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Pondering the big questions, with Sebastian Junger
317 Plays27 minutes ago
One of the tragedies of modernity is how it has stripped away the time (or if we’re being honest, the inclination) to think about the big questions. Most of us no longer spend much time reflecting on the big questions. Which is why it was such a privilege for Will to speak to someone who does.
Sebastian Junger is a #1 New York Times best-selling author, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, and a celebrated war correspondent. His books, which include 'The Perfect Storm' (later adapted into a blockbuster Hollywood film), 'Freedom', 'Tribe', 'War', and 'In My Time of Dying', are bracing reminders to reflect on what it means to be human.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Fire at Will' Podcast
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. One of the tragedies of modernity is how it has stripped away the time and, if we're being honest, perhaps the inclination to think about the big questions.
00:00:39
Speaker
for the vast majority of human history. Those long nights were filled under the stars with reflections on life, death, and the meaning that we attached to both.
00:00:52
Speaker
Most of us no longer spend as much time thinking about the big questions, which is why it is such a privilege to speak to someone who does.
Introducing Sebastian Junger
00:01:02
Speaker
Sebastian Junger is a number one New York Times bestselling author, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, and a celebrated war correspondent.
00:01:12
Speaker
His books, which include The Perfect Storm, which was later adapted into a blockbuster Hollywood film, Freedom, tribe, war, and in my time of dying are bracing reminders to reflect on what it means to be human.
00:01:26
Speaker
Sebastian, thank you very much for joining me on the show. My pleasure. As I was saying to you just off camera, its sometimes you're actually a difficult man to prepare an interview for because your work is so far-reaching in its scope.
00:01:41
Speaker
ah So what I've done is I've ah done a ah buffet approach. I've picked out some of my favorite lines from your different books, and I want to use them as jumping off points for your reflections on the world today.
00:01:52
Speaker
Awesome. Fantastic.
The Necessity of Reciprocity in Group Sacrifices
00:01:55
Speaker
So, number one, it makes absolutely ah you said sorry it makes absolutely no sense to make sacrifices for a group that itself isn't willing to make sacrifices for you.
00:02:08
Speaker
This resonated with me when I think about young people today. I think there are so many young people across the West who feel disaffected. you look at, and I think particularly this would be the case for young men, you look at the way that ah changing notions of, of but if you look at changing notions of masculinity in society, you look at a decline in religiosity, there are all these different ways in which young men, I think, feel disaffected.
00:02:33
Speaker
They feel like they are, they don't have a sense of purpose. And you add on to the fact, the reality that many of them feel like the quality of life that they will have will be lower than their parents. How do you reflect on on how young people feel in the world today and that sense of purpose?
00:02:47
Speaker
And perhaps how do you go about instilling a sense of purpose for young people, keeping in mind that, say, religion for you wouldn't be one of those one of those sources? Yeah, I mean, so there's so many moving parts there, right? So there's the fact that we live in a modern society in a way that's very, very different from most of our human history, when each person was intimately connected to the food they ate, the shelter that they ah you know lived under, ah and they they knew most of the people in their small community that they depended on for survival. I mean, that's you that is what it means to be human, but it no longer means that for much of...
00:03:25
Speaker
for for most of the modern, quote, modern Western world, right? so So yeah people are disconnected from the things that keep them alive. One of the ways that humans ah defended themselves against a hostile environment and hunted very dangerous animals was with something called the Male Coalition, right? And it's a group of of male peers, you know, ranging from, you know, 16 to, you know, maybe 40, right?
00:03:52
Speaker
ah And, you know, they as as a group, the the sort of rule was that each individual did not matter if if you were committed to risking your life to protect the other the other males in this group. You were all more likely to survive the engagement with the enemy, with the engagement with the saber-toothed tiger, whatever it may be. You needed that so a ah sort of coalitionary approach to deal with these dangers. Yeah.
00:04:19
Speaker
And, um you know, women ah were not part of these coalitions. They did not mostly engage in warfighting and dangerous hunting. But they did this other thing, which was incredibly dangerous, which was childbirth, right?
00:04:31
Speaker
the The mortality risk of childbirth was 1% per birth before Western medicine. So you have the two sexes doing these different things that are both very painful, difficult, and dangerous.
00:04:42
Speaker
So what happens in modern society is that we have mechanized... And use technology on the the sort of like the the the basic problems that males faced for hundreds of thousands of years, right?
00:04:57
Speaker
We are no longer hunting. Most of us are no longer fighting the enemy on the outskirts of our village, etc., etc. Those traditional male roles have, thank God, what a blessing, right, disappeared from our daily experience. The problem the downside of that is that I think it leaves young men wondering, like, how do I prove I'm worthy, right? How do i prove that i'm that I'm mature, that I'm an adult, that i'm an add adult that that that I will sacrifice myself for my brothers and my community? Like, all these basic definitions of manhood that don't have equivalence for women.
00:05:30
Speaker
And um so so yeah that instinct, that protective male instinct, Sometimes it happens very naturally. Like there was a mass shooting in a town called Aurora, Colorado.
00:05:42
Speaker
a young A deranged young man with a rifle started shooting people in a dark theater. And I think 12 people were killed and three or four of them, so a quarter of them or a third of them, were were young men killed because they stepped in...
00:05:56
Speaker
in front of their girlfriends, right, these are teenagers, to protect them from the bullets. And so there's an instinctive response there, you you know, that I think, frankly, many, many women would have with a child, right? I mean, there's the sort of division of labor of human society.
00:06:10
Speaker
You can see it play out in moments of crisis like that. So what do you do now?
Modern Society's Disconnect and Existential Crisis
00:06:15
Speaker
what What do you do now to make young men feel like they're needed? They're not that needed. I mean, they're not that needed for their particular maleness, right?
00:06:23
Speaker
And there aren't really that many jobs that require that sort of coalitionary risk-taking behavior. Firemen are one, you know, whatever. it's obtain In the military, obviously, in combat, you know, it does exist. But the U.S. s is a nation of, you know, 320 million people. That's a yeah lot of young men to give, you know, useful purpose to. Yeah.
00:06:45
Speaker
And so I don't, you know, I don't know. i don't know what the answer is, but I think it's a um it's a grievous ailment, a psychological ailment for our entire society. The thing is that if you are cynical or if you're pessimistic and you play this out and you look at the impact of AI, for example, which will continue to make more and more and more jobs redundant, the the the pessimist in me sees this problem actually getting worse and worse as opposed to there being some sort of a way to be able to to find some sort of reversion.
00:07:18
Speaker
Well, it'll get worse and worse for western modern Western society. I mean, there's a lot of the world that is so mired in poverty, AI actually isn't going to be part of a person's daily routine in, say, South Sudan, right? And so, i you know, and I don't know how the population divides up, but Western society, I'm not even sure it's a majority of the world population. So, yes, you're right for our the society that you and I seem to live in, ah but that is hardly what humanity is.
00:07:45
Speaker
And ah you know will Will Western society sort of psychologically crash and burn? Will depression rates, anxiety rates, addiction rates, um suicide rates rise steadily?
00:08:00
Speaker
So much as they have in the last 10 years or so since the introduction of the smartphone, will they rise so much that um it cripples society? Yeah, maybe. Right. That's the downside to the thing to you know, to a force that actually is also bringing a lot of good. You know, I mean, everything has a cost and a benefit.
00:08:18
Speaker
That may just be the cost that we pay. and That's a nice segue to another line that piqued my curiosity, which was that people in wealthy countries suffer depression at as much as eight times the rate as they do in poor countries.
00:08:33
Speaker
I'm keen to explore that phenomena. Why is that the case? Well, you know, I'm guessing, and it in like let me just, the caveat is that it's for it's it can be quite hard to precisely measure things as um as as elusive and sort of soft-edged as depression, just to say that, you know, like firm numbers are a little tough to get but to get at. But the the World Health Organization did do an international survey of depression rates around the world, and what they did the What they did seem to find ah was that modern affluent society had higher rates of addiction, depression, suicidal behavior, things like that, than very poor societies poor agrarian societies, poor rural societies and ah in in the in the developing
Community Connections as Psychological Buffers
00:09:22
Speaker
world.
00:09:22
Speaker
right and So my guess is, and this is just me you know like guessing, because the World Health Organization did not explain it, but my guess is that, you know, along with all the benefits of affluence, one of the things you actually lose is community connections.
00:09:39
Speaker
When you don't have money, when you can't hire someone to fix your roof, you and your neighbors have to do it, right? it's the It's the sort of like, ah um you know, there's the Amish-style barn raising, right? And i mean I'm sure you know who the Amish are. It's an agrarian community.
00:09:56
Speaker
It's a technology-averse community in eastern eastern United States. And and You know, the whole community will get together to raise a post and be embarked that no one person could do but on their own. It takes the whole community.
00:10:09
Speaker
but if When you can just hire contractors to that work, you lose all of those rich connections. And we know, absolutely, we know that social connections are a buffer. against psychological troubles, anxiety, depression, addiction, all kinds of things.
00:10:25
Speaker
They found even with rats, if you ah if you um traumatize a rat and put it in cage by itself, it will not recover psychologically. If you traumatize a rat... And put it in a cage with other rats within a week, it's it's indistinguishable from the other rats, right?
00:10:40
Speaker
And they've done similar things with with addiction with rats, right? You put – to addict a rat to something, whatever it is, fentanyl or something, you put it in a community of other rats, it actually does quite well by itself. It it basically dies of its addiction. so So affluence allows us to be isolated.
00:10:55
Speaker
And that isolation is a is sort of a freedom from the community mores and all that. But it also comes with the downside is that we are psychologically vulnerable and poor societies.
00:11:06
Speaker
ah If you're literally getting your water from the same well as everyone else in the sort of West African village, ah you you have social connections that actually are quite helpful in terms of depression.
00:11:19
Speaker
So perhaps a techno optimist would say that perhaps we haven't lost community as much as it has migrated through to digital channels. So we're obviously doing this conversation via a ah zoom call.
00:11:31
Speaker
Uh, many people, in fact, I think most now in America meet their prospective partners via dating apps, uh, Working from home has become commonplace in a way it wasn't almost five years ago.
00:11:43
Speaker
Can you actually replicate that same level of community community ah in a digital realm compared to what we have had as in face-to-face human connection for most of human history?
00:11:56
Speaker
Well, the data is not looking good for that theory, right? I mean, yeah yeah in the 10 or so years since the smartphone became absolutely ubiquitous in people's pockets, including in the pockets of teenagers, all the sort of metrics for mental health publicly have gone in the wrong direction and catastrophically so.
00:12:14
Speaker
You know something like 50 percent of American teenage girls ah say that they are unbearably anxious, right? Those are new numbers. No one's ever seen numbers like that before, right? This is the wealthiest safest country in the world, practically. Like, why would you, what would you be anxious about?
00:12:29
Speaker
Well, they have social anxiety, which is being fed by the algorithms that give young people, um that addict young people to social media by raising their cortisol levels and them dosing and then dosing them with dopamine, right? It's absolutely, it's evil. It's, it's, it's straight up evil in its effect on our young people. In in new in New York City, um,
00:12:51
Speaker
They have just passed a um rule, an ordinance, a law, whatever whatever it is, a stipulation, that there are no smartphones in public schools from kindergarten until the end of 12th grade.
00:13:04
Speaker
None, right? Thank God, right? So and the other thing I would say is that if this sort of digital substitution for actual human, ah analog human engagement, right, which would be a phone call or a face-to-face meeting, um if there was a viable substitute, people wouldn't have gotten as depressed and as alcoholic and as miserable as they did during COVID. We wouldn't have noticed. It'd be like, oh, yeah, I just Zoomed with my buddy and it's the same thing.
00:13:33
Speaker
It's not the same thing. And particularly the effect of human touch. ah cannot be replicated with anything, right? and ah And so you you completely lose that. And that is the primary yeah it's one of the primary forms of human communication is touch.
00:13:50
Speaker
And ah you just can't you can't do that digitally. And particularly with young people, it's a huge, huge loss. but I almost died a few years ago. We can talk about that. But I have catastrophic blood loss. And I, you know, I was in full stage, you end stage hemorrhagic shock. I was convulsing on the table.
00:14:07
Speaker
I was 10 minutes from dead and incredible pain. Right. I mean, and ah astronomical pain. And this nurse came up and they were trying to save my life. And, i you know, whatever. i wasn't a good moment for me. And.
00:14:19
Speaker
This nurse came up and held my hand and said, it's okay, breathe with me. And I started doing that and all my pain went away. That human touch was absolutely crucial and helped my survival, right? I might not have survived, literally medically survived without it.
00:14:36
Speaker
Let's pivot then to that experience, which you wrote about so poignantly in My Time of Dying. ah For people who aren't aware of the story, tell me about it and then perhaps tell me about how your reflections on death and the concept of an afterlife as someone who is an atheist were ah perhaps evolved as a result of that experience.
Near-Death Experiences and Quantum Physics
00:14:58
Speaker
ah Yeah, so I had ah an undiagnosed aneurysm in my pancreatic artery. I've been super healthy my whole life. I've been an athlete. I don't drink.
00:15:09
Speaker
um And, ah you know, I've been a war reporter for a long time. And after a few close calls, I gave that up. So, know, I really thought, like, in my 50s, like, I'm pretty good. i mean, something's going to take me eventually. But, i you know, i'm not I'm not a walking heart attack. I'm not going to just drop dead of something. That happens to other people.
00:15:24
Speaker
Not people like me, right? and and And God, the hubris, the arrogance, right? Unbelievable. but So I had an undiagnosed aneurysm, which is an unnatural ballooning of the artery wall that's due to very, very random things, right? This isn't high cholesterol or something. This is is a completely random thing.
00:15:41
Speaker
And aneurysms grow throughout your lifetime for decades without symptoms, and they'll rupture without warning. And when they rupture, you're bleeding out into your own abdomen. You know, if someone had only just stabbed you in the stomach, the doctors would know where to stick their finger to plug the leak, as it were.
00:15:56
Speaker
But with aneurysms, it could be anywhere. And, you know, i was losing a pint of blood every 10 or 15 minutes, and, you know, you can lose about half the blood in your body. That's five five or six pints of blood, and you're dead, right? Right.
00:16:10
Speaker
And we lived an hour from the hospital. So, you know, you can do the math. Like, I was literally a human hourglass. They got me to the hospital 90 minutes later. I mean, I was minutes from dead, but I'm still conscious.
00:16:21
Speaker
And they start putting a large-gauge needle through my neck into my jugular to transfuse me with blood, with donated blood. I needed 10 units of blood. I needed a full oil change, a full body's worth of blood, right, and by by the time this was over.
00:16:38
Speaker
And as I'm lying there in the trauma bay and they're working on my neck – ah and I have to say, as you said, I'm an atheist, right? And my father was an atheist and a physicist, which is like atheist squared, right? So I've got some serious credentials in that regard. And ah this black pit opened up underneath me and I started getting pulled into it and I was terrified of it.
00:17:03
Speaker
And then suddenly above me, My dead father appeared in this sort of energy form. and this His sort of essence was right above me, communicating with me in this very benevolent way. He was like, it's okay. You don't have to fight it. You can come with me.
00:17:19
Speaker
I'll take care of you. It's okay. Come with me. And I didn't know I was dying. I knew something bad was going on. I did not know I was dying. I was shocked to see him and horrified.
00:17:31
Speaker
ah by his suggestion, like go with you. I've got two little children. I'm a lot. You're dead. The party's over here. I'm alive. Why would I go with you? Right? Like i we'll talk a lot later.
00:17:43
Speaker
I'm just in for belly pain. I think you got this all wrong. I mean, and I said to the doctor, you got to hurry. I'm going like, I knew I was going away. I knew there's nothing I could do about it. And I was being taken.
00:17:54
Speaker
i said, you got to hurry. I'm going. ah And um I'm leaving now. Yeah. And they managed you know they managed to save me, barely. and um And so my book, In My Time of Dying, is about you know what happened to me medically and also this sort of very, very common phenomenon of an NDE, a near-death experience. And I had one without even knowing what they were, but it's very, very common. And one of the most common things is that the dead turn up to help the dying,
00:18:26
Speaker
In their journey, right? And this happens with Christians, with atheists, with people of all religions, all around the world, there's historical accounts of it. It's remarkably enduring and remarkably similar.
00:18:37
Speaker
And um so I sort my book as a brief investigation into what the... Explanations for this might be. And, you know, including um yeah where I sort of landed was um in quantum physics.
00:18:53
Speaker
I mean, the the physical world is explainable in rational physical terms. And if near-death experiences do reveal something about a, quote, afterlife... It's got to be something that's that's explainable in physical rational terms or it wouldn't exist.
00:19:07
Speaker
Right. So um I took that approach. And there are some really interesting possibilities within the strictly rational world of quantum physics. That means subatomic physics um that suggests some kind of mysterious explanation for some of some of these phenomena.
00:19:24
Speaker
is one of the Is one of the potential explanations evolutionary in that i it is meant to be a way to to ease pain or to ease anxiety or trauma in what is an anxious, painful, traumatic moment? What's the the rational explanation for this as opposed to potentially where some other people would fall, which would be some sort of metaphysical explanation?
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, for me, metaphysics is just, you know, there's stories that are told to take the place of ah rational explanations that we that we're not smart enough for or haven't discovered yet. So metaphysics to me is just a sort of like, ah not a particularly useful word. But but the...
00:20:05
Speaker
So the evolutionary explanation sort of falls apart pretty quickly. So the the evolution, um the way evolution works is that traits and behaviors that add to increased survival or reproductive success...
00:20:20
Speaker
get passed on at disproportionately high rates to the next generation compared to individuals that don't have that those adaptations and either die at higher rates or fail to reproduce at at higher rates. So that's how it works. So the next generation has these beneficial genes and on and on for thousands of generations, and then eventually you get, like – human Genetic human beings. And so what would so, the you know, these are phenomena that happen when people are dying.
00:20:49
Speaker
Right. It's not just you break your leg and suddenly your dead grandfather appears and said, it's OK, son, you're going to be all right. Like this is this is in the last moments of life. Right. And. the the The process makes it easier to die, right?
00:21:04
Speaker
Makes it um generally, um I was an exception, but generally makes it easier to die. Like, it's okay. I mean, people have reported these incredibly comforting moments. Oh, it's all right. Like, I'll, i'll you know, i'm i'm um I'm at one with the universe. There's my dead grandmother, you know, whatever. like all these are Evolution does not want to make it easier to die,
00:21:26
Speaker
Right. It's the that's the opposite of evolution, evolution, evolutionary traits make it harder to die. Right. And and the ones that the the individuals that don't die as easily go on to reproduce and leave their chains and people that succumb to easily don't. And that's how you get evolution. So an evolution does not care what you feel like.
00:21:45
Speaker
Right. it does It just it it it the point of evolution isn't to make death a little bit easier because but evolution is some sort of benevolent force that is troubled by our suffering. Like it just couldn't care less. So I i don't I don't quite buy it.
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, that makes sense. ah What are some of the more plausible explanations for then why your father emerged to you in that moment? Well, so there's the sort of neuro, yeah sir ne the neuroskeptics or whatever you might call them. These are doctors who are like, look, the neurology of the brain is very, very complex. And the and the dying brain is a brain brain under a huge amount of stress.
00:22:25
Speaker
And low blood oxygen levels can produce ah hallucinations. And um when you put you know fighter pilots in human centrifuges, the ah the diffusion of blood to the brain is...
00:22:37
Speaker
is um is impaired And then you have out-of-body experiences and there are chemical compounds that are released that produce visions and blah, blah, blah. Right. all very sort rationalist.
00:22:49
Speaker
And it all, you know, I sort of. I sort of bought all that, right? It all kind of made sense to me, right? So one explanation is that it's a completely neurological phenomenon that does not reflect on a, quote, afterlife, which is a word that I hate, but I quote, afterlife.
00:23:05
Speaker
It doesn't reflect on that whatsoever. It reflects on neurology, right? And I'm in as a, you know... The rationalists are my favorite football team, right? i mean right I love watching those guys play. It's a lot of fun to watch them beat the opponent. you know That's where I'm at. The only thing that, in a rational sense, I cannot say makes sense to me is, all right, yeah, so people who take LSD will all hallucinate. People who are suffering, you know, oxygen, low levels of oxygen, you know, whatever – What is hard to explain is the consistency of the visions. nothing can No neurology can explain the content of hallucinations.
00:23:44
Speaker
And the content of these hallucinations is that people see the dead, right? In fact, there are cases of people seeing dying people, seeing dead people who they didn't they didn't know had died because they just died the day before, right? I mean, there's something sort of mysterious going on. And that's the one thing in a rational sense that, for me...
00:24:06
Speaker
contradicts the rational explanation, right? And so it's the presence of the dead in these hallucinations. And it happens that hospice nurses will tell you the same thing. you know Older people in their 80s or 90s dying of cancer, and suddenly there's their mother, right? And things like that.
00:24:21
Speaker
And it's really, really common. And so for me, well, not for me, from what for for some of the the physicists, the theoretical physicists, the quantum physicists,
00:24:32
Speaker
There is a um there's a phenomenon in quantum physics which is very which is mysterious and contradictory and profound, which is that conscious observation changes the quantum reality that you are observing.
00:24:46
Speaker
So if you – a photon will act differently –
00:24:52
Speaker
if it's being watched by a conscious mind or not. The consciousness affects the behavior of a subatomic particle, right? And if you stop observing it, it acts differently.
00:25:05
Speaker
Moreover, these subatomic particles seem to be linked simultaneously. entangled to affect each other instantaneously across any amount of distance, and including across the entire universe.
00:25:17
Speaker
In other words, they're exchanging information about each other faster than the speed of light. Speed of light's fast, but it's not instantaneous. There is no explanation. We can prove that these things happen.
00:25:29
Speaker
There's no explanation for how or why they happen. and And so one of the theories about all of this is that our individual consciousness, your consciousness, my consciousness, That the the individuality of our conscious experience is actually an illusion, and you and I are both, we are all part of a more universal consciousness.
00:25:50
Speaker
that inhabits the physical universe and affects it much like the force of gravity, right? You can't see it. You can't taste it. You can't touch it. You can't locate it anywhere, but it affects everything and determines the outcome of physical reality and that consciousness operates in somewhat the same way.
00:26:09
Speaker
And that when we die, um And instead of life being a strictly biological process that ceases completely when you die, part of the mystery of consciousness, which we don't really understand and can't even really define very well, that conscious individual consciousness is subsumed back into a broader universal consciousness.
00:26:32
Speaker
And that's where some of this sort of echoing of, oh, is there an afterlife? Like, yes, but not quite in the sense you mean it. Yeah, it does almost feel like ah an attempt to create some sort of a scientific bridge to a form of spirituality.
00:26:47
Speaker
um And don't get me wrong, I'm sure far, far smarter men and women than myself could explain in a way which is scientific, but it's difficult to fully get your head around, isn't it?
00:27:00
Speaker
Well, it is you know it is a scientific theory, right? I mean, this is rooted in science, and the mystery of quantum physics is enduring and doesn't seem to be explainable. Sometimes people say to me, oh, well, religion, you know, science can't even explain everything. Like, that's why I believe in God, because say science can't even explain this or that, right? I'm like, you know what?
00:27:20
Speaker
Science can explain it. We're just not smart enough to understand the science. Right. But don't blame. This isn't science's problem. Right. Like we're just and our our human brains, as amazing as they are.
00:27:33
Speaker
Right. There is nothing like them in the known universe. um that they still may be too limited to understand the sort of ultimate reality of existence and consciousness and life and death and time, and and for that matter, how the universe started. Like, we you know we know, we know how the universe developed from um the very, very, very first moments, right?
00:27:58
Speaker
But we don't know why those moments got started, and we probably never will.
Social Consequences of the New Atheist Movement
00:28:04
Speaker
Let's dig a bit deeper on on the small matter of religion. I too am on the the rationalist football team. When I was younger, I devoured the new atheists. i read all of Dawkins. I read Hitchens. I i was fully on the bandwagon.
00:28:19
Speaker
ah still I am an atheist today. There has been conversations that I've had on this podcast with ah several people now, and it seems to be an emerging view, and that is that The New Atheist Movement basically was good in the sense that it was a pursuit for truth, and we should always be searching for truth.
00:28:40
Speaker
But there are unintended consequences, and some of those unintended consequences of a decline in religiosity were... depending on your point of view, ah either a loss of purpose amongst young people or some people equate the rise of identity politics and, for want of a better term, wokeism, with the decline in religion. It is a replacement religion for many people.
00:29:03
Speaker
And I think as a result of that, you've seen a lot of people like Dawkins, for example, who have started to call themselves cultural Christians, as in, ooh, perhaps did we maybe go a bit far in the new atheism movement?
00:29:14
Speaker
Did we actually lead to unintended harms as a result of pushing away Judeo-Christian values in pursuit of of a a search for that truth?
00:29:25
Speaker
How do you feel about that line of argument? I mean, I feel like it it's apples and oranges, right? I mean... If you are um an atheist because your pursuit of the truth about the physical nature of reality and the universe does not lead you to the conclusion that there's a God because there's zero evidence of any God, right?
00:29:50
Speaker
That's an inquiry into that's that's an inquiry inquiry into reality. you're now talking about social engineering And using religion as a form of social engineering for a better outcome for our society, that's fine. But it has nothing to do with the quest for for knowledge, provable, demonstrable knowledge. Like, they're completely separate things.
00:30:11
Speaker
And there could be actually no God... and you know I mean, easily and probably no God, but you could also come to a a a morally responsible decision to pretend there's a God so that you can have a religion, so that people can have a better sense of community in the sort of ghastly technological void that all of our innovations have left us with.
00:30:35
Speaker
ah No problem, right? But therere you know one's a story that helps us live better. The other is a search for reality that has not turned up any evidence of God whatsoever. So, I mean, you're just doing two different things there.
00:30:48
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. like This is something I've always thought in this conversation and that they are two entirely separate conversations, but they are so often conflated now in that a lot of people say, well, you can't have Judeo-Christian values without the God.
00:31:01
Speaker
In fact, I've spoken to several people on this podcast who have basically said, well... the Judeo-Christian values that underpin Western societies fall apart without the belief in a God, and some argue that we're already seeing that today.
00:31:15
Speaker
I'm assuming you would say that it is perfectly possible to have the values that, say, underp pin some of the do i underpin the Judeo-Christian religions without having a God in order basically to enforce or to be held accountable for, no, to hold you accountable for those beliefs.
00:31:33
Speaker
I mean, look, human morality way, way, way predates Christianity and and every other monotheistic religion, right? Human morality is one of the things that keeps the survival group together, because if there's no sense of fairness and justice and and moral behavior within a small group surviving in a harsh environment, if if if that moral quality to human life and to the community is completely absent, the the the community falls apart. And And people die. So there's there's no the the idea the fiction, the idea, the the. the um
00:32:07
Speaker
ah indulgence of thinking that morality started with Christianity is preposterous. Likewise with communitarianism. I mean, that you we're social primates, right? I mean, chimpanzees are social primates. like we're It's in our DNA to band together.
00:32:22
Speaker
And so you don't need a Christian God to get that done. that The Christian God showed up like yesterday in human history, right? I mean, it's very, very recent... innovation And the the the human qualities of of loyalty and protection of our loved ones and generosity and kindness um and aggression against dangerous outsiders, ah the willingness to sacrifice your life to protect vulnerable people against an outside threat.
00:32:49
Speaker
I mean – There's something called bystander rescues, right? So you're walking down the street. There's a child hanging from a balcony in a building that's on fire. What do you do, right? You climb the drainpipe to save the child, whether you're Christian or not, right? That's just a human behavior.
00:33:05
Speaker
for to and And the mortality rate for bystander rescues is one in five, right? Twenty percent. right Far higher than almost any unit in the U.S. military during active combat.
00:33:18
Speaker
right So you just – I'm sorry. like they're Those two things are completely unlinked. What I would say is that a very easy sort of like community in a box – form of social connection is a church, right? I've been to church.
00:33:35
Speaker
I had a great time in church. I loved it. The music was gorgeous. People were nice and friendly. I got to hug the guy next, you know, the person next to me in the and the pew, you know, whatever. it was all these wonderful human experiences.
00:33:46
Speaker
You don't need to believe in God to enjoy those experiences, right? God's really quite irrelevant. And um yeah they they it's human beings responding to each other because they're part of a community ah god You know, god you know, if you want to believe in God to get yourself in that building, go for it. If you go for the music and the pastry, like, go for it doesn't really matter as long as you're in that room some kind of room where you're interacting with other people in a benevolent and generous and open-hearted way.
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree with that entirely. it's It's interesting hearing you talk about religion in this unfiltered way. I actually picked up a couple of those old Dawkins and Hitchens books before this interview just to glance at them to remind myself, and it's...
00:34:31
Speaker
I think in 2025, almost confronting the way they talk about religion and that in that particular moment, what was this, about 15, 20 years ago now, there was obviously this cultural openness to debate, to discuss ideas, to question, and particularly, for example, the way that Hitchens talked about Islam.
00:34:46
Speaker
I think, yeah and for me, I think sadly you would not get away with today because I think that there is more of a sense that for some people, words of violence or or that debate is not, you know, as as promoted around particular issues.
00:35:01
Speaker
ah How do you feel about the way that basically um public discourse has either evolved or perhaps devolved, depending on on your opinion, in countries like the US s and the UK and Australia?
00:35:14
Speaker
Well, you know, I think sort of like blind um adherence to a um shared norm that cannot be questioned I mean, that's not a bad description of religion, right? But it's also not a bad description of this sort of, you know, sort of woke, sort of the woke thinking in the American far left and the ultra conservative MAGA thinking in the American far right.
00:35:43
Speaker
Right. You're just like it does not brook. Forget about opposition. It won't even brook a contrary fact. Right? Introduce a contrary fact, and they say that you're attacking them.
00:35:56
Speaker
It won't even brook a conversation about the things that it says are important. Right? Now, what I would say is that I'm an atheist. And by the way, atheist doesn't mean i think I can prove there's no God.
00:36:08
Speaker
It doesn't mean that. It just means I myself don't believe in God. Right? Right? That's all it means. I'm not making any claims about knowing that there's no God. I just myself don't believe in God. I believe in gravity because I can test for gravity. I could throw something out a window, and it every time, every damn time, it falls, right? So I now believe in gravity.
00:36:27
Speaker
If there was a similar test for the existence of God, I believe in God. well Why wouldn't I, right? Of course. would be such a relief, right? There just is none, right? so But what you know what i would say is that the um the the
00:36:43
Speaker
The ability to talk rationally about something like God or politics or what we owe each other in society, that ability to talk rationally, society depends on that.
00:36:56
Speaker
And when you have people on both extremes that say there will be no debates, if you debate me on this, you are the enemy. right? If you debate me on this, I will punish you.
00:37:10
Speaker
That's fascism. I'm sorry, that's fascism. And so for me, I'm an atheist. I'm now an atheist with questions, because I saw some really strange things as I was dying, things I can't quite explain.
00:37:23
Speaker
What I would hope is that this conversation, the one you and I are having, and more broadly, the one in society, would make people of faith, be would make them people of faith with questions.
00:37:36
Speaker
Questions make your beliefs stronger. They do not undermine them. A person of faith with questions has a stronger faith. They are more devoted to God because they're not devoted to God blindly.
00:37:51
Speaker
They have asked themselves hard questions. They've come to some kind of resolution. And have renewed their dedication to this beautiful ideal of acting in a godly manner, following Christ's beautiful words, etc. But likewise, it's atheists. I have real questions, but I still don't believe in God.
00:38:08
Speaker
And what I would like to say is that I can make my way in the world as a moral person and treat people people with kindness and hopefully act with some kind of courage if it's ever called I'm ever called upon to.
00:38:19
Speaker
like I hope I can do that just as a human being without having to rely on sort of you know God to tell me how to act well. Like that, you know, if that's what you need, go for it. I like to think I don't need that in order to not rob banks and not, you know, hit people and, you know, whatever. Like, hopefully I don't need God to to to so keep me from doing those terrible things.
00:38:40
Speaker
this ah yeah triggers a thought in my mind, particularly around the importance of asking those questions and of being of a questioning nature of the importance of, of curiosity.
00:38:50
Speaker
And this was actually a question that I asked not so long ago of Jeffrey Archer, the, the novelist and short story writer. ah And something which came out of a conversation with him, and it would be is the same with you, is that great writers and great journalists are innately curious. They have this insatiable desire to understand how the world works and what is going on around them.
00:39:14
Speaker
And the question I would have is, do you think that the curiosity that you obviously have, to what extent do you think that that is innate, And to what extent do you think you can, as a person, cultivate or improve your sense of curiosity?
00:39:30
Speaker
ah Well, if you want it you know, i mean, if you want to be more curious, you can make yourself read books and learn about things, whether you're actually curious or not. i mean, it's like, but most things, ah you know, and anger, selfishness, tendency to depression, anxiety,
00:39:52
Speaker
a certain amount, you know, a certain portion of your IQ, like intelligence, most of it's sort of 50-50 nature and nurture, right? 50-50, know, it's like 50% genetics, roughly 50% the way you were brought up. So, you know, I was, whatever my innate curiosity is, whatever that chromosome might be that's connected to curiosity, obviously curiosity is adaptive. We live in the natural world as a species.
00:40:16
Speaker
If you're curious about this berry or how this tree, you know, whatever, like it, The behavior of animals that you depend on for food, that curiosity is adaptive and leads to a better survival. So that's obviously hardwired into all of us to some degree, some more than others. and But, you know, I also was brought up in a home um ah with a – A home of great intellectual stimulation. My father was a physicist. He was brought up in Europe.
00:40:43
Speaker
Our home was filled with books. My father and mother both were very educated, interesting people that liked talking about the world and were quite open-minded and fair-minded. They they were um politically liberal, but also, you know...
00:41:01
Speaker
Very, very much insistent on questioning things and understanding things in real terms, not ideologically. And um they were both atheists as well. So, um you know, I'm guessing you like with most other things where most people it's fifty fifty Yeah, I think that's that that sounds right.
00:41:19
Speaker
I want to maybe pivot us somewhat to your reflections on America today.
America's Path and Political Polarization
00:41:25
Speaker
And there's this brilliant quote that I'll read. ah One night, a freight train thundered by with so much noise and power that I tossed out what I thought was an unanswerable question.
00:41:36
Speaker
What would it take to stop something like that instantaneously? I imagined some kind of massive wall, but the answer was more obvious. Another train going just as fast the opposite way.
00:41:49
Speaker
America could seem like that as well. A country moving so fast and with so much weight that only a head-on collision with itself could stop it. What did you mean by that?
00:42:00
Speaker
Well, I was on this this strange trek with a couple of combat vets and another guy, another journalist. We were walking along the railroad lines, not hitching – we weren't jumping freights, right? We were walking along the railroad lines from Washington, D.C.
00:42:15
Speaker
to ah Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, which – It was about 400 or so miles. And the freight the freight lines, the railroad lines are these sort of strips of no man's land where it sort of anything goes. It's completely illegal to be there.
00:42:29
Speaker
But as long as you sort of avoid the the um train yard security and the and the police, you can sort of get away with it. And we were sleeping under bridges, cooking over fires, sleeping in abandoned buildings, walked through ghettos, walked through factory towns, walked through the wilderness.
00:42:47
Speaker
So that was the context for this. Yeah. But the um the trip, we we we did it in a series in a series of trips, and some of them were during a very politically contentious time in this country, um the run-up to the 2016 election and the advent of Donald Trump.
00:43:05
Speaker
And um i ah i what what i what I meant by that was that this country is more powerful than any enemy, right? Like, I mean, we may not be able to...
00:43:18
Speaker
sort of bring a war, a foreign war to a successful conclusion. But God forbid you try to invade us, right? I mean, we're just – that's not it's not happening, right? We're extraordinarily powerful country, and in and which is great, but it's also in some ways gives us the illusion of of safety.
00:43:37
Speaker
And the our blind spot is ourselves, right? And that the social and political forces that are can be and unleashed in any country – and I've been in – as a war reporter, I've been in a lot of civil wars – Those social and political forces, if you unleash them, they will destroy your country in a way that no enemy ever could.
00:44:01
Speaker
And um so ah it was sort of a warning. i mean, I wrote that as a sort of – I was struck by the visual power of the metaphor but also as a kind of warning to this country. Like, oh, you're all obsessed with al-Qaeda bringing down the World Trade Centers. Don't worry about it.
00:44:18
Speaker
Al-Qaeda can't touch us. I mean, they can Al-Qaeda can touch us. They can't destroy us. we Only we can destroy us. Since you made that warning in 2016, do you think those forces within the country have got worse?
00:44:35
Speaker
um I don't know. It's hard to tell. you know like the They've certainly gotten more acute, right? um i don't i don't ah Worse... I'm not quite worse' worse is a very general word. And and it so just to be more specific about it, like Donald Trump to me represents a sort of anti-democratic strand in American society.
00:44:59
Speaker
he I think even his followers will acknowledge that the sort of like democratic institutions of this country are ones that he doesn't particularly understand or respect or want to adhere to. And that's part of his appeal.
00:45:12
Speaker
Right. But. but His really extreme actions recently have turned ah an impressive majority of Americans sort of against against his policies, right? I mean, something like 80 percent of – who knew?
00:45:28
Speaker
80 percent of Americans – something – I mean, I'm going by memory here from a poll that I read. But something like a large majority of Americans feel that a president cannot reject a Supreme Court decision and do what they want.
00:45:40
Speaker
Right. And sort of the ultimate core of a democratic norm is that the president is actually bound by some rules, some judgments. They are not they don't have unilateral power in all things. Right.
00:45:51
Speaker
And so, you know, so i would feel that the sort of the the the the screechy, annoying and sort of whiny tone of the far left is. ah has been, thank God, has been blunted by our our catastro they're catastrophic defeat a few months ago. Like, thank God, right?
00:46:09
Speaker
ah But likewise, you know, Trump's pretty outrageous and quasi-fascistic approach to governance to governing in these last months has produced a pretty um comforting backlash even among some of his but a supporters.
00:46:25
Speaker
So is it getting worse? ah It's coming to it's all sort of coming to the surface where it can be has to be acknowledged and maybe can be dealt with. You know, I think the far left is ruinous in its policies, extremely unfair, quite fascist in its own right, in its suppression of free speech and its dictation of moral norms.
00:46:45
Speaker
ah But I also feel like the far right is like. ah You know, ah my my father was a refugee of two two wars, including the the rise of fascism in Spain. And the far right is is it's a it's a fascistic movement, right, and that that has no business in a democracy. And, um you know and you know, I just feel like one of the great things about having all this come out in such a florid way is that, you know, it like— means we can't ignore it and the country will have to deal with both of these sort of toxic strains of American thinking.
00:47:19
Speaker
Well, this is really interesting because, you know, so much of your work focuses on the positive side of being part of a tribe, part of a community. And what you just communicated is tribalism in its negative connotation, which obviously has become more pronounced in Western countries,
00:47:37
Speaker
particularly America, ah and that political polarisation is worse, or at least it's far more obvious than it has ever ever been. And the question would be, have we now entered an age where this sort of negative form of tribalism is just going to get worse and worse, or is there a way as a country to align around a higher sense of unity in a way that...
00:48:00
Speaker
Maybe it's with rose-tinted glasses. i'm I'm looking back, but maybe there was once, but no longer is. which How do you see the where where does this? Where does this end, I guess, is the question. Well, I mean, it's it's a really complicated question. So that kind of tribalism, which has ah a negative connotation, you know, sees the sort of segmenting of society into to like-minded people, people that look like each other, they have similar tastes, similar histories.
00:48:23
Speaker
um That's a very, very natural human thing. And frankly, it's just as bad in the developing world as it is in the first world, and in in the Western world. I mean, it's ah it's just just a human, it's a human quality, right? So when one football team, and an american you know, American football team, plays another...
00:48:39
Speaker
football team from another high school, they're purely tribalistic in their in their competitiveness or and even in their aggression, right? That's just what humans are. And that's why we survive. And it's and you know you could say it's why we're so awesome, right? I mean, there's why there's seven or eight billion of us, right? We do that kind of thing extremely well.
00:48:56
Speaker
What's a little more awkward you say, okay, all you all, like, All the different ethnic and racial groups and religious groups in this country of the United States, we're actually all part of one big group called the United States.
00:49:10
Speaker
And we're going act in concert for our own mutual benefit. Right. And so there's a supply chain, a global supply chain that can only really be managed by a national government.
00:49:22
Speaker
That benefits all of us, even people in our tiny little sort of ethnic enclaves, wherever they may be, or our tribal, tiny little tribalistic like communities. We still need the global supply chain for the things that we survive on and and enjoy. Right.
00:49:37
Speaker
And, you know, the tariffs that Trump's imposing, those tariffs are a they are. They represent the largest tribe that we're all part of, which is the nation, right? Now, i you know, ah they leave me a little puzzled about what's the end game.
00:49:54
Speaker
But as an action, it is a national level action that is telling everyone basic sort of tribal thing like, y'all, we're going to be better off. And I'm not saying I agree with Trump, but just ah just take him at face value.
00:50:09
Speaker
He's saying, listen, everybody. We're all going to be better off in the long run. We're going to have to suffer a little bit now. But trust me, we got this. Right. That is tribalistic thinking in its largest form as a nation. So was the decision to fight fascism on the shores of Normandy and in Europe and in the South Pacific during World War Two. Right.
00:50:30
Speaker
It's like, yeah, a lot of people are going to die. This is going to suck. But in the long run. It will benefit this nation and the world if we confront this evil right now. So off we go to war to defeat Hitler and to to defeat Japan. Right. So so basically it's the it's the same kind of tribal thinking where, yeah you know, the in a group of, you know, 30 people, the leader might say, look, we're going to have to walk all night through the sleet.
00:50:58
Speaker
Right. It's going to suck. Right. But when we get to the other side of the mountain, we'll all be better off. It's completely tribal thinking. We're just enacting it on a national level, which feels sort of awkward and weird. And there's a lot of internal division. So what I would just say is that there's many different tribal divisions, starting from your immediate community in your neighborhood, where you know everyone by by by sight, all the way on up to, yeah, I'm an American. You're an American.
00:51:26
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, we have something in common. Here we are in Uganda, in a small village in Uganda, right? what are What are the chances? Well, another American. Wow. Where are you from? That's tribalism as well, right? So it's the entire spectrum.
00:51:40
Speaker
um It's not all – it doesn't just take place at one level. yeah That's an interesting reflection. I hadn't thought about it that way. Another element of this, obviously, is the leaders that bind people and tribes and communities together.
00:51:53
Speaker
There's a lovely little line that you said, ah in any society, leaders who aren't willing to make sacrifices aren't leaders. They're opportunists, and opportunists have rarely rarely have the common good in mind.
00:52:06
Speaker
They're easy to spot, though. Opportunists lie reflexively, blame others for failures, and are unapologetic cowards. question that comes to mind for me is I don't think if I look at Western politics today, we have the same calibre of leaders that we once did.
00:52:20
Speaker
We election in Australia recently where I would argue both of the leaders of the major parties weren't of the same calibre as leaders of times gone by. think even the most partisan person in America would recognise that the The leaders of recent times aren't in the mould of, you know, the Washingtons or the Lincolns or, you know, take your pick of of those early great names in American history. And I'm conscious of the rose-tinted glasses thing and the nostalgia thing, but it does feel to me like there is a global trend of not having the same calibre of leaders as we once did.
00:52:52
Speaker
Do you agree? And if so, why do you think that would be the case? Yeah, so I'll... i'll I mean, i you know, I don't know how to measure Lincoln for on an altruism scale. Like, I mean, just ive I don't people who were close to him might have thought he was a son of a bitch. I mean, I i just have no idea. Right.
00:53:11
Speaker
He certainly had a beautiful ideal and a beautiful capacity for articulation in the Gettysburg Address. Right. So if that's a reflection of his soul, I would say, well, I don't.
00:53:22
Speaker
There aren't many modern leaders capable. Maybe Kennedy. Kennedy had, you know, Obama maybe? I mean, I don't know. That kind of verbal ability and that sort of nobility of spirit, like, it's not a common thing.
00:53:34
Speaker
I wrote a book called Freedom that basically looked at underdog groups that prevailed against greater powers, against more powerful groups, right?
00:53:45
Speaker
And um I looked at that because if the smaller group or the smaller individual couldn't prevail in a in a contest, right? Freedom would not be possible, right? If the empire always won, the world would be composed of fascist megastates.
Junger's Book 'Freedom' and Underdog Strategies
00:54:03
Speaker
And it would be very hard for people to be self-defining and autonomous in that context. But thank God insurgencies can win against the British empire, right? Or America wouldn't be here, right? you know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:54:18
Speaker
I loathe the the Taliban, right? Their oppressive... horrific fascistic organization, ah cruel and sadistic, but the fact that they could defeat the United States over the course of 20 years, ah and by defeat I mean make the war not worth fighting for us any anymore, ah when we, you know, they didn't have an air force, they didn't have artillery, some of them didn't even have boots, but that they were capable of that means that smaller groups can defeat larger ones, and there is some hope for humanity in that as well, right? So,
00:54:52
Speaker
um the One of the common – I am getting to your question. one of the One of the essential components – One of the commonalities of successful underdog groups is leaders who are careless with their own life.
00:55:05
Speaker
Right. the The Easter Rising in Ireland. Right. Where the um Irish rebels went up against the British military, you know, who were just 50 miles from their own shores. Right. They're not off in Baghdad. Right. This is right off right next to in England. Right. Right.
00:55:25
Speaker
Those men and women were incredibly brave. And one of them, I can't remember his name, but he was the military commander in Dublin fighting the Brits in Dublin. And his aides had to keep dragging him out of the line of fire ah because, as they said, look, sir, we need you. Like, you can't get yourself killed in these street battles.
00:55:43
Speaker
The man was wounded twice within one week. He was wounded twice. and Then he was captured by the Brits and executed. Right. He clearly had his people foremost in his mind and not his own safety, his own concerns or his own Bitcoin gambit.
00:55:58
Speaker
Right. Like, I mean, you know what I mean? So what like has the quality gone down? Yeah. But the quality of many things has gone down in our mass society. And it may be that the skills and traits that are required, right.
00:56:11
Speaker
by a leader to run something as enormous and complex and disassociated from community values as the United States. It may just be that the leaders of old that ran so that ran small insurgencies against oppressive powers, that those people, those men and women, actually don't have a great role in the in this enormous hierarchy that is required to run a a modern country. I you know i don't know.
00:56:35
Speaker
What I would say is that voters have the right to say you can do better. We want you to be self-sacrificing of your own interests.
00:56:47
Speaker
And when you make millions and billions of dollars pretending to serve our interests, and we have a second mortgage and my wife's working three jobs, we think you are ah fraud and an imposter and you do not deserve deserve the honor of leadership.
00:57:05
Speaker
I think voters have the right to say that.
00:57:09
Speaker
Hopefully many more of them do across Western countries in the years ahead.
Conclusion and Thanks
00:57:14
Speaker
ah Sebastian, as I expected, we've only scratched the surface of what we potentially could have, but want to thank you so much for coming on. As I said, I think your meditations on what it means to be human across freedom, tribe, war, ah all of your books, as well as ah as well as your your um many other pursuits are, I think, such an important and valuable contribution to...
00:57:37
Speaker
the public discourse. Thank you for everything you've done and thank you for coming on. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.