Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

"Junger, an author and a journalist, wrote two related books, one is called Tribe and the other is called War . These are about the experiences he had while embedded with American troops in Afghanistan. They are descriptive. What I really like about Tribe is that he talks about the importance of community. We, as a modern society, have really lost that sense of ‘tribe.’ We evolved for hundreds of thousands of years in tribes on the African savannah. Now society is so atomized. We think we’re connecting through social media on our phones and computers but we’re actually becoming more disconnected than ever. A record level of adults are alone and a much higher percentage are single than at any other time recorded. “A big part of politics is trying to get people to behave the way you want them to behave.” As horrific as combat is, the experience of serving in the military creates a sense of community that many miss when they return to civilian life. This is a brilliant insight into the nature of coalitional psychology. When in a dangerous environment, things that ordinarily divide a society, whether race or politics, tend to dissolve because everyone needs to have each other’s back to survive. When people come home what they really miss is that sense of unity and community. Junger suggests that what those returning from war experience is a feeling of isolation that we must work to overcome. Society is suffering from not just political polarization but also social polarization. That lesson is really important. It’s a really short and brilliant examination of that issue. It’s directly related, in that it examines the psychological impact of combat experience. And Tribe provides other insights through its examination of in-group and out-group behavior. It’s a metanarrative for the kinds of conflicts that happen between states."