New book In My Time of Dying - 5/21
Author of The Perfect Storm, War, Tribe, Freedom
Co-Director of the Oscar-nominated
@RestrepoMovie
Founder of
@risctraining
All Ukranian men have been ordered by their government to stay and fight the Russian Army. Women are allowed to leave, but many are staying to fight as well. Makes our national hissy fit over mask and vaccine mandates look pretty silly, no?
Offered a rescue by the US, Ukrainian President Zelensky chose to stay in Kyiv and face the same dangers as his people. How many US politicians would pass that test - Ted Cruz? Hilary Clinton? Donald Trump? I don't think so. Vote!
Ten years ago today, my friend and colleague, the incomparable British photographer Tim Hetherington, was killed covering the civil war in Libya. Tim and I had spent a year together shooting video for our documentary, Restrepo, about an American platoon in combat.
Please watch CNN's beautiful piece on Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Libya eight years ago. Tim and I collaborated to make Restrepo, and after Tim's death I started Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues to train journalists in combat medicine.
In an era when the phrase, “Journalists are the enemy of the people,” has become a rallying cry for many in America, it's worth noting which leaders and groups take this to heart: Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia, ISIS. Criminals hate the truth, which is why journalism is necessary.
This is my piece on stunningly unfair takedown of Jihad Rehab (now, The Unredacted) that humanized men tortured at Gitmo. Weirdly, critics were left-wing, not right-wing. The National Review was only publication that would touch it. See what you think.
If you study successful uprisings, women are a crucial component in defeating a great power. They impart moral legitimacy and, like small men in a fistfight, are underestimated in ways that can be endlessly exploited. That makes them a "force multiplier," in military terminology.
For most of history freedom had to be suffered for if not died for and that raised its value to something sacred. But today, many believe that any sacrifice at all - rationing water during a drought - is government tyranny. That is literally infantile. Only children owe nothing.
The temptation to ignore reality while believing in a divine being that will protect you from harm has gotten a lot of people killed over the ages. What truly is benevolent, though - what will save you over and over, or die trying - are other people. Citizen soldiers in Ukraine:
Women are more likely than men to display something called "moral courage" such as hiding Jewish families from the Nazis. Whereas men are quicker to counter physical threats, women are quicker to defend moral standards. It's the kind of thing that helps outgunned armies win wars.
Journalism is important because reality is important, and reality is something that many generals and politicians have a complicated relationship with. The powerful do not willingly embarrass themselves, so the press must do it for them.
For most of history freedom had to be suffered for, if not died for, and that raised its value to something almost sacred. The word is derived from the medieval German for "beloved." The fact that we will die to protect those we love may be our most noble human trait.
A lesson for Putin from a city official at the 1912 mill strikes in Lawrence, MA: "One policeman can handle ten men, while it takes ten policemen to handle one woman." When women get involved a rebellion, it's often just a matter of time before they win.
The Ottoman invasion of Montenegro in 1604 is a classic example of how a large army can be routed by local militias. Outnumbered 12 to 1, the Montenegrins attacked at dawn and decimated the enemy. Freedom is due, in part, to the fact that powerful nations do not always win wars.
The definition of tribe: "What happens to you happens to me." The more people you feel that way about, the more meaningful your life is going to be. After 9/11, much of the country felt that way. Maybe we can find out way back to that without having planes fly into towers.
The problem with guns is that they allow cowards to feel like heroes. And the problem with gun laws is that they often can't tell the difference. It's time for the American people to get rid of politicians who use such issues to divide the nation and benefit themselves.
"In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife" will be available May 21, 2024. It is my most personal book.
More information is available here:
Thank you,
Sebastian
Unconscious submission is devastating to a person's chances of winning a fight. In pre-match publicity, boxers who smile briefly are statistically less likely to win than fighters who just frown. Such signals are known as "leakage." Thus far, Ukraine hasn't shown much leakage...
Please consider making a donation to my charity, Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues, so we can continue training journalists in battlefield medicine. link:
Leaders who aren't willing to make sacrifices aren't leaders, they're just opportunists - but they're easy to spot. Opportunists lie reflexively, blame others for failure and cower under fire. True leaders are willing to die for their people. Think about that next time you vote.
For people raised in safety, freedom can seem like a luxury, like money or good health, but first and foremost, it's the absence of threat. A person who can be killed without consequences for the killers is not free in the most important sense of the word.
My dear friend bled out in the back of a rebel pickup truck racing for the Misrata hospital.
There are a lot of brave people in the world, and Tim was one of them. I am profoundly lucky to have known Tim and to be able to call him a brother.
His work, his wisdom and his deep compassion will live on if we choose it to. For more information about Tim, please check out the foundation that his family has established in his name. I miss him terribly.
Women are a crucial component in defeating a dominant power. They give moral legitimacy to causes and often prevent governments from using deadly force. "One cop can handle ten men," one official complained during a 1912 labor strike, "but it takes ten cops to handle one woman!"
Thrilled to announce FREEDOM, which explains how people across the ages maintain autonomy in the face of more powerful foes. Humans are unique in that ability, and were that not true, the powerful would always dominate. Thankfully, they don’t. Avail 5/18:
We’re kicking off
#VeteransDay
Weekend with
@nytimes
bestselling author and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker,
@sebastianjunger
. Join us on November 10 and get your copy of "Tribe" signed by the author.
Reserve your 🎟️:
As Daruis's great army prepared to attack the Scythians, these wild tribesmen began hunting rabbits in the underbrush. Darius easily could have won but was was so unnerved that he withdrew. Empires never do well fighting people who are utterly unconcerned about death. See below.
In a deeply free society, leaders step down after losing elections because they value having no power in a fair system rather than all the power in an unfair one. Disagreements are resolved by courts and leaders are chosen by elections. All political violence is fascism.
The same can be said about the border crisis, the national debt, climate change, election denial, and anything else that threatens this great nation. Some are conservative issues, some are liberal ones, but all deserve a fair and unbiased accounting.
Emerging from the underbrush after hiding from a passing train west of Bolivar, PA. Pouring rain, nowhere to sleep and dark coming on. Oh well - might as well keep walking.
hey everyone, this is a pretty incredible book by an amazing young writer about her search for a relative who was shot down in Vietnam and never found. I highly recommend it...
One can tell the relative objectivity of a news organization (“integrity” may be a better word) by its willingness to report stories that are unflattering — or even devastating — to its preferred candidate.
Problem with Democrats is they assume we live in world where nice guys will eventually win. Problem with Republicans is that they assume we live in a world where nice guys will eventually get stomped to death in a gutter. In some places we are all just Americans. Unite!
Dominant men have higher testosterone than non-dominant men, which is associated with both wide facial features and leadership. T is so closely tied to aggression that you can predict how much time a hockey player will spend in the penalty box by measuring the width of his face
If democracy is a form of freedom, accepting an election loss may be the ultimate proof of how free you want yo be. History is littered with fascists who have subverted elections and jailed critics, but their power tends to be brief. Most wind up dead or in prison. Mussolini:
At the heart of most stable governments is the willingness to share power with people you disagree with - and may even hate. That is true for tribal societies like the Apache and for democracies like the United States. Thugs like this invariably destabilize their own country:
In 1604, the Ottoman Empire invaded the tiny principality of Montenegro - home to a warlike people who supposedly feared nothing but dying quietly in bed. Though outnumbered 12-to-1, the Montenegrins attacked first and killed one third of the enemy. So much for might makes right.
Large armies--or people--are stronger than small ones but slower and less efficient. This is true at every scale from open warfare to streetcorner fistfights. Because the outcome of conflict cannot be predicted, the powerful often end up having to grant freedom to the weak.
I'm thrilled to release our new video about
@vetstownhall
. As you know, VTH is a nonprofit that I started to help bridge the military-civilian divide. Check out my (very) short doc about the sheer power of bearing witness to the experiences of others:
In a free society leaders would not only be barred from exploiting their position for personal gain they would be expected to make the same sacrifices and accept the same punishments as those they led. In that sense America tried to replicate the equality of many tribal societies
We both had many close calls out there but always came out unscathed. And then Tim took a boat to the besieged city of Misrata, in Libya, to document a ferocious onslaught by Qaddafi’s military. A mortar landed near him and shrapnel severed the femoral artery in his groin.
I'm looking forward to discussing "In My Time of Dying" with
@howtoacademy
in London on June 5.
Event info:
More event dates will be announced very soon.
The award-winning war reporter and bestselling author of
#Tribe
and
#ThePerfectStorm
@sebastianjunger
shares his near death experience and the profound existential reckoning that followed.
Wed, 5 June | 7:00pm | London
Tickets:
War is supposed to be bad because a lot of bad things happen in it, but for a 19 year old at the working end of a .50 cal during a firefight that everyone comes out of okay, war is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.
The great virtue of hunter-gatherer society is that - though leaders understandably have more prestige than others - they don't have more rights. Unlike European monarchs, they could not leverage their power to gain access to wealth or skirt the laws that govern everyone else.
We walked 400 miles, and most nights we were the only people who knew where we were. There are many definitions of freedom, but surely that’s one of them.
We walked out of the Lewiston Narrows and the terrain laid down as it ran west until the Alleghenies were just a distant presence. It was flat open country with plenty of firewood and drinking water and plenty of places to sleep even if you just lay down where you were.
Though democracy may not survive as a broad form of freedom, its core virtue of holding leaders accountable and insisting that they make sacrifices along with everyone else is crucial to group survival. Wealthy nations might survive poor leadership but no one else will.
The trains were so heavy and fast that they seemed to set the whole world in motion, vibrating the air and raising a strange pitch from the rail that fell at the edge of human hearing. We'd step into the underbrush and sit on our packs and wait for the beast to come through.
The men marching for better pay were easily stopped by machine guns, but women were a different matter. Their social networks ran laterally through squalid city neighborhoods and were almost impossible to penetrate. These women were effective precisely because they were marginal.
When journalists cite biology to refute the idea that gender difference is merely a social construct, they are not standing up for cisgendered Americans but for the idea that objective truth matters and will come after us if we ignore it for too long.