174 Quotes by Sebastian Junger

A wealthy person who never had to rely on help and resources from his community is leading a privileged life that falls way outside more than a million years of human experience. Financial independence can lead to isolation, and isolation can put people at a greatly increased risk of depression and suicide. This might be a fair trade for a generally wealthier society- but a trade it is.

A rampage shooting has never happened in an urban ghetto, for example; in fact, indiscriminate attacks at schools almost always occur in otherwise safe, predominantly white towns. Around half of rampage killings happen in affluent or upper-middle-class communities, and the rest tend to happen in rural towns that are majority-white, Christian, and low-crime.

When you throw trash on the ground, you apparently don’t see yourself as truly belonging to the world that you’re walking in.

The eternal argument over so-called entitlement programs – and, more broadly, over liberal and conservative thought – will never be resolved because each side represents an ancient and absolutely essential component of our evolutionary past.

It makes absolutely no sense to make sacrifices for a group that, itself, isn’t willing to make sacrifices for you.

Of the primary emotions, fear is the one that bears most directly on survival. Children show fear. Adults try not to, maybe because it’s shameful, or, in some circumstances, dangerous. The fear response is automatic, though, and your body runs through its reflexes whether you want it to or not.

The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates – we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees – and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them.

The findings are in keeping with something called self-determination theory, which holds that human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered “intrinsic” to human happiness and far outweigh “extrinsic” values such as beauty, money, and status. Bluntly.

Civilians understand soldiers to have a kind of baseline duty, and that everything above that is considered “bravery.” Soldiers see it the other way around: either you’re doing your duty or you’re a coward.