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Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging QUOTES

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging QUOTES

1 " I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I’ve done it so many times. First, there’s a kind of shock at the comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about, depending on their views: the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign born, the President, or the entire US government. It is a level of contempt that is usually reserved for enemies in wartime except that now it is applied to our fellow citizens. Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

2 " Women tend to act heroically within their own moral universe, regardless of whether anyone else knows about it - donating more kidneys to nonrelatives than men do, for example. Men, on the other hand, are far more likely to risk their lives at a moment's notice, and that reaction is particularly strong when others are watching, or when they are part of a group. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

3 " Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

4 " Today's veterans often come home to find that, although they're willing to die for their country, they're not sure how to live for it. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

5 " Western society is so unappealing. On a material level, it is clearly more comfortable and protected from the hardships of the natural world. But, as societies become more affluent they tend to require more, rather than less, time and commitment by the individual, and it's possible that many people feel that affluence and safety simply aren't a good trade for freedom. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

6 " Poor people are forced to share their time and resources more than wealthy people are. And as a result, they live in closer communities. Inter-reliant poverty comes with its own stresses, and certainly isn't the American ideal, but its much closer to our evolutionary heritage than affluence. A wealthy person who has 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. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

7 " To make matters worse, politicians occasionally accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their own country—a charge so destructive to group unity that most past societies would probably have just punished it as a form of treason. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

8 " Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

9 " 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. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

10 " In this sense, littering is an exceedingly petty version of claiming a billion-dollar bank bailout or fraudulently claiming disability payments. When you throw trash on the ground, you apparently don’t see yourself as truly belonging to the world that you’re walking around in. And when you fraudulently claim money from the government, you are ultimately stealing from your friends, family, and neighbors—or somebody else’s friends, family, and neighbors. That diminishes you morally far more than it diminishes your country financially. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

11 " What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

12 " The public is often accused of being disconnected from its military, but frankly it's disconnected from just about everything. Farming, mineral extraction, gas and oil production, bulk cargo transport, logging, fishing, infrastructure construction—all the industries that keep the nation going are mostly unacknowledged by the people who depend on them most. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

13 " How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage? "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

14 " Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

15 " When people are actively engaged in a cause their lives have more purpose... with a resulting improvement in mental health, "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

16 " Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. The "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

17 " If you want to make a society work, then you don’t keep underscoring the places where you’re different—you underscore your shared humanity, "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

18 " An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain," one of the survivors wrote. "The equality of all men". "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

19 " In effect, humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable, and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences.” The "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

20 " It may be worth considering whether middle-class American life—for all its material good fortune—has lost some essential sense of unity that might otherwise discourage alienated men from turning apocalyptically violent. "

― Sebastian Junger , Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging