Quotes by Sebastian Junger - Page 2

No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Advice
Arab Spring
Dark
Dark Ages
Military
Military Force
President Obama
Spring
Turns
Vote
Actively
Obama
Ages
Arab
Engage
Fails
Movements
Region
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I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've always turned it into a matter of honor and a way of gaining acceptance back into society if they survived.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Men
Acceptance
Groups
Honor
Human Society
Survived
Thinking
Men Society Always
Gaining
Gotten
Necessary
Sent
Tens
Tens Of Thousands
Thousands
Thousands Of Years
Turned
Young Men
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I went to Afghanistan in '96 to write about terrorist training camps south of Jalalabad and Tora Bora, in the mountains. I was there right before the Taliban took over, literally a few weeks before they took Kabul. The frontline wasn't terribly active, but it was definitely there. And they swept into power.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Active
Afghanistan
Camps
Mountain
Taliban
Training
Writing
Terribly
Literally
Swept
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If hardship brought out the worst in people, the human race wouldn't have survived. Right after 9/11, for instance, the murder rate actually went down in New York City. In World War II during the Blitz, the civilians of London were bombed almost every night for six months, but psychiatric admissions declined.
Sebastian Junger / Author
War
Night
People
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People ask me about 'The Hurt Locker' a lot, and it's an incredible piece of filmmaking - as are 'Band of Brothers' and 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Apocalypse Now.' But they're not necessarily true to war in a literal sense. What they are, really, are brilliant movies about Hollywood's idea of war.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Movies
Apocalypse
Band
Brilliant
Filmmaking
Hollywood
Hurt
Literal
Ask
War Me People
Brothers
Full
Incredible
Jacket
Locker
Metal
Necessarily
Piece
Platoon
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I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we'd steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Bridges
Complicated
Horrible
Real
Real Life
Thinking
Time Consuming
Steer
Climb
Endeavors
Imminent
Jump
Just Be
Parachute
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I decided to start a medical training program for freelancers, only freelancers. They're the ones who are doing most of the combat reporting. They're taking most of the risks. They're absorbing most of the casualties. And they're the most underserved and under-resourced of everyone in the entire news business.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Casualties
Combat
News
Program
Risk
Training
Absorb
News Business
Reporting
Underserved
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The combat environment has the effect of flattening out civilian identities. If you're young or old, or a graduate from Harvard or the son of a farmer from Alabama, or if you're gay or straight or good-looking or ugly: none of those things matters much in combat, as long as you can conform to the group expectations.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Alabama
Combat
Conform
Environment
Harvard
Son
Civilian
Effect
Matters
Good-Looking
Graduate
Group
Identities
None
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What is and isn't justified by military necessity is, naturally, open to interpretation. One of the key concepts, though, is the law of proportionality. A military attack that results in civilian casualties - 'collateral damage' - is acceptable as long as the military benefits outweigh the price that is paid by humanity.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Acceptable
Benefits
Casualties
Civilian Casualties
Collateral
Concepts
Damage
Humanity
Interpretation
Justified
Military
Paid
Results
Naturally
Attack
Open
Civilian
Outweigh
Price
Though
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Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was provocative and complicated for Pakistan, but only if you accept the idea that he was an acceptable member of Pakistani society.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Acceptable
Ideas
Ideology
Including
Pakistan
Provocative
Way
Bin
Fellow
Member
Muslims
Tens
Tens Of Thousands
Thousands
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The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Car
War
Divorce
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The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it; it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Car
Car Accident
Combat
Divorce
Effects
Filled
Negative
Life War Me
Accident
Awhile
Deal
Go Away
Least
Noises
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The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Army
Commitment
Girlfriend
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Here's an easy way to see if a war movie is being truthful: If you see an explosion on a faraway hillside and the sound of the explosion and the detonation of the bomb happen at the same time - if they're putting the sound and the vision together in the same moment - they're going toward our cultural understanding of war, not the reality of war.
Sebastian Junger / Author
War
Reality
Understanding
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One interesting thing I found was that if you take an affluent modern society and collapse it during a crisis, like a war or a natural disaster, people begin relating in a more ancient, organic way. They're functioning in small interdependent groups and putting others first. And another irony is that even in terrible times, cooperating makes people feel good.
Sebastian Junger / Author
War
Interesting
People
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My reporting in Africa wouldn't be political per se, but it's certainly the point of my reporting - and of a lot of other reporters I know: Human suffering is bad, and if reporting stories about it brings it to light and someone does something, that's part of the point of journalism. And it's a thin line between that and activism, and you have to be careful about that.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Journalism
Political
Suffering
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In my eyes Marlantes has become the pre-eminent literary voice on war of our generation. He is a natural storyteller and a deeply profound thinker who not only illuminates war for civilians, but also offers a kind of spiritual guidance to vets themselves. As this generation of warriors comes home, they will be enormously helped by what Marlantes has written. I’m sure he will literally save lives.
Sebastian Junger / Author
War
Eye
Spiritual
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Right now, America doesn't ask us to do anything besides pay taxes. We don't even have to vote. But as psychologists will tell you, when you have to sacrifice for something, you value it more. What about national service for young people? Everybody between 18 and 24 could spend a year or two working for this country in some capacity. It'd be an amazing thing. And it would mix this country racially, culturally, economically.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Country
People
Sacrifice
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The most profound question is, "What would I risk dying for?" The natural answer is "for my family." But for most of history, we didn't live in families. We lived in small communities that gave us our sense of safety and place in the world, so the natural answer would be "for my people." The blessing and the tragedy of modern life is that we don't need our community to survive anymore. When we lose that idea, we lose a sense of who we are.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Blessing
People
Safety
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There is some evidence that average wave heights are slowly rising, and that freak waves of eighty or ninety feet are becoming more common. Wave heights off the coast of England have risen an average of 25 percent over the past couple of decades, which converts to a twenty-foot increase in the highest waves over the next half century. One cause may be the tightening of environmental laws, which has reduced the amount of oil flushed into the oceans by oil tankers.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Ocean
Couple
Past
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Soldiers join the military to serve their country, but when bullets are flying, it's hard to fight for an abstract notion like patriotism. They're fighting for the people standing next to them, and it doesn't matter who's a Republican or a Democrat, or who's black or white or Christian or Muslim or gay or straight. If Congress and all Americans could manage to ignore those differences, we would have a perfect country, but somehow we cannot rise to that level of nobility.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Christian
Country
Military
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Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. ... Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Jobs
War
Country
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Ironically, though our society of affluence brings safety and stability, it doesn't bring psychological health. As wealth goes up, suicide and depression rates tend to go up. I read one study that compared women in North America with women in Nigeria, and the group with the highest rates of depression was urban North American women, which is the wealthiest. Now, there are obviously huge stresses that come with poverty, but the poorer the society, the more collaborative people have to be.
Sebastian Junger / Author
People
Stress
Suicide
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I would never want to pass a law limiting freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean we have to condone statements that undermine basic national unity and respect. Imagine being asked to defend a country where some citizens say the man in the White House isn't their president. Or a major presidential contender accuses the commander in chief of not even being a U.S. citizen. Those kinds of statements erode trust in our democracy, and it's up to both parties to publicly reject them. We have to restore confidence that we are a nation that loves and believes in itself.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Believe
Country
Party
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During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with the parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plan hit the ground and exploded. They all died.
Sebastian Junger / Author
Death
Men
War
Air
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Sebastian Junger Quotes - Page 2

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