Sebastian Junger: 3 Things Every Person Should Have To Be Happy With Their Life
“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.” — Sebastian Junger
Progress for humanity comes with a price that today’s individual often pays more and more with inner suffering — and the feelings need and usefulness that came from our past contribution to your tribe is what’s making loneliness and meaninglessness harder to combat — causing depression and suicide rates to increase.
And with today’s rapid pace of progress, it’s becoming more ‘expensive’ than ever for individuals to remain content as a result.
Why has this been the result?
Our rate of evolution the last couple hundred years, which is a pittance from an evolutionary standpoint, has transcended what we yearn and seek in our individual lives today, and going against what we’ve been wired for, for almost two million years.
Hunter gatherer bands are purely egalitarian.
Where you came from didn’t matter, you belonged to a group and were judged by your contribution to the group and your individual conduct as it related to your role in service to the groups survival.
This created a sense of feeling needed that just doesn’t exist today. Call it the price of progress.
Now it takes a lot more effort to find your purpose with almost unlimited options — seeking the luxurious peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing with this one life you have to live because the options are unlimited and all come at a cost.
Instead of your tribe asking you to contribute to the group, today they advise you on what you should do for yourself.
All things that have gotten harder and harder as our systems get more sophisticated and make it so the individual who does the best for themselves is the winning individual, competing against other individuals. Less so for any collective group.
And today, less and less so for even our nations whether it’s America or Europe, we serve the nation less and less every day. Thus why journalist, war-reporter, author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger says:
“In modern society there really is no group to serve, and it really leads to a profound sense of meaninglessness to people.”
Junger’s most recent book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging says it’s because we’re more lonely than ever, and instead of feeling needed and useful in the tight knit bond of a group with a mission (which used to be food production and security), our system today rewards the individual — thereby lacking those evolutionary feelings we’ve evolved to have.
“We’re the descendants of the fittest few who contributed most the group. Which is why our genes survived.”
We aren’t needed by people in the way we used to be (we actually counted on them for survival).
In Tribe, Junger spells it out clearly:
“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.”
Hardship and necessity as the accustomed way of life provide instant purpose, and living in constant contribution to a group provides deep meaning that didn’t take effort to be manufactured like it needs to be today.
There’s a lot of power in force functions, which Junger shows lot’s of evidence that disasters are what create true equality of man.
“An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain, the equality of all men.”
Junger’s uniquely qualified to talk about these human conditions as he’s oscillated between Hell on Earth in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, one of the harshest environments as a Taliban occupied stronghold to shoot his legendary documentary Restrepo. Junger and his platoon were shot at regularly, witnessed death of comrades on a regular basis and lived in the harshest outdoor environment with constant fear of being killed for a year.
And yet, Junger interviewed those same soldiers after they arrived back to living in the US who said they missed it and wanted to go back.
“A modern soldier returning from combat — -or a survivor of Sarajevo — -goes from the kind of close-knit group that humans evolved for, back into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families ae isolated from wider communities, and personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good. Even if he or she is part of a family, that is not the same as belonging to a group that shares resources and experiences almost everything collectively. Whatever the technological advances of modern society — -and they’re nearly miraculous — -the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit.”
Junger provides cases from suicide and depression going down after the 9/11 attacks to the same happening during the Blitzkrieg in London during World War II — when the citizens of Great Britain had to sleep side by side in the tube stations. Both resulted in less depression and suicide in what you’d intuitively think would have caused more. Studies indicate this is true across the board during catastrophic times.
It’s the risk of death and urgency that makes life actually feel sacred. If there’s no risk, your participation doesn’t matter as much. It’s the difference between practicing a sport everyday vs. playing in the big game when it matters. And in our very first-world case, creating the stage of situations that make it matter more.
As one of Frederich Neitzche’s pilar’s of living taught us:
“You have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief … or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet. If you decide for the former and desire to diminish and lower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and lower the level of their capacity for joy.”
How Do We Feel Competent, Connected And Authentic?
Competence
You shouldn’t do whatever you want, following the sexy path you’ve been programmed to want. You should take a hard look at your skills and strengths, and do that. Cut your options as much as possible. This seems unintuitive. However it’s having too many options that paralyze us or put us on the wrong path. I’ve certainly been there and it’s cost me dearly. Whether it was not recognizing early enough I didn’t have the tennis talent to try and play professionally after high school or studying quantitative finance in college.
Every human being is genetically unique, unlike any other variation. Find those gifts.
Connected
Form or join a group with an extraordinary interest in the same thing. This could be a cause, craft or mission. The higher the stakes the better. Also, go against the grain and be a giver.
This could be as simple as volunteering or signing up for some manual labor to work closely with other people.
In this brilliant conversation with Tim Ferris, Kevin Costner talked about how he derives so much joy and pleasure from work that he literally ‘get’s into the weeds’ with the workers who manage his ranch’. After one of his employees asked: “isn’t he in the movies?”, his co-worker’s response was “he likes it hefe. He likes it.”
A family and kids is a powerful combination — both as a force function that instantaneously makes you and the team a tightly knit group, as well as creating the necessity on you personally to be needed.
In a conversation I had in 2016 with Benjamin Hardy, Medium.com’s #1 writer, I asked him what drove him to foster three children at the young age of 27 (or so) while at the beginning of his writing career. His response was that he thrives in the hardest of situations and likes exhaulting himself into challenging situations.
What he perhaps didn’t realize was that he was also forcing himself to cooperate closely in a tight-knit group, as it’s leader. This created necessity and being needed. You never won’t feel needed when you have three (and now five) children and a wife relying on you.
Authentic
Living authentically means living with the values you believe to be right. Seems pretty straight forward, but are you always living up to your standard ideals?
Have you designed the ideal person with the traits you want to deeply possess and associated standards?
This is harder than it sounds and requires repetition and ritual. We humans forget very easily and go back to our default unconscious settings.
Making what you actually want and who you actually want to be takes work.
Every morning go through a morning routine where you put yourself in a peak state of mind.
This does two things:
It puts you in a state where you’re ready to push yourself and make highest ideal decisions, even if they scare you at the time. You will feel motivated enough to go for it in that state.
I do this as often as I can by going over my goals and writing in my journal before I do a workout.
Who do you want to be?
What traits to you want to have?
Next decide what daily rituals will actually turn you into that real thing, and give you that character you strive to become.
Cut the things you don’t want out, and make daily rituals for the things you do.
It’s this repetition that changes your subconscious default setting to the things you believe will make you live an authentic life that’s your ‘true self’.
Identity is malleable and who you are is up to you.
In Conclusion: Who We Are And How We Serve To Live A Happy life
One thing is for certain, we have more options than ever to fulfill the sense of being needed in a way we’ve evolved the last two million years.
We have more options for authenticity, competence and connection — yet it’s the systems (economic and political) and medium’s (not for survival but for work and immediate family) in which we seek them create more loneliness and less necessity as a result — this is clear in the evidence that seems we’re heading for more meaninglessness as technology continues to evolve how we live.
With depression and suicide rates continuing to rise as society get’s more affluent, it’s up to us to know what matters, manage our attention and upgrade our minds to humanity 3.0 — balancing the needs of our evolutionary past to the needs of the future and now.
This is the way we’re evolving and the rate of progress is only going to increase — and there’s never a good reason to resist natural selection.
We still must give more than we get to be successful. The group’s have only gotten larger, with less primitive missions.
If you commit to older world connection, competence and authenticity in your life, you’ll be able to embrace change.
If you commit to older world connection, competence and authenticity in your life, you’ll be excited for the future.
If you commit to older world connection, competence and authenticity in your life, you’ll be able to handle the future.
How can you create more old- world connection, competence and authenticity in your life?
Commit to it now.
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