Sebastian Junger
speaker
2,422 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jul 2024
last heard 13 Jun
Sebastian Junger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And so those behaviors are self-serving,
even though they look altruistic but they're altruistic in a self-serving way or they wouldn't exist right and um so i think yes i think the trade-off of modern society is that all of a sudden we are not individually needed by our group in fact we can't even identify our group what's your survival group like what is it right like it's your neighborhood probably not right you're what's like the
pta the parents organization at this kids school no like i don't know who would you die for like your family maybe right and and so there's enormous loss of connection there and you know they've they've done studies where they've shown that um the more affluent a society the the higher the levels generally of
anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, right?
So affluent Western society has incredibly high levels of all those things.
In really poor societies, I think the comparison was rural Nigeria to North America, I think was the study that I read, now 20 years old.
But I think it was rural Nigeria, the poorer the community in rural Nigeria, the more collectively people had to act, right?
There was, as it were, one well, or literally one well, and everyone had to get their water out of it.
the poor of the community, the better off psychologically people were, even though there are great, great stresses to poverty, despite that.
But those afflictions of depression, suicide, anxiety, just...
When people are banding together to survive, suicide in some ways is a selfish act.
Depression is isolating.
You're not functional.
Anxiety, likewise.
And when you're needed, those things sort of go away.
And so in some ways, the trick is to be in a community that is struggling enough that you are needed on a daily basis.
And your mental health will probably improve.
That's how, I mean, listen, that's adaptive, right?
I mean, you think about humans, like that we have behaviors that allow us to survive.
Of course, as things get better, we act, as things get worse, we act better.
Showing 421–440 of 2,422 · page 22 of 122
← Previous
Next →