Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

“The reluctance of Bouquet’s captives to leave their adopted tribe raised awkward questions about the supposed superiority of Western society.”

Henri Bouquet was a colonel in the British colonial army charged with fighting Indians in Pennsylvania and re-capturing whites taken previously by the tribes. Junger’s pointed observation that the white re-captives’ ambivalence (at best) or despondency (at worst) about returning to white society indicts both explicitly supremacist colonialists at the time and latently supremacist historians of today. 

“On a material level it is clearly more comfortable and protected from the hardships of the natural world. But as societies become more affluent, they tend to require more, rather than less, time and commitment by the individual, and it’s possible that many people feel that affluence and safety simply aren’t a good trade for freedom.”

Junger has been discussing whites who chose tribal society over colonial society, but he is using this historical phenomenon to speak about the present period. This is an example of how Junger uses the motif of the tribe to build his argument about the limitations of modern society and the desirability of tribalism.  

“Bluntly put, modern society seems to emphasize extrinsic values over intrinsic ones, and as a result, mental health issues refuse to decline with growing wealth. The more assimilated a person is into American society, the more likely they are to develop depression during the course of their lifetime, regardless of what ethnicity they are.”

Junger is summarizing the unique ills of modern society compared with tribal society. For instance, either indigenous tribes experienced no suicide whatsoever, or when they did, it was not rooted in psychological causes as it largely is today. Modern societies, by contrast, have suicide rates as high as 25 cases per 100,000 people; and the World Health Organization reports that rates of depression are significantly higher in wealthy countries.