 I'm Brian Buckwalder with DAV, and I'm joined by Sebastian Younger. Sebastian is the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in Belmont, War, Tribe, and Freedom. As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Sebastian is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film Restrepo, a feature-length documentary co-directed with Tim Hetherington, was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Restrepo, which chronicled the deployment of a platoon of US soldiers in Afghanistan, is widely considered to have broken new ground in war reporting. Sebastian and Tim are the 2011 recipients of DAV's Bugle Award. This award recognizes the outstanding contributions of members of the media in support of disabled veterans. Sadly, this was a posthumous award honor for Tim, who was killed on April 11, 2011 while covering the Libyan Civil War. Sebastian is also the founder and director of Vets Town Hall. Sebastian, thanks so much for joining me today. My pleasure. I enjoy talking about all this, so thank you. Yeah, I just, I do want to dive into your book, Tribe. I know it's not, it's not your most recent book, which is Freedom, but Tribe was really a fascinating book into how humans were essentially designed to be tribal creatures, living in close proximity to each other and working together for survival. But you say in your book that the United States has largely moved away from this way of life, right? And how so? Yeah, I mean we're so, I'll put it even more strongly, not only are we tribal creatures, we're social primates, right? And as social primates, as humans we are uniquely vulnerable in the natural world. We don't have long claws, we don't have sharp teeth, we can't climb trees, we can't run very fast. We get our strength and really our dominance from our ability to speak and relate with one another and form close groups and make sacrifices for one another. It's something that very few other mammals do and it makes us dominant in the world. The problem of modern society is that it has solved almost all the survival problems. Like that is now its survival problem in a weird ironic way. We don't need each other in close proximity to go to the supermarket and buy food, to have a roof over our heads, etc. In fact, we might not even know personally all the people that built the things and grew the things that we depend on for our survival. That's a completely new circumstance in human society and it's an amazing liberation from the tyranny of the group. But it also is an emotional impoverishment that comes with it that can be really crippling the people. And so you know what I would say is that when people feel ill at ease, when they feel alienated, when they feel depressed, when they feel suicidal, whether you're a combat veteran or not, it doesn't matter. This is affecting everybody. One of the things you may be suffering from isn't your own particular mental illness. It may be in a weird way a kind of healthy response to the sort of asocial stresses of the society that we've built. Yeah, you've essentially said that people can walk through their entire lives completely lonely surrounded by people. I mean, is that that's sort of what you're getting at, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, we live in a society of strangers and that would be okay if we also live clustered in small groups of people that we sort of knew really well and depended on. But you know, I mean, I grew up in a sort of like middle class suburb, right? I mean, we didn't depend in every family had their own home. And we didn't depend on the other families for our survival. My dad had a job and we had a car and you know, whatever, we didn't need anybody. And when you don't need other people, it's hard for you yourself to feel needed. And when humans don't feel needed, they get depressed. You know, one of the reasons that when people retire, they get depressed and sometimes suicidal is that it's clear that society doesn't need their services anymore. When soldiers come back from a deployment, whether they were in actual combat or not, most soldiers actually were not in combat, but it doesn't matter. They were in a close supportive environment where they were very much needed by the other men and women in the platoon they were in, and all engaged in this thing that's much bigger than themselves. And then they come back to the society and they don't appear to be needed by anyone. And in fact, the government in all of its sort of like good intentions is all too willing to say, you know what, you have 100% disability. We will backroll the rest of your life. We, you know, the subtext there of a 100% disability service connected disability is the subtext. Unfortunately, is we don't need you. We can get the nation can get by without you, right? Which is the wrong message to send to anybody. And so, you know, how do we take care of our veterans in the very real ways that they need, but not inadvertently send this message of you're now superfluous, you know, you can you can live in your parents' basement and watch TV and it doesn't matter like we're good. And that's a that if you want to create a depressed alcoholic who will start thinking about suicide, like that's a pretty good way to do it. So that's the needle that we have to thread as a society. Yeah. And you've you've seen this this tribal connection that service members have deployed firsthand. What did you see? Was it something that you weren't expecting? Or did you kind of have an idea going into it? What was it like to be I don't know if an outsider's the right word, because you probably became part of the tribe at some point. But what was it like to be in that in that situation experience? What service members see on deployment? Well, yeah, I mean, I started as an outsider by, you know, halfway through the deployment, I, you know, I had I got my share of bumps and scrapes over there as well, and was sort of included in the platoon on on virtually every level other than that I wasn't carrying weapon, which would cross a journalistic boundary. So, but I felt I mean, it was sort of intoxicating. I was like, wow, this is what it feels like to belong to a group. And I don't mean a football team and everyone goes, you know, goes home at the end of practice, right? I mean, a group where you all you're bunking together, you're sharing your meals together, you're doing everything together. And that feeling is for me is sort of encapsulated by what one of the soldiers said to me, a guy named Brendan, who I am so very, very close to, he said, you know, he was sort of marveling. He was like, you know, it's amazing. There's guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other. But we would all die for each other. The amazing thing about that kind of fraternity in combat is that it doesn't depend on how you feel. It depends on your shared recognition, you're all part of a group. And the group is bigger and larger and more important than you individually are. And that you must be prepared to make sacrifices for that group. And in return, the group will make sacrifices for you. And it doesn't depend on feelings. It's a question of loyalty. And the only time that I've seen that arise spontaneously in civilian society is during a crisis during a hurricane or a tornado or a flood. Or as I looked at in my book tribe, the Blitz in London during World War II. Class differences disappeared. Everyone pitched in. Those who didn't pitch in were ostracized. And there was what was described at the time as a kind of social utopia where people were measured evaluated by their efforts towards the common good rather than how much money they were born with or what title came after their name or what happened. Yeah. And tying this back to kind of the service member returning from deployment. It's something that I think all of us who've ever been deployed have seen. It's almost like a culture shock coming home. You come home. You've been into this this environment that is completely different than society as you remember it. So it's like a culture shock coming back to the United States. And then you kind of feel disconnected, I think from from the community around you. I mean, it fades over time. But you know, the thank you for your service and all this stuff almost it's hard to connect with that. But I think that's where like you're starting to see this like divide between civilians and military because there's not a there's not like a connection that a shared connection. You mentioned that in just a few seconds ago. Well, yeah. I mean, in all circumstances, people affiliate with other people that they've shared experiences with. So people who were in prison together feel affiliated with other prisoners, people who went to a certain college together were on a certain football team. You know, likewise, I mean, it could be good things are bad when when you share experiences you deepen connection. And so what happens with soldiers is that they share experiences overseas and they come back in the country that they fought to defend. The vast majority did not share those experiences. And so there's a lack of connection. And you know, I think during the sort of more all encompassing wars of say World War Two, for example. Okay, the country wasn't in combat. But I mean Pearl Harbor was attacked, right? And you know, mainland America in some ways. I mean, it was the state of Hawaii. But also there were enormous sacrifices by the populace during World War Two. And so that did make it feel like somewhat of a shared experience. Not true now, right? A much smaller military than World War Two. And the consequences were not at all borne by even by taxpayers. I mean, all was sort of, as I understand, put on a kind of national credit card and the debt, you know, we basically increased the debt rather than pay it down at the time. So it's understandable that soldiers feel unconnected to the society they come back to, which is a pity for everybody. It's pity for the soldiers and for the civilians. And so what do you think is maybe the problem or the potential problem from that divide, like from that lack of common understanding or, you know, like you mentioned, like the shared public meaning in the Israeli military forces, you talk about World War Two and trauma, but is there is there a problem that's going to start arising if we don't reverse this or somehow address this issue as a country? Well, you know, it's very hard for, I mean, the natural human group, based on sort of anthropological studies is, you know, 40, 50 people, 100 people, a couple hundred people, maybe, I mean, that's the sort of like maximum group that you can emotionally affiliate with. Beyond that, it starts to fracture a little bit. And we, you know, we are doing something. And by that by we, I mean, you know, modern nations are doing something unheard of in human evolution, which is to deliberately, consciously create groups of hundreds of millions of people. So how do you keep those hundreds of millions feeling invested in and willing to sacrifice for a common goal? It's a very, very hard, right? I mean, my shared values with you are not obvious. I mean, we might share values and goals, but I don't know, right? I mean, you're another American. So theoretically, we do, but I don't know that on a personal level. You know, if we went camping for 10 days, I might start to feel it more personally, or we're in some situation of hardship, I might feel it more personally, but right now it's totally abstract. So how do you, how do you do that? And I think the fracture that veterans feel when they come back is a symptom of a larger, a larger problem, which is a general fracturing in this society. There's fractures between the races, between economic groups, but between political parties. There's fractures on every conceivable level. And, you know, it is dangerous and it's sad, and it really flies in the face of a very profound and beautiful American ideal. I don't know how to solve that. I mean, boy, I wish I did. I wish somebody did, right? But, you know, one thing I think you can do that we can do is create a sort of a form of ritual that binds soldiers back into society when they come back. Now, every society in the world has had to deal with the threat, with the threat of violence and with the reality of warfare, virtually every society. And when you train people, you know, in most cases, it's men. When you train men, young men to kill and to defend each other with their lives, when you train them in that way, and then you bring them back to the software environment of society and women and children and everything else that they fought to defend, when you bring them back, you have to kind of psychologically decommission them. And tribal societies do this very effectively. So one of the things I looked at was the gourd ceremony that was practiced by some of the tribes of the Great Plains, of the Southern Great Plains in the United States. And basically what they would do is they bring the warriors back from combat and the each warrior would have the chance to sing or dance or perform or retell what he did to protect his community, his tribe on the battlefield, who he killed. I mean, I'm sure a lot of it was sort of boasting, right? But what he did to, so not only is that cathartic for the warrior, but it allows slash forces the rest of the community to participate morally in the violence that was conducted on their behalf. So when you bring American soldiers back from overseas and allow them to speak to their community, maybe a similar thing could happen. And that's how we came up with something called vets town hall, where you open up town halls on Veterans Day. It doesn't have to be Veterans Day, but there's a nice sort of symbolism there. And it's not open for other business on Veterans Day. It's open for use for this organization. You open it up on Veterans Day, you turn on the PA system, and you allow veterans from any war who served in any capacity. I don't care if you're a supply clerk in Korea, it doesn't matter. You serve this nation in uniform. You have the right, the opportunity to speak for 10 minutes about what it felt like. And some veterans are going to be absolutely furious that they had to fight the war that we all set them to fight, right? Some vets are going to be very proud. Some vets are going to be so sad, grieving so profoundly at the brothers and sisters that they may have lost that they won't even really be able to speak very well at all. But all of that is the experience of war, the consequences of war. And then that starts to integrate, starts to bind communities to themselves. And when you bind communities, you start to bind the nation. And that's my great hope for this, not only that it will help vets, in the long run, it'll help the nation because if the nation is psychically ill, veterans will never recover from their particular wounds of war. Yeah. I know that this is such an important conversation to have. Like you said, I mean, it's cathartic, it's healing, it's binding. How do we get people interested on both sides? I think there might be a tendency to not want to confront, you know, we want to feel good. And sometimes you might not feel comfortable with having these conversations. But how do we get people engaged on this? Where are you seeing with these vets' town halls and the ones that have happened and the ones coming up? Well, the wonderful thing about reality is that it flies in the face of all political ideology. So no matter where you are in the political spectrum, if you go to one of these events, you will be hearing things from veterans, from the heroes, as it were, that fly in the face of what you assume politically to be true. And if you're a diehard patriot, publican, blah, blah, blah, you're going to hear veterans, people that you admire, saying, God damn the war you made us fight. You know what I mean? And then if I grew up in a very liberal environment, very anti-war, very pacifist, you could be someone from like my political community that is faced with the prospect of a young person saying, serving in the military and deploying overseas saved my life. I was a mess before that and now I'm a productive citizen. Thank you, US Army, whatever. And the great blessing of this is it gets people to give up some of their ideology. And of course, ideology is what's going to kill this country, politically, socially, economically, morally. Ideology will kill it dead. And I say that I happen to be a Democrat. I see that equally about my people as about Republicans. And we have to break that down. And I do feel that veterans who dropped their political beliefs in combat instantly, right? No one cares if they're fighting next to a Democrat or Republican, or if they're gay or straight or God knows what, like they really don't care. And that in that example, our nation may save itself. Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, oftentimes when you go to war, you're fighting for the person to the left or right, you're not necessarily fighting for the grander reason. I think that's maybe something that some people don't realize that it's like you said, there's very little judgment or talking about ideology in those moments. So yeah. Well, Sebastian, thank you so much. For our viewers, if you're interested in more about this topic, we're going to be talking more about it on November 3rd for the 2022 DAV Distinguished Speaker Series hosted by the Veterans Legal Clinic at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School and the Harvard Law Armed Forces Association. This webinar discussion titled, Bridging the Gap, Sebastian Younger on the dangers of the military civilian divide is going to be the title of the conversation. It's free and you can register to attend the webinar through our Facebook page or through the link in the description. Again, Sebastian, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you.