Book Review: Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
I had wanted to pick this book up for quite a while – 3 years in fact – vaguely because I wanted to learn about its contents, but mostly because it’s coming from a recommendation by a YouTube content creator I follow who makes particularly entertaining and informational content, that is CGP Grey. I searched far and wide for the book since first hearing about it but had little success. Most of the physical bookstores I know don’t carry it, and the one store that did have it in its catalog always seems to have no stock of it (though, at this point, it seems they never bothered to restock it).
And then I bought a Kindle. One click later, it was loaded in my library and I was ready to read. Though I must say, the three years of hype I was building myself up to for this moment was kind of unjustified in that actually reading it was rather different from my expectations, but it never made the book any less interesting as an informational read nonetheless.
This review will detail a few key takeaways I got from the book, briefly explain what the book is about and explore how enjoyable it was for me to read.
What is it about?
The book is by journalist Sebastian Junger and is his take on why people band together in groups and tribe-like societies in the way they do. Garnering the experience he’s had from reporting within war zones, the book gives a brief insight into what groups do together as a collective in times of crisis, such as Londoners during The Blitz and the citizens of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. Both groups were ordinary people caught in the crossfire of some very vicious fighting and wartime scenarios, yet somehow remained happy and maintained high morale in their time of crisis. Junger also details how this collective team spirit eventually went away in the aftermath of the conflicts and how people just became their individual selves again.
Junger also discusses the group morale that soldiers have within their units during deployments and war, and how men in units near the frontlines tend to have higher morale than those who were in support units far away from the frontlines. Although the former runs a higher likelihood of being exposed to traumatic events such as witnessing one’s buddy dying in battle or bitter violence, less men from these units report post-traumatic stress disorder after the conclusion of the fighting as compared to their support counterparts.
No Man is an Island
One important takeaway I got from this book is the importance of making the individual feel important and valued within the group. The final piece to the puzzle for why war veterans tend to suffer from trauma-related mental handicaps is not so much the hardship or the emotionally scarring experience of war, but the loss of control and being made unimportant in the eyes of society after the fighting is over. The brotherhood and social structures built during their time of service is suddenly taken away from them, leaving them lost, listless and lonely. As Junger aptly put it at the start of the book,
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. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, p. xvii
The individualistic nature of society and how the self-centred career goals of the one, Junger claims, is one of the leading causes for heightened suicide rates in the developed world, despite the highest living standards humanity has seen in millennia and the safety of modern society from the external threats pre-industrial humanity had to face, like predators and getting seriously ill from a small scrape.
Social Structures and Hierarchy
Junger also presents the case of colonial America, where he tells of Benjamin Franklin lamenting of English settlers running away from colonies to join Native American tribes whereas Native American tribespeople almost never engage in the reverse.
Junger once again discusses the tribes as focusing on lifting up every individual and making them feel important within the tribe, while at the same time being able to maintain dedicated leadership positions within the group. There were members of the tribe tasked with leading the group specifically during peacetime, who were different from the members who were designated leaders during wartime. Others had a role to play in the tribe, such as hunters, foragers and child-rearers. These tribes also have outlandish coming-of-age ceremonies, which adds to the feeling of being inducted into a larger group together, to achieve common aims.
There definitely needs to be clearly defined hierarchies in order for a group to be successful together, with strong leadership at the top, while at the same time ensuring every niche is filled with the appropriate individual tasked to do them, with the understanding that their work is integral to group survival.
Accountability
One small takeaway I got is the wildly different approaches is the fact that the anonymous modern world is a sprawling mess where “people can get away with incredible levels of dishonesty without getting caught. What tribal people would consider a profound betrayal of the group, modern society simply dismisses as fraud”.
This made me aware of the fact that I need to be more wary of freeloaders, takers and ripoffs that lurk within larger groups. While individual members in a project group of five can easily be called out for not pulling their weight in terms of contributions to the project, a selfish soldier in a platoon of 40 men can easily get away with passing off responsibility to someone else, as the group’s shortcomings and easily be blamed on “the group” not doing enough or even, more maliciously, pushing the blame to other people and not getting caught as easily.
In terms of real-world applicability in my situation, we have to be especially cognisant of the slackers among us, especially in managing a big group of people.
A Perspective of PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a theme central to the ideas of this book, as most of the stories and statistics Junger draws come from war veterans and their adjustments to civilian life after the war.
Junger laments the civilian experience of war veterans as being more patronising than helpful, with much of the American population making token attempts at helping vets settle down in empty “thank you for your service” greetings and stores giving veterans discounts as if that’s something they really want. This apathy of the public to their experiences and troubles, Junger claims, is among the reasons why veterans develop PTSD later on in life.
This sentence nearly perfectly sums the whole situation up:
Veterans need to feel that they’re just as necessary and productive back in society as they were on the battlefield. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, p. 102
How was the book?
Personally, it’s hard for me to describe the kind of writing used in this book, but I know for sure that it isn’t in a narrative kind of way. Sort of informational, if that makes sense. Honestly, I felt that the writing was pretty stale for what the stories within are trying to depict. Imagine a book that tells of coming together during tough times regardless of cultural background reading like a home appliance instruction manual. Informative and useful, yes, but very robotic and sometimes repetitive in delivery.
However, at the same time, the lessons I learned about how groups think together when faced with a challenge was interesting and memorable. That’s about it. The book offers perspective into why modern society behaves in the selfish ways it does, the reality of PTSD in war veterans and how different it is to other PTSD stressors, and advice on how to live tribally with your group and organisation and how it can benefit you.
Ultimately, this book isn’t for the reader looking for a clear-cut story that is fixed in a sort of narrative structure or clearly defined table of contents on how the subject matter is tackled in the book, it is rather a collection of anecdotes, data and statistics, as well as a psychological take on the human experience and mankind’s innate need to stick together in groups. However, if you’re looking for a short but informational read, then I’d tell you to check this book out, it’s only 170 pages long. 3.5/5