Sebastian Junger is a journalist, author, and filmmaker whose work has taken us into the lives of hardworking men and veterans for the last twenty years, whether it's in The Perfect Storm, or his Academy-award nominated documentary Restrepo. (He is also the co-owner of the excellent Manhattan bar The Half King.)
In that work, where he's embedded in communities, he's learned something else: what it means to be part of a group, or "tribe," and how that community clashes with modern life.
In his new book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, he's discussing the history of PTSD and how it manifests in veterans, making the argument that much of this trauma is rooted in the isolation of modern life. He touched on this idea in a 2015 feature for Vanity Fair:
"The shocking disconnect for veterans isn’t so much that civilians don’t know what they went through—it’s unrealistic to expect anyone to fully understand another person’s experience—but that what they went through doesn’t seem relevant back home. Given the profound alienation that afflicts modern society, when combat vets say that they want to go back to war, they may be having an entirely healthy response to the perceived emptiness of modern life."
Junger will be in conversation about Tribe with Negotiation and Conflict Resolution professor Peter Coleman and NECR program director Beth Fisher-Yoshida on Friday, November 4th.
Learn more about the Master's in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution.
