Sebastian Junger

They weren't defeated from the outside.

It was infighting.

When people... When I talk to left-wing people about, you know, aggression, right, and how it's... How it's... Sort of bad... Like...

I was maladaptive with the anthropological term, like maladaptive.

It produces bad outcomes.

Right.

And I'm like, look, arguably the most aggressive man on the planet in history was Genghis Khan.

And he left the largest genetic footprint on the human genome, on the human race.

Of any individual ever, right?

So aggression at that level in Darwinian terms, right, is absolutely rewarded.

The shy guy that was writing poetry had one kid, right?

Genghis Khan, 11% of the population of the area that he conquered is descended directly from him.

He's their daddy.

That was because of his aggression, right?

So you have to understand that in evolutionary terms, aggression is richly rewarded.

So the trick for human culture is to blunt that with some cultural values that bring people back into a place of peace and dignity and cooperation and blah, blah, blah.

Right.

But just don't tell me that aggression is counterproductive.

Right.

It's complete nonsense.