When most people think about war, they think about senseless killing, brutality, violence and horror. But when journalist Sebastian Junger thinks about war — even though he has witnessed firsthand how war is all of those things — he also thinks about meaning, purpose, brotherhood and community. It's why, he posits, so many veterans actually miss war when they return home. As Junger argues, war gives people all of the things that religion aspires to impart to people and often fails. War, he says, delivers.
Junger was a war correspondent for many decades. His reporting on the front lines of Afghanistan was captured in his best-selling book, War, and was made into an Academy Award winning documentary, Restrepo, which follows a platoon of U.S. soldiers in one of the bleakest, most dangerous outposts in Afghanistan. Through his raw, unfiltered, on the ground reporting, perhaps no one has done more to illuminate the full picture and reality of war.
One of those realities is that men seek and need danger. They have a deep desire to prove their valor. They find community and meaning in crisis. And yet, much of the Western world lives without any kind of high-stakes, high-risk danger at all. It is, of course, a great blessing we don't live in constant crisis. But our comfort, safety and affluence, he argues, come with unexamined costs.
So for today, a conversation with Sebastian Junger about reporting from the most dangerous regions of the world, his new book Freedom, what it means to be human, and how danger is inextricably tied to living a meaningful life.
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This was really interesting to me and then it went completely off the rails...I started wondering whether SJ works for US Intelligence and/or is this podcast propaganda to warm the American people up to the idea of drafting Americans (a la Vietnam) to fight the hot war in Ukraine?
Great show! Like many others have suggested, his comments were a little tainted by TDS, but certainly not enough to detract a lot from the episode. However, I'd love for someone with Bari Weiss' interviewing ability to honestly engage with someone like Mr. Junger, who believes the US was in actual danger on Jan 6, on the following basis.
During the Kavanaugh hearings, protestors completely took over the Hart Senate building. This building is literally a stone's throw from the Capital and a place where substantial government work occurs. It houses the offices of many Senators and has many committee rooms. The protestors physically threatened Senators and staff and occupied Senate offices. The protestors had the express intention of indefinitely obstructing the Senate from installing Kavanaugh as Kennedy's replacement. They obstructed proceedings concerning two branches of the government (Senate and SCOTUS) both of which are equal to the Executive branch. The demonstrations were loudly encouraged by Democrat leaders of the Senate and House. Does Mr. Junger feel that the Kavanaugh protests were an "insurrection" that imperiled the nation? If not, please explain how the Jan 6 riots were different in substance from the actions and intentions of the Kavanaugh protestors?