Sebastian Junger is the New York Times bestselling author of In My Time of Dying, Tribe, War, Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, and codirector of the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting.
Today, many adults have never seen someone die and are likely to have no underlying religious belief. Both of those things make death fearsome and alien. Powerful death narratives can help break that down like powerful war narratives can help break down the military civilian divide.
EW: As someone who has been on the front lines of war and faced your own near-death experience, how did those moments change your understanding of mortality and the meaning of life?
SJ: Wartime dangers always seemed specific to the place and that if I didn’t want to be in danger, just don’t go to warzones. As a healthy and athletic man, suddenly dying of a freak medical occurrence made it clear that we are all alive by the merest of chances and that our lives are brief miracles that may have no enduring meaning at all.
EW: How has it influenced your approach to discussing and understanding end-of-life issues?
SJ: I’m not sure what you mean by end of life issues but I will say that many dying people might not realize they are dying and perhaps it’s better that way.
EW: How do you think storytelling—whether through journalism or personal narrative—can help us reframe the conversation around death and make it a more accepted, less feared part of life?
SJ: In earlier eras people died at home, often in childhood, and death was very familiar to most people. It was also experienced in a religious context. Today, many adults have never seen someone die and are likely to have no underlying religious belief. Both of those things make death fearsome and alien. Powerful death narratives can help break that down like powerful war narratives can help break down the military civilian divide.
EW: In your exploration of human resilience and community, what insights have you gained about the role of connection and support during times of profound personal and collective loss?
SJ: Communality and human connection are our most effective buffers again fear, pain and grief. Drugs and alcohol can provide temporary relief but also cause devastating damage to one’s life. If you are not part of a close-knit human group, you are at a greatly elevated risk of depression, anxiety, suicide and addiction. Affluent Western society does not provide any obvious solutions to this.
EW: In your experience, what is the most significant societal norm or belief about death and dying that needs to be challenged or redefined?
SJ: That death is unnatural, repulsive and embarrassing. It’s no more so than any other human process, including birth. It’s just what mammals do.
EW: You did a lot of research into the science around connecting with the dead during a near death experience and how that might be explained from a neuroscience and physics perspective. Without knowing conclusively, do you think these connections are “real”?
SJ: I’m a journalist and as such, I don’t offer personal opinions. But I will say that there are legitimate and rational reasons to believe that – like beetles, raccoons, gazelle and sardines – we are simply biological beings whose individuality ends utterly and completely upon death. But there are also legitimate and rational reasons to believe that we have no clear understanding of the basic phenomena of existence, such as consciousness, and that the life/death divide is a false one that conceals the fact that all things in the universe are connected in ways that defy human understanding.
Sebastian Junger will speak at End Well 2024 on November 22, 2024. Join live or virtually!