[Movie played]
>>Sebastian Junger: Thank you very much. It's
a real pleasure to be here. That was the trailer
for a movie that my partner, Tim Hetherington,
and I shot, directed, and produced that's
been out for the past couple months in the
United States, and if you're interested, it
may be playing in a city near where you live.
That movie was shot in the Korengal Valley
of eastern Afghanistan. I spent a year, off
and on, there with Tim with a small platoon
in a small outpost. They were in almost 500
firefights during their deployment.
A fifth of all the combat in all of Afghanistan
while they were there was taking place in
that six-mile-long valley.
I'm a journalist. Specifically, I'm a war
journalist.
One of the things I cover -- I realized, as
I started thinking about this talk I was going
to give, one of the things I cover in my job
is catalysts.
There are social and political factors that
cause wars that can simmer for decades and
be ignited literally in an afternoon.
One of my jobs -- one of the things I do in
my job is to explain how that catalyst worked
or try to predict when it's going to happen
again.
It happens all the time.
There's a tax on tea and suddenly the colonies
are rebelling against the English government.
An airplane is shot down over Rwanda with
the president in it and suddenly there's three
months of genocide that kill almost a million
people.
That kind of event that precipitates a long-standing
problem is exactly what I cover in my job.
It affects me personally.
I was in Liberia once during the Civil War
in 2003 and the rebels were advancing on the
capital and the Charles Taylor government
 -- it wasn't even a government, really -- were
convinced that America was backing the rebels,
and I was the only American in the country.
I had come in kind of randomly during a time
of peace and then suddenly the rebels attacked
and Charles Taylor, when --
While I was there, George Bush declared that
Charles Taylor was a war criminal and could
not travel the world freely and would be brought
to the Hague, if caught.
And that afternoon my life was in danger.
It was the right thing to say by President
Bush. It was true. But suddenly I was accused
of being an American spy and I had to -- I
was actually kicked out of the country. I
was dragged into a basement detention center,
interrogated.
The U.S. embassy, which was getting mortared
at the time, intervened and so they kicked
me out of the country. I couldn't get out
because rebels had surrounded the capital
and so I went into hiding.
That statement by President Bush was the catalyst
for something that almost ended very, very
badly for me and remains -- for all the footage
that you saw there, remains probably the most
terrifying experience of my life.
The way I understand catalysts is that basically
 -- I mean, as a journalist, I focus on catalysts
in the social world, the political world.
I'm not a chemist, obviously.
The catalysts take a -- basically a sort of
sea of potential and they convert it into
energy.
You know, you light a match in a kitchen with
a gas leak and that match is the catalyst
for an explosion.
Someone shouts an accusation during a mob,
a lynch mob, a riot -- that happened to me
once in Liberia -- and suddenly a mob turns
into a lynch mob and people get killed.
It can be one sentence.
Planes fly into buildings. That's a catalyst.
In my job, catalysts can produce a lot of
good and a lot of bad, and often both.
And I think it's very interesting to watch
the events following 9/11 still unfolding,
watch to sort of see the bad and the good
compete with each other.
One human reaction to catastrophe is to group
together and help one another.
Another reaction is to become extremely defensive
and paranoid and ready to kill.
They both happen. I've seen it in wars over
and over and over again.
Tremendous examples of courage and generosity
side by side with incredible acts of violence
and hatred.
Political and religious leaders all act as
catalysts for what I think of as the sort
of endless human capacity for both violence
and for generosity and collective action.
Successful political leaders are catalysts.
The ones who are not successful fail to become
catalysts. That's why they're not successful.
I'm going to tell a brief story. I think no
discussion on catalysts is complete without
a story about a bar fight.
[Laughter]
When I was a young man, I was traveling in
Spain. My dad grew up in Spain -- Spain and
France -- and I've been back there many times.
And I was in Pamplona during the festival,
the running of the bulls, and, you know, basically
you're out all night and you go to sleep at
about 7 a.m. after they run the bulls and
you make up in the afternoon and --
I mean, at least that's what you do if you're
22.
And I wound up with some really nice young
Spanish guys, a couple of guys.
One of them -- I mean, they had had quite
a lot to drink, and one of them was wearing
a plastic Viking helmet sort of askew on his
head, and we -- they were just friendly and
we started talking. We were in a bar.
In walked three very tough-looking Moroccan
guys, and spoke French. My friends spoke Spanish.
And one of the Moroccan guys walked up to
the my -- the guy with the Viking helmet,
grabbed it off his head, and said in French,
"That's my helmet. You stole it from me."
I'm the only person who speaks both languages
so now I'm, like, a U.N. translator in the
middle of a bar fight.
So I'm explaining everything. The Spanish
guys grab the Viking helmet. The other two
Moroccan guys grab the Viking helmet and I'm
trying to translate and avoid a bar fight.
And I'm thinking in my mind, "How long -- what's
the protocol? How long do you have to know
a guy before you really are obligated to back
him up in a bar fight?"
[Laughter]
Like I'm hoping years. Maybe -- maybe months.
[Laughter]
If it's an hour, I'm in trouble, right?
So I'm trying to negotiate this. It's getting
uglier and uglier. Everyone else backs away.
And then suddenly, they're all pull -- they
haven't started hitting each other yet, but
that's coming. They're pulling at the Viking
helmet and they're all cross-eyed drunk, right?
They're pulling at it and the helmet, the
thing they're fighting over, starts to rip.
The only thing that could have gotten these
guys to stop was that they were destroying
the thing they were fighting over, right?
Of course.
So "Stop, stop, stop!"
And one of the Spanish guys yelled, you know,
(speaking in Spanish) and then he came to
me and he said, in this sort of elegant Spanish
way, "Do you promise -- will you take my place
at the helmet?"
I was like, "Okay."
So I -- he said, "Do you promise to defend
the helmet upon your ancestors," blah, blah,
blah.
[Laughter]
And I said, "Yes," et cetera.
So he went and got the biggest, cheapest jug
of red wine that he could from the bartender,
screwed the top off, and -- in that bar at
that time, you could just buy big bottles
of wine from the bartender. It was no problem.
So he came over and he filled the Viking helmet
with red wine up to the brim, till our fingertips
were red. And then he put his hand underneath
it. And I think the only thing that would
have been worse for these five guys, worse
than destroying the helmet, was -- would be
spilling red wine, right?
[Laughter]
So he puts his hand under the helmet and he
says, "Now, everyone let go."
And we all let go and he gave the helmet to
the leader of the three Moroccan guys and
said, "You drink first. You're our guests.
In this country, you drink first."
And he drank from the helmet, passed it to
his friends, went around the circle, went
around again, filled up again with more red
wine, finished the bottle, got another bottle
of red wine.
Half an hour later, the helmet is, like, forgotten
under a table and they're just passing the
bottle of red wine around and like an hour
after that, they're all best friends. They
can't understand each other at all but they're
so drunk that it doesn't matter.
[Laughter]
You can see in that story the hallmarks of
human society. You can see tribal affiliation.
You can see the defense of resources and territory.
You can also see the incredibly deep satisfaction
of the human connection. That guy, that helmet,
was a catalyst -- threatened to be a catalyst
for violence. It also became a catalyst for
human connection. They're so close those two
things.
Human society -- we evolved from the higher
primates. And we evolve from a system where
dominance -- there were groups controlled
by dominance. Dominance hierarchies. As language
developed, that system of controlling the
group broke down.
Before language -- I mean, just on a very
crude level, if you're the biggest ape in
the group and there's no language so no one
else can form an affiliation to confront you,
you basically call the shots. And, as soon
as you have language, you have alliances of
weaker individuals who collectively are stronger
than any one dominant individual.
With that language you need empathy. Zog wants
to sleep with your wife. You go tell Joe that
you're unhappy about it, but Zog is 8 feet
tall. Joe needs a certain amount of empathy
to say, "Okay. I'll help defend your home
because you will do that for me." I'm really
making this very simple. But that's the essence
of how I understand this works. As soon as
you have language, you have cooperation, you
have empathy. And you have organized violence
and organized cooperation.
A society that doesn't have organized cooperation,
a human society, an early human society that
doesn't have organized cooperation cannot
thrive. And one that cannot assemble, organize
violence, organize defense can't survive,
can't defend itself.
They estimate that something like 15% of our
early ancestors died from intergroup violence.
15%. Imagine a 15% casualty rate in this society
from violence from another group. I think
the civilian casualty rate in the 20th century,
which was such a bloodbath, was 1%. Just imagine.
That was human prehistory.
So you got violence, and you have cooperation
and empathy.
Every social catalyst -- I believe that every
social catalyst will potentially -- at least
of the ones I deal with as a journalist will
potentiate one of those two or both.
I spent, as I said, a year off and on with
a platoon of 30 men in a very remote outpost
in Afghanistan. The outpost was called Restrepo.
That's the name of the movie. They had no
running water up there. They couldn't bathe
for a month at a time. They had no phone,
no internet, no connection to the outside
world, no Internet, no hot food. They basically
lived in a world of sandbags and crates of
ammunition, two or three firefights a day,
for a year. No women, nothing. It was -- they
were on Mars except with a lot of combat.
Very high casualties. The guys really suffered.
And they came back -- it was just, basically,
the worst thing a person can go through. And
they came back to their base in Vicenza, Italy.
It was the battle company of the 173rd airborne
based in Vicenza.
And a lot of things that were not at Restrepo
were very easily available around the base
in Vicenza. And they sort of indulged themselves
for a few weeks. And after a few weeks or
a couple months, they, most of them, realized
that they missed Restrepo. They missed being
on that hilltop. They missed the worst experience
of their lives. It was a great -- it was very
confusing to them. And in my book "War" I
try -- the main thing I try to explain is
what is it about combat, because it's so obviously
so awful, what is it about combat that young
men actually miss? Why is that more compelling
than the society that soldiers come home to?
I don't mean just in this war, I mean going
back to the Iliad. I think one of the -- one
of the explanations is that combat potentiates
both of these great human reactions to crisis.
It triggers organized violence. And it triggers
cooperation and brotherhood and, in a word,
it -- love.
One of the guys in the platoon said -- Brendan
O'Byrne, said to me -- we were on a hillside
outside an enemy village. And American mortars
were going over our head and hitting the far
hillside. It's very tense because mortars
sometimes fall short. They were going right
over our heads. We were trying to have a conversation
hoping this all ended well. And he said, "You
know, it's crazy. There's guys in the platoon
who straight up hate each other. But we would
all die for each other."
That is one of the most tremendous human traits.
To briefly go back to chimpanzees, they -- chimpanzee
groups will send out groups of males -- 6,
7, 8 males into the territory of a rival group.
And they will creep -- it's a raid. And they
go in very quietly and they're very observant
and they're very careful. And they will attack
lone males of the rival group and beat them
to death. And over the course of months or
years, one by one, they'll kill off the males
of this rival group. And then they'll expand
their territory. Suddenly they have all the
females of that group. They have more food.
With more food, the females in their group
are more likely to raise healthy young. And
that group, that aggressive group thrives.
The less aggressive group dies out.
Chimpanzees happen to be, genetically, our
closets -- we are the -- we are closest primate
relative to chimpanzees. So chimpanzees and
humans are over here. The rest of the primate
groups are over here.
But here's what's interesting about this:
When this happens and they attack a lone male
and he -- that lone male has brothers in the
area who can hear his screams, they do not
rush to his aid even if doing that would equalize
the fight and allow their compatriot to escape
alive. They just get out of there. The problem
is that there's no language to convey acts
of courage in chimpanzee society and there's
no language with which to penalize acts of
cowardice. As soon as you have language and
you fail to come to the aid of a brother and
you survive but back at the campfire everyone
is talking about how disgracefully you acted,
all of a sudden, courage is something that's
required of individuals and cowardice is something
that's punished.
And one of the really extraordinary human
accomplishments, I think, is this idea that
individuals will risk or sacrifice their lives
for other people that they're not even related
to. I don't mean their kid. I don't mean their
spouse. I mean some guy who joined the platoon
three months ago. There's no other animal
species that does that in that way, the throwing
yourself on a hand grenade act.
I'm going to bring this to a close. I don't
know how long I've talked. But I don't see
a flashing red light yet, but I think we're
getting close.
Some people, I feel, look at human history,
look at human events, and they see war, they
see conflict. That is what characterizes the
human experience. As a journalist, I can tell
you that as much as that is true, in equal
part what I see is an incredible sea of potential
altruism and generosity and cooperation. It
is both. There's a war in Afghanistan. People
are getting killed. We've spent God knows
how much money. A trillion whatever dollars.
There are also people from this society who
have nothing to do with Afghanistan who have
gone over there, civilians, who have gone
over there as doctors, as architects, as engineers
to help build roads, to help cure people,
bring medicine, to educate children. And,
tragically, many of those people have been
killed doing it. That is altruism. That is
human altruism side by side with human violence.
And I feel that, if we as a species, if our
leaders, if we as a people can figure out
a catalyst that triggers that altruism that's
out there, we'll be fine. Thank you very much.
(Applause).
