this point home, reading your book Freedom, you describe this amazing moment where you guys are like, you've dug out these perches along this riverbed. There's like four of you sleeping next to each other, your dogs at your feet. You're like, nobody knows who we are. And if there are things better than this, there aren't going to be many of them. And this idea of nobody knowing where you are is freedom itself. So if we have this innate pull to that, why does Tokyo win? You live in New York City. The guy describing nobody knowing where I'm at is one of the greatest things. And yet you live in New York City. Help me. And by the way, Tokyo and New York are like two of my favorite places on planet Earth. I could not be more obsessed. So why do they win if we have this innate call to the wild?
- [48:04]
Sebastian Junger
Well, we have a lot of different things that appeal to us, right? So autonomy is one of them. And the life of within a hunting society, within an egalitarian tribal society is very, very appealing. It was Benjamin Franklin who sort of lamented the fact that young men and women along the frontier were constantly sort of absconding off to the natives and that there was no, you know, for. And the natives were never returning the favor and coming to white society. Right. Plowing a field just isn't that much fun compared to hunting. Right. The sexual strictures in a very conservative Christian society just aren't that much fun compared to the more libertarian instincts of a tribal society. I mean, on every human level, like Christian agricultural, Christian society along the frontier just wasn't that good a time, you know, and the tribal societies really were. And so. But that's a. So those are individual choices made by a few people. Right. But as long as the majority of people. I mean, agriculture is a powerful system. The Enlightenment produced a very, very powerful way of thinking that allowed for the innovations of science, advances in technology. You know, one of the instincts that we. We have an instinct for autonomy. We also have an instinct for, you know, not being uncomfortable and being safe and. And having our ease, you know, not having to. Not having to toil from dusk from dawn to dusk or dusk to dawn, you know, so, so, so modern society, that Western society that mechanized the survival processes, that also is Appealing because it's adaptive to want to save energy and relax. That's also adaptive. Right. And you know what I think you could say? I mean, I really avoid value judgments in my book, but I do like to point out differences between things. I think one could say that the level of comfort and ease permitted by modern society has allowed a lot of people to become overweight, to become lethargic, to become non athletic, to not have any sense of the processes that keep them alive. They don't grow their own food, they don't build their own houses, they don't, you know, whatever. And they're not really participating in their immediate community. We're wired for communitarianism, right? I mean, anytime there's a disaster, immediately people act in communitarian ways. They share water, they share shelter, they share defense. And then when you take the catastrophe away and you fix it, whether it's the blitz in London or a hurricane or a tornado or whatever it may be later, people often miss the tough days because they miss being communitarian and which is not communism, right? Like, let's not slide into a. In. Into an inappropriate political conversation. I'm not talking about communism. I'm talking about groups of people relying on each other for survival and that, you know, it's very, very adaptive for people to enjoy that because it works extremely well and it makes people feel like they're doing something meaningful and crucial for those around them. And that's an intoxicating feeling. So you just have to look at humans as being sort of pulled in many different directions, each of which is adaptive in a certain kind of situation. In evolutionary terms.
- [51:27]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that idea of meaning and purpose and, you know, get. So my wife and I could retire at any time, never need to work again. But we're working harder now than we've ever worked. And when I'm trying to explain that to people, my thing is always, ultimately what you're looking for is a sense of fulfillment, which I'll call a neurochemical state. You want to feel some kind of way about yourself, about your life. And what I realized, thankfully very early on in my life, is that if I was only doing things that benefited me, that didn't make me feel the way that I wanted to feel, I didn't feel alive, but. But once I started doing something that served me for sure, but also put me in a social context and allowed me to serve other people, then I had a sense of meaning and purpose. Then I felt the way that I wanted to feel. And it's. You Know, fulfillment is a far more resilient emotion than happiness or even fear. Like, those things sort of ebb and flow. But when you're like, what I'm doing matters, what I'm doing is meaningful. I show up every day and I'm playing with purpose. Like that is very profound. And going back to your London Blitz example, that's utterly fascinating to me that people going into mental institutions went down during the Blitz. They thought they were going to have some just massive catastrophe of psychological damage, and they didn't. That people would, like you said, reflect back on those times and say that they were positive. Talk to me about what it means to be a social primate and why that would be true, because that seems so counterintuitive.
- [53:03]
Sebastian Junger
Why it's true that we're social primates. I mean, we're. We now.
- [53:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Why it's. Why it's true that you would. So to say it another way, when somebody goes to war, they don't usually have the PTSD during war. They have the PTSD when they come back and are isolated. So what. What is it about? I think you even talked about a study where you can give a rat PTSD or a mouse ptsd, but they won't develop those symptoms unless you isolate them.
- [53:32]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. So it seems that being in a group buffers individuals, even mice, from psychological distress. And one of the tragedies of modern society, which we should just immediately acknowledge comes with a huge amount of good. Right. I mean, let's not forget the laundry list of good things that comes with modern society and the affluence that we enjoy, our democratic rights, our, you know, our system of government, legislature and the courts and everything. I mean, you know, we have encodified a basic sort of egalitarianism within our society that's. That's imperfect, but enormously an enormous blessing for everybody. Right. So let's just acknowledge that. But sort of moving on, what happens in an affluent society in individuals need others less to survive, and so they're able to live more and more individualistic lives that are more focused on their own experience and less focused on the experience of others. It's less communitarian, it's more individualistic, which has huge advantages. Right. But the disadvantage is that it makes people vulnerable to psychological distorts, to psychiatric disorders. And so there's a very close correlation. As wealth goes up in a society broadly, the rates of depression and suicide tend to go up. And in poorer societies, despite the stresses of poverty, rates of depression and suicide tend to go down. Likewise with PTSD life is traumatic. There's car accidents, there's wars, there's kids get hit by cars at intersections. There's houses collapse and crush people, you know, whatever. I mean, there's a lot of stuff bad. A lot of bad stuff happens in life in any society, right? And it's all traumatizing. But what they found was that in the poorer the society, the less, the lower the level, the occurrence of ptsd. And in wealthier societies, there were higher levels of PTSD from a given trauma. And the reason proposed by the researchers was that in poorer societies, there's a lower expectation of. Of life, that it's just assumed that life is going to be dangerous and hard. And so when that happens, it's less of a. It's less of a shock. Right. What they don't mention, but I think is also possible, is that in poorer societies are. Poor societies are forced to be more communitarian, sharing of resources and time and collaboration and all that. I mean, there's nothing lonelier than, you know, a wealthy suburb or, you know, those sort of. Well, the rich part of town is nothing lonelier than those neighborhoods. I grew up in one. It's ghastly. In human terms, it's ghastly. And so in those kinds of societies, there is less group interaction. And so people are not buffered from their trauma by the proximity of others. Every kid has their own bedroom, every family has their own house. You know, neighborhoods are isolated. There's no sense of a broader community within the town and certainly not within the, you know, the country or whatever. Like, everyone's on their own. And that. That's very, very hard for social primates, like humans.
- [56:49]
Tom Bilyeu
God, this stuff is so fascinating to me. You know, it's so easy to think of yourself as a human and sort of above it. And you even quote in the book that from the Bible, and I know you're not religious, nor am I, but in the Bible it says God tests man so that he will remember he's an animal or something like that. And it's so interesting when you conceptualize us, sort of pull us back down to earth as a primate and begin to realize, okay, I'm having this physiological experience. And when you can understand, like, what we need to thrive, like the fact that if you isolate a human long enough, their psyche will break even as an adult. Like, that seems so weird that you can kill a child just by not touching them, by not showing them any love, they will actually die. Like, that is so strange and yet so potent to understand. And then it gets really messy. And I want to go back to that because I know you have a fascinating way that you've raising your children, but that to confound it is that you went on this journey that the book is about partly anyway, where you guys are walking, the four of you by yourselves, totally isolated, off and on for a year. And that there was like all this sort of. I don't think you ever use the word healing. That's me putting something on it. But that's interesting that there is this sort of power to isolation to some degree. And then this tribe commitment on the other hand, is incredibly healing. So interesting. Talk to me about how you're raising your kids. The like fact that you guys sleep in the same room, the skin to skin contact when they were infants, like, it's all really interesting.
- [58:31]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. So I mean, just keep in mind that we're primates and that baby primates cling to their mothers because their sense of security and safety comes from, you know, they're totally defenseless. Right. So they're not safe unless they're with an adult, unless they're with their mother. And that's also where they get their sustenance. And the heart rate of the mother helps regulate the biological processes of the baby. And they can feel the heart rate from skin to skin contact. So that's what baby primates need. And of course baby humans are baby primates. And so when you separate them from the parent and from the mother specifically, you're making the baby do something that's completely non human and non mammalian. Right. I mean, there is no mammalian species that puts their young in a different place and then goes off and goes to sleep. It's insane. There's no human.
- [59:29]
Tom Bilyeu
And didn't you say that's quite recent?
- [59:32]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah, the British invented it 200 years ago, like along with most the rest of the stuff that feels bad. I mean, it. And you know, it spread through the British Empire and that's sort of supposedly the norm. But most, for most of human history and still today in most human societies, there's a huge amount of parent child physical contact and people sleep in collectively. Right. Families sleep collectively. And so, I mean, what we're doing is not. I mean, I wish it weren't fascinating. I wish it were the norm because I think it's certainly in keeping with all of our evolutionary past until 200 years ago. But we have a four year old and a one and a half year old, both little girls, and we live in a very small New York apartment We sleep on the ground on a pad so no one can roll out of bed. And we sleep and we sleep with the kids. And they're in physical contact with us the whole night. And so they never have sort of night frights or almost never have sort of night frights and night terrors. We're not locking them in another dark room like they sleep with us. And, and you know, we live on a walk, you know, a walk up, a walk up without an elevator. And so, you know, we don't have strollers or anything. We just, you know, I carry the girls and you know, my oldest girl is what she weigh 35 pounds. And the little one weighs 20 pounds. And so one goes on my shoulders and the other goes in my chest and you know, what is that, 55, 60 pounds, something like that? I mean, I can walk all day long with that kind of weight. I mean, I'm fit person and every human should be able to do that. And so. And you get to feel your children right there on you. They're. They're next to you like a dog barks. And like, they don't. They know they're on daddy and they're safe, you know, and on some level, that's extremely important for young, for, for, you know, what's called like, secure attachment to the parents. You know, it comes from physical, physical contact. And, you know, I mean, this is just a. To segue to something else you mentioned. So part of the, part of my book is an account of this trip that I took with a few other guys that, you know, we'd all been in a lot of contact, a lot of combat. And we walked from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, along the railroad lines, these sort of weird no man's land. And we were sleeping under bridges and abandoned buildings and drinking, getting our water out of creeks and cooking over fires. And, you know, we were the only people. Every night, we were the only people who knew where we were, right? Definitely a form of freedom. But what we had was each other, right? I mean, that same trip done by myself would have been absolutely terrifying and miserable. We were doing it in a group, in a. In a survival, in a human survival group of a few other. You know, it was four of us. We trusted each other with each other's lives. And because it was a group experience, it felt good rather than scary. And just to wrap it up, you know, we were carrying every. We called it high speed vagrancy, right? We were moving 10, 15, 20 miles a day. It was totally illegal, so we had to Be able to avoid the cops and everybody else. And we were carrying everything we needed. You know, we were carrying, what, £60 on our back, Something like that, you know, so basically the same weight that I carried from D.C. to Philly to Pittsburgh, that's what my children weigh. And so that's how we move around. And my daughter's 4, and she likes to run and walk. And so now. Now I just carry the little one unless the big one gets tired. And that's how humans have done it for 200,000 years. Right. The stroller was invented, you know, what, a couple hundred years ago, probably.
- [63:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. The idea of walking and thinking might not quite be the right word. Meditating may be more useful. But the sort of ingrained you talked about us is because. Being these sort of ultimate running machines, but our ability to traverse long distances clearly would need to bake its way into our DNA psychologically as much as physically. And I know at least two of you guys were going through some pretty heavy sort of life changes at the time. Was that part of what prompted the desire to do that? Was it. Did walking make that transition time more useful?
- [63:45]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. So specifically, two. There was four of us. Two of us were getting divorced in the middle of getting divorced. So half the group, right where it was four men, we'd all been in a lot of combat. Half of us. Sorry about the sounds of New York out there. Half of. I don't know if you can hear the honking from the cars. Yeah, yeah.
- [64:03]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm so used to New York.
- [64:04]
Sebastian Junger
It's all good. So half of us were getting divorced. So first of all, no, we didn't do the trip as a form of therapy. We did the trip because we wanted to encounter America in this sort of weird way. Way. And we wanted to recreate something about the sort of feeling of combat where you're reliant on other people in. In a. In a complicated environment where you have to be on your guard, and that's physically hard. So the trip was about that and about encountering this country. We. We never. I mean, as a sort of extraordinary. And maybe this is a male thing. I don't know. I'll leave that to others to decide. But the two guys who were getting divorced never brought it up in 400 miles. Off and on for a year, neither of us brought it up. And the two other guys who knew we were getting divorced, they never brought it up either. It just was never mentioned for 400 miles. And the reason is because the trip was a respite from that divorce. Is hard work. It's painful, it's incredible, Incredibly sad. And I had about as good a divorce as you can have. I'm still good friends with my ex wife. Like it, you know, we're just totally blessed that it went like that and I'm very grateful to her. But it was, you know, incredibly sorrowful time and I needed a break from feeling bad, right. And the break that I found was out there with my buddies moving 10 or 15 miles a day. It's hard. It sucked, it, it was cold, it was hot. It was everything, right. But we had each other and it was. There was something about the physical exertion and the challenge of avoiding the cops and the small sort of micro challenges of like cooking dinner over a fire, getting clean, drinking water, and you know, like sleeping in the underbrush outside of like some suburban home along the tracks. And they never see us. Those challenges were just like a drug. They just put. Put us mentally in a different place. That was enormous. In a weird way, enormously relaxing. Yeah.
- [66:11]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting that it seems like you've sought challenge out a lot in your life. I know some of your early jobs. I mean, you're such a profoundly talented writer. It's odd to think that you used to, you know, climb very high trees, cut them down with chainsaws, you know, that you embedded yourself on purpose in war zones. What is it about that notion of challenge, of sort of testing your mettle that you find interesting, useful? Not sure what the word is.
- [66:39]
Sebastian Junger
Well, you know, people have different levels, different thresholds of where something goes from challenging to unbearable, it goes from exciting to terrifying. You know, we all have our different thresholds. But I think for most people, having our skills tested, our resilience tested, being presented with. With challenges that you have to solve, you have problems you have to figure out feels good. And again, if you think about it as an adaptive trait for humans, if overcoming challenges and solving problems feels good, people will do more of it. And then suddenly you've invented the bow and arrow or you whatever. Like the. That human capacity in part comes from humans pushing the limits. And pushing limits can feel good up into the point where it feels horrible. And so we're adapted to sort of challenge ourselves, because if we never challenged ourselves, we would still be in the treetops like chimpanzees. Right? I mean, we would not. That's where evolution comes from, is testing new things and evolving physically and psychologically to adapt to them. This huge change that came 6 million years ago as humans came down from the Treetops and started walking and walking upright. It made us very vulnerable. Right. Because we don't have claws, we don't have teeth, we can't climb trees, we can't run that fast compared to some predators. But it also gave us these incredible human abilities that are still with us today.
- [68:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. It's really interesting to put this into a male context. And I know earlier you abdicated that, leaving it to other people, but I'm super curious to know how much of what you've gone through in terms of spending time in war zones, in terms of this trip, which was all men, how much of that do you think is. Is uniquely male? And do you think at all about the sort of dynamic dance that happens between men and women and, you know, is there anything of interest there for you?
- [68:53]
Sebastian Junger
Well, yeah. I mean, the sexes are clearly biologically, emotionally, psychologically, significantly different. That said, there are individuals in both groups, male and female, that are much more like the female norm or the male norm. In other words, there are individuals that are much more like the norm of the opposite sex than the norm of their own sex. So when you talk about. When you generalize about groups, which is a completely legitimate thing to do, I mean, it's a bell curve where averages. Right. I mean, you can say basketball players are tall. It doesn't mean that tall people. That all tall people play basketball, or that some basketball players aren't short. You're making a generalization. It's a completely legitimate thing to do. But you must remember that when you do that, you're talking about a group average. And implicit in the idea of a group average is that some individuals will be way outside that norm and in fact, adhere more to the group average from some other group. So there are. There are. There are clearly sort of tendencies and traits in each sex. And there is. In every human society, there's a division of labor, starting with the most basic one, which is that only one sex can get pregnant and give birth. Which means that there are other tasks that fall to men because they're not running the enormous risks and suffering the enormous physical pain of childbirth. Other tasks fall to men. So. And then there is. There are preferences and tastes that each sex is, like, slightly average, is slightly different for the two sexes. So. So all people value freedom and suffer its loss. Human, I mean, all humans, male or female, it doesn't matter. Right? The way that people go about preserving their freedom sometimes breaks down along gender lines because the sexes are better adapted to different things. Men are. Are physically larger, they have more testosterone which is crucial in running and in fighting and weightlifting and a lot of physical tasks. They have, on average, more upper body strength. They, they have quicker physical reflexes. They are more capable of picking out a shape in a broken background, like seeing a lion in foliage. It just. Those things are empirically true about men, right? Which makes them quite good at fighting compared to women. And so when you have a, a primordial group that is trying to defend itself against an aggressor, most, but not all of the people with the, the axes and the spears and the bows and arrows are going to be male. Right. But most, but not all. It's really important to remember that. And so in a closed society, meaning Western, a modern Western country, when you try to change that society towards what you believe to be a greater degree of freedom, you're not necessarily trying to topple the government. You're not necessarily trying to outrun the society and hide in the mountains. You're trying to actually change it. Right. I mean, the Taliban were trying to get rid of us. They weren't trying to change us, but within this society, for example, the labor movement 100 years ago, you know, these are very disempowered people, often migrants to this country. Many barely spoke English. They're working in the textile mills and the steel mills in New England. And they were up against the US Government and corporate interests and the National Guard that was sort of stood at the beginning, you know, was at the disposal of the government. And they won. Right. And one of the reason this is in my, the last third of the book is called Think the Way they did this was out thinking their opponents. And, you know, there's a couple of commonalities to the groups that manage to do this. Well, one is that the leadership has to be completely selfless. Like, you need leaders who will die for you. Anything less than that is not a leader, an opportunist. And so if you had, in the labor movement, if you had leaders who were sort of literally hiding behind other people when it got dangerous, that, that, that's not going to work. Right. And I looked at the Easter rising in Ireland. The, the, the leaders at that time in 1916, you know, they were fighting the British Empire, basically. And the leaders were incredibly courageous. And there was one, one leader named Conley who, you know, his aides kept trying to drag him out, you know, back to cover, you know, during gunfire, because he kept wandering out into the street trying to figure out where to put the sandbags. And, you know, his aides were like, please sir, get. You know, take cover. You're going to get shot. Right. He got shot twice. And then when the. When the uprising failed, he was executed by firing squad by the British. Incredibly brave man. Right. That's leadership. I would say that most of our political leadership fails to rise that standard, even anything close to it. But the other commonality to successful underdog groups is using women. Women are really, really interesting in this context. First of all, the authorities are reluctant, more reluctant than with men, to use mass violence against groups of women in the street, in public, for a variety of reasons. And so what the strikers started to do, when confronted with National Guard troops with fixed bayonets, they started putting women on the front line. And these kids, the national. You know, the kids in the national guard were like 18, 19 years old. They're not going to start bayonetting women. Right. Come on. That order will never work. And so what happened was, tactically, on the street, the women actually tip the balance. And one very frustrated police captain at the time in Lawrence, Massachusetts, said, one good cop can handle 10 men, but it takes 10 cops to handle one woman. The other advantage that women have is that they. They don't tend towards vertical hierarchies, they tend towards lateral egalitarian networks. Both are important. Neither is superior or inferior to the other. You need both. And men happen to be very good at vertical hierarchies. The problem is, if you take out the guy at the top, you risk taking out the entire thing. Right. With women's lateral networks, there is no way to take out the woman at the top, because there is no top. It's lateral. It's a spider web. And so it's very, very hard for the authorities to. To penetrate and monitor.
- [75:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I found that really interesting, this idea that you could. It was far easier to disrupt what the guys were doing. And so they stopped passing information amongst the guys if they were trying to organize or rally people. And they started not only putting the women on the front lines, but that they were using them as, like the information network to get the times and places and everything out there. Yeah, that, to me is. It's utterly fascinating when you think about. So the sort of raging debate about men v. Women, to me, isn't very interesting. To me, they're of equal value. There are these fascinating differences in the way that we each operate that I find so intriguing as you put us back into a historical or mammalian context and begin to see things that way. So, so, so intriguing. Speaking of men and women, it is interesting to me that you've done some what I will call seriously manly shit, whether it is boxing or embedding yourself, you know, or walking, you know, 400 miles of the country just with some other dudes that you have two daughters. Have they changed at all, like your take on life in general? Do you think it would be different if you had two boys versus two girls?
- [77:00]
Sebastian Junger
Well, I'm sure it would be different. I mean, boys and girls by all accounts act quite differently starting very, very early. I mean there's, there are tests, I mean, not to like, I hope, I hope I'm not boring people with like arcane studies of humans. But even by three months, infant girls will, baby girls will are much more likely to look at a face and infant boys are more likely to look at movement, track movement. And that, that, that difference shows up very, very early on way before any kind of socialization could have taken place. It's really, really interesting. And if you think of, you know, that sort of classic gender, gender division of labor, men overwhelmingly in human societies are the hunters and the warriors where tracking movement would be very, very important. And women overwhelmingly do the majority of child care and are completely reliant on, on lateral social networks for collective child care and gathering. I mean, you know, I mean, it's almost impossible for one person, male or female, by themselves to raise children. It's incredibly hard, right? But in a group, all of a sudden it's doable. So those sort of lateral networks depend on really subtle interpersonal relationships where noticing what the other person noticing the other person's facial expression which reveals how they're feeling is enormously advantageous if you're going to maintain relations like that. Men in top down hierarchies, it doesn't really matter how everyone's feeling because men are much more programmed to sort of follow orders from an alpha male. So I mean, I know like in the platoon in Afghanistan, it was amazing. This one guy said to me, he said, you know, it's amazing, he said, some guys in the platoon straight up hate each other, but we'd all die for each other. In other words, the way they were all feeling personally had nothing to do with their level of commitment to the group. Right? That's not a classic feeling female way of being. And they're powerful, powerful advantages to both ways of being. When you put them together in a society, then that's a society that's very adapted for survival. So that said, yes, I have two young girls because I'm male, I think I have more to learn from women than from Men from girls than from boys. I kind of know how boys operate, I don't think. I think it would have been a profound joy to have a son, but it's an equally profound joy to have daughters. And I'm learning like crazy, right? I mean, it's, you know, they're different, right? And they bring out, I gotta say, they bring out something really wonderful in me that I'm not sure boys would have. You know, like, I mean, it's, it's. And also I'm older. I'm 59. Right. You know, if I had children at 29, maybe it'd be different. But I'm 59. I'm in a much gentler place in my life. And you know, the, the connection, the sense of connection, emotional connection and just love that I have with my family. Like, it's just, I mean, it's the ultimate. And I would say it's the ultimate freedom. You know, I'm, I'm no longer focused on myself. I'm focused on others in a very, very profound way. And that's, you know, in some ways being freed from the obsessive interest in oneself, which is adaptive when you're young. Being freed from that is a. Prof. I mean, that's maybe the final stage of freedom where you're not thinking about yourself anymore. Then you are really, truly released from fears, from all kinds of sort of ego driven actions. Like it's quite a profound state of freedom.
- [80:51]
Tom Bilyeu
That is interesting. And if anybody else had said that, I'd be like, amazing and that would be the end of that part of the conversation. But in your. Oh God, do you talk about it in the book I've now intake, I've taken in so much data from you, I forget where I picked everything up. But going back to the near death experience that you mentioned earlier, you said that there was a crippling amount of fear as you were coming out of that and realized that you almost died and left your kids alone. So it doesn't seem to me that that's an end to all fear. Maybe a different kind of fear. I don't have kids, so you're going to have to tell me. But talk to me now in terms of that near death experience and your relationship to fear and what that looks like.
- [81:31]
Sebastian Junger
Well, yeah, I mean, my fear was. It wasn't fear precisely. It was anguish. Wasn't over the fact that I myself had almost died. It was that had I died, I would have left my children fatherless. It was about them. Right. It wasn't the loss of myself that tormented me. I've nearly died a number of times overseas. And it, you know, it gets your attention, but I wouldn't say it's unduly tormenting. What is, really.
- [82:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Because there's no one else.
- [82:03]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. You know, and my wife too, of course. I mean, you know, like. I mean, you know, we're a family, and my wife would have suffered an incredible loss as well. But your peers are not quite vulnerable in the same way that one's children are. And the confusion that they. That the eldest would have experienced of having me disappear from her life at age three and a. Three and a half is so horrifying for me to contemplate that she might have had to go through that. Like, I just. I can't even think about it. It's just too. It's too upsetting to me. Right. So when I, you know, when I. When I woke up in the ICU the next day, I mean, I'll rewind for a moment. So I got to the. I had a aneurysm in my pancreatic artery. It ruptured. It was undiagnosed, asymptomatic. Ruptured without warning. Within a few minutes, I wasn't able to stand up. I'd lost so much blood into my own abdomen. About 10 minutes later, I started to go blind. The ambulance finally showed up, and it took another hour plus to get to the. The ER. By the time I got to the ER, I. I was down to about 10% of my blood. I was almost flatlined, but I was conscious. And they started to cut my neck open to put a line into my neck to try to get blood into me fast enough to save my life. And the doctor asked for permission to do that. I said yes. I had no idea I was dying. I mean, I was like, why would you do that? I mean, in case there's an emergency. He was like, this is the emergency, sir. Like, we need to do this. So I had no idea I was dying. I was very confused. And then suddenly this black hole opened up underneath me, and I started to get pulled down into it. I didn't know I was dying, but I did not want to go into that hole. And with every fiber of my being, I was like, I do not want to go down there. And just as I started getting pulled down into it, my father appeared. My father's dead, right? And he appeared above me and started sort of consoling me. And the last thing I remember saying what to the doctor was, you got it. You gotta. You Gotta move fast. You're losing me right now. I knew I was gone. I could feel it. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was going. And that was a long, painful process after that. That lasted about eight hours. They finally found the leak in me and plugged it and stabilized me.
- [84:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Were you awake through the whole thing?
- [84:31]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. Yep. I mean, I was in and out of consciousness. They had no anesthesia. They can't. If your vitals are that low, they can't give you anesthesia. It'll kill you. So I was waiting.
- [84:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, God.
- [84:42]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah. So I had no anesthesia at all, and. And my kidneys were failing. I mean, I was in agony. And it went on for eight hours. And so, you know, eventually, I. They. Eventually I survived. I mean, they were gen. I mean, the doctors were just. I mean, they saved my life. Straight up, like, they were geniuses. And they put a catheter in through a vein and threaded it through, and they. They did a catheter embolism that blocked the. They finally found the ruptured artery and blocked it with a catheter embolism. You know, they went in through my groin, you know, but I'm, like, conscious for all this, right? And. And, oh, my God. But they pulled it off, and I survived. And the next day, I woke up in the icu, and the. The nurse. The Lord said to me, it's a miracle you're alive. Like, nobody survives what you survived. You almost died yesterday, and it's a miracle. And I had no idea. I had no idea that there was an Amir. I mean, I had no idea what had happened. I just. You know, appendicitis. I mean, whatever. I mean, I didn't know what it was. I had no concept that I'd almost died. And immediately, what I was thinking about was my little girls and what that would have meant for the them. And then the nurse came back about an hour later and said, how are you doing, Mr. Younger? I mean, I was doing terribly. I was throwing up. I mean, I was alive, and I was throwing up blood, and I was in a huge amount of pain. And, you know, I was totally rattled by this news. And I said. I said, well, physically, I'm okay, but honestly, I'm really tormented by what you told me. It's really upsetting. And I almost died in my own driveway in front of my family. Like, what do I do with that? And. And she said, you know, it was so incredibly wise. She said, don't think about it as something scary. Think about it as something sacred. Like you were a lot, you were. You brought to the threshold of death and you got to see what it looked like. And then you came back and you saw something sacred. We're all headed there. I mean, she didn't say all this, but this is the sense I made of it later. Right. And you were privileged to see what you saw and to make it back. And that gave me something as an atheist, I'm not religious. My father's a physicist. Was a physicist. That gave me something to sort of like, it gave me a way of making some meaning out of it rather than just a sort of randomly terrifying thing that I barely survived.
- [87:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Were you tempted to give that a religious meaning?
- [87:09]
Sebastian Junger
No. No.
- [87:11]
Tom Bilyeu
It's interesting. So I know you're writing your next book or you have said that you're writing your next book about this incident. As you explore that. How are you going into the meaning of it all? Are you going into the physics of it all?
- [87:29]
Sebastian Junger
Well, meaning is what we. I mean, meaning is something we give to things, right? So sunset, sunsets aren't beautiful, right? They're beautiful. To us they're just sunsets, Right? You know what I mean? Like, they're just. It's the Earth rotating and the sun disappears over the horizon. That's all that is. It's not beautiful. It's a mechanical process, a physical process. Right. To us it's beautiful. Right. And you know, likewise, like the meaning that we give to life and the meaning that we give to death, it doesn't say anything really about the nature of existence. It says something about how we as humans create a place for ourselves in the world on this crazy planet we live on. So yeah, I'll be talking about meaning plenty. But understand that it's not a transcendent meaning that encompasses something like universal in existence. It's something very subjective that humans bring to the table to give themselves a sense of purpose, a sense of significance, you know, in a universe that otherwise might seem like a howling void.
- [88:37]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting. So as you, you've written so many fascinating books on like some of just the most profound topics. What is it about this book? And is, is the book specifically going to be about near death experiences or is it going to be about something else? And what is it that draws you to the thing that you're writing about?
- [89:01]
Sebastian Junger
Well, at this moment, I think I'm going to call it Pulse and it's going to be something along the lines of if it had a subtitle, it'll be something like what Keeps us alive and what it, what happens when we die. I'm really interested in the fact that a very thin piece of tissue ripped in my abdomen and within minutes I was actively dying. Right? I mean it was an artery, an artery wall tore. That's it. It's all that separates all of us from eternity, right? Just something that it's so thin you almost can't measure it. And I want to understand how that works. And how did they save my life? I mean they pumped 10 units of blood into my neck and they did it, they pulled it off. It's extraordinary. And then they threaded a tube into my vascular system and found use a fluoroscope to figure out where the leak was. And they popped something that looks like a pipe cleaner into the end of it. And then, and it blood coagulated around the pipe cleaner and they pulled the tube out and now I, you know, it's plumbing basically, right? It's really crazy plumbing. So I want to explain that, but really more deeply I want to, I want to talk about what I think about the fact that we all are alive. I want to talk a little bit about what it means to have some that, what the existence means. What's it mean that things exist, that we exist? Like seriously, like think of it, we take it for granted because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to function every day. But just stop for a moment, just think how mind blowing it is that there's a universe that exists and that we're conscious in it to contemplate it. That's insane. I mean really, like. And finally I had what's called a near death experience. Nde, right? And the, the dead ancestors showing up are, is very, very common, right? And there are mechanisms that explain hallucinations like that, like endogenous ketamine or DMT in the brain or low oxygen levels and stuff like all these mechanical processes in the brain that might explain hallucinations. But actually what they found is that it's only in people that are dying that they have some of those experiences where they see dead ancestors who come aid them or advise them or comfort them, right? You can give a person DMT or ketamine and they don't see their dead father. And I'm really curious about that. And I'm curious as the son of a scientist, as a non religious person, like how does that work? And are we encountering something about existence in a physical sense, right. That we just don't understand, you know, something about death that we, we don't Understand or maybe is beyond our understanding, but we're encountering a sort of edge of it in those experiences.
- [91:59]
Tom Bilyeu
That's super interesting. I can't wait to read that. I know that you said that the fear or going through that experience has sort of, you know, removed fear for you. You've also said previously that you have a pretty interesting relationship with fear in terms of your ability to compartmentalize it and to have sort of a functioning relationship. Did you develop that in being in these sort of war torn places or was that something else? And what is that ability?
- [92:30]
Sebastian Junger
Well, when I was young I was, I was a distance runner and I was, I was pretty good and I was, I would all, you know, the, you know, running the mile or the two mile or whatever was incredibly painful and I would get very, very anxious beforehand. Very fearful. Everybody did. It's like before a boxing match. It's just horrible. Or public speaking will do that to people. Right. And so what you learn to do is to compartmentalize. It's, it's a kind of denial. You're like, okay, you just remove yourself from experiencing that feeling of anxiety and fear. And it's essential for, I mean, you couldn't live without that, right? I mean, every time you went to the dentist, you would be incapacitated with dread. I mean, you have to be able to put that feeling somewhere else. And so I got very good at that because I was racing all the time and I just got very good at sort of like distancing myself from what I was feeling. And the, and then, you know, I was a later in my 20s, I was a climber for tree companies and some of it was really scary. You know, I'd work 70, 80, maybe 100ft in the air, hanging on a rope with a, with a chainsaw running in my hand, taking the tree down in pieces, sometimes large pieces of tree above my head, I'd have to cut it right, or it fall on top of me and you know, etc. And it was all, you know, pretty scary, right? And, and you have to be able to like separate yourself from your feeling of fear or you won't be able to do it. And you know when people say, oh, you know, men should get in touch with their feelings, it's like yes and no. I mean, you know, some feelings that you get in touch with prevent you from being from doing something that needs to be done. Like that ability to, to, to, to create that ability at emotional denial is absolutely crucial when you're doing something that is scary or horrifying and so I got good. And then when I was in war, I likewise, you know, I'd be about to do something that seemed like it was going to be pretty scary and dangerous, and I just. There's. I know the feeling. There's just like, you get more and more anxious. And then I cross this line and I just feel myself just turn to ice. I just, like, stop down. But I just. It's hard to explain. I just go dead and I don't care about anything. And, you know, it's classic, classic process. I mean, I'm very. I mean, a lot of people do this and, you know, and it happens very naturally if you go into shock, if you. If you're attacked, if someone attacks you right on the street and all of a sudden some guy's coming at you with a knife or something. That's never happened to me. But, you know, people, or if you're attacked by a. By a predator like a bear or a mountain lion, people will say that it's not that scary because they go into shock immediately and they are actually removed from their sense of fear, their sense of terror. It's an adaptive mechanism and you can learn to do it to yourself when you have to do something scary or unpleasant. And so, you know, I'm not exceptional. This is just. It's a human trait. That's necessary.
- [95:29]
Tom Bilyeu
I remember Jocko Willink talking about during his deployments, he would. I think he had kids even when he deployed, and so he would not keep photos of his wife and kids. He didn't want to constantly be reminded. To some extent, he just had to, like, shut that part of himself off so that he could focus on what he was doing.
- [95:49]
Sebastian Junger
That makes total sense to me. I mean, again, I think I would have had a very different experience with my near, you know, near death last year had I not had children. I mean, it was that, that, that event in the context of having children that made it so, you know, so anguishing.
- [96:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think that's part of why you fought so hard not to go into the pit that was opening up, or you would have always rejected that?
- [96:17]
Sebastian Junger
I don't know. I mean, you know, we're. I mean, I. Our, our bodies are, are adapted. You know, we're wired to survive. Your heart's going to keep beating as long as it possibly can. I mean, we're the product of millions of years of evolution that kept individuals alive as long as possible. So. But maybe unconsciously, I mean, I didn't consciously know that I was dying, and I'M so glad that I didn't, because I would have been terrified and anguished. I can't even imagine going through that, knowing I was dying. It would have been horrible. You know, again, mostly because of my family, but maybe unconsciously, you know, maybe if I didn't have children. I mean, I got to say, having stood in that. Having spent a little while in that twilight zone between life and death and come back with some memories of it, you know, death was just like a half step to the left. I mean, it was not a big deal. I mean, when you finally get to that place, the final transition is not a big one. It's a small one. And it looks rather mundane. It wasn't appealing, but it looked like a rather small step. And all you had to do is just. All I had to do. Literally, it felt like I just. If I just take one little step over to the left, that's it. And maybe I didn't do that because I had children and unconsciously, I was hanging on. I don't know. But I gotta say, they were shocked that I was conscious enough to be talking. I mean, I had 10% of my blood, my pulse, my.
- [97:46]
Tom Bilyeu
I can't believe that's possible.
- [97:47]
Sebastian Junger
I know. I. I mean, it needs to be neither, right? I mean, my blood pressure was 60 over 40. My hemoglobin count was 1.2. Right. You're supposed to be at 15.0. 1.2. Hemoglobin is the stuff that moves the oxygen around. Right. 1.2. Like, I mean. I mean, I Googled that. You can't even find it, or you can hardly find it. It's very rare to survive that. And I was still talking to the guy, right? And. And to the doctor. I can. I can't explain it. I mean, the doctor said is that you have an athlete's heart. You have a very strong heart. You have an athlete's body. And you know, this. You know, he didn't say this, but in my mind, I'm like, this is the race I was. This is the race I was preparing for my whole life. It wasn't the chat, you know. Championship cross country, Division 3 cross country in 1984 at Wesleyan in Connecticut, right? It was this. This was the championship. And I. And I. And I did it, like, amazing.
- [98:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus, dude. So extraordinary. I cannot wait for that next book. But I have to say, Freedom Smash for me, it was so interesting. Yeah, you. You are a very profound voice in literature. It's. Yeah. Really, really incredible, man. I'm so grateful that you put it out. Where can people connect with you? Follow along as you, you know, promote freedom and beyond that.
- [99:07]
Sebastian Junger
Yeah, so if you go to my website, sebastianyounger.com and it's j u n g e r sebastian younger.com from there you can get to Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff. I don't really do social media, but I have some people helping me with it right now because the book is out and they're doing a great job. So. And so everything you need to find out is on my website. You can go to Amazon or preferably your local bookstore, which should be open now. Support your local bookstore. You can go or to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and order the book if it interests you.
- [99:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Love it, guys. I think it really will interest you. He doesn't tell you what to think about it, but he introduces these just really incredible ideas that are going to make you think a long time after you finish the book, and which is very high praise indeed. And speaking of things that you will think about long after they are over, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.