How the Rise of Depression Relates to the End of War Parties

And what we can do about it

Author photo taken near river mentioned in essay.

“The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;

Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,

And he that stands will die for naught, and home there’s no returning.

The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.”

– A.E. Housman, 1922

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My platoon operated in a valley with a river running through it. We had to cross it on most of our missions. On our way to a sniper hide around two in the morning, myself and three others took a knee while hidden beneath the canopy of an almond orchard about twenty meters from the water’s edge.  

I soaked in the spectacle: The river’s gentle groan and our deep exhales were the only sounds that broke the night. The illumination from moon and stars cast a pale whitish glow on the water ahead. Dense orchards stretched to the west on the far side. Further on, black craggy mountains loomed high and channeled the river’s course north to south. Merely breathing was a joy: the wholesome air of the mountains of Afghanistan always reminded me of the draughts of the Ents of Middle Earth.

While gazing into the woods on the opposite shore for silhouettes of enemy shoulders or glints of moon on their rifle barrels, myself and another silently emerged from the tree line onto the rocky banks of the river. The other two remained behind with rifles at the ready to cover us. We put our lives in the hands of our overwatch and stepped into the current. The cold was stunning: I took a sharp inhale through my nose, my vision became clearer, my blood pumped harder. Once across, we paused and covered the remaining two of our sniper team as they crossed, their lives now in our hands.

It was a war party on a cold night. Matter and mind were charged with enemy. I felt the hunt in my marrow. I was neither the first to feel this way, nor was I the first to feel the aching void left by its absence.   

What was a profession for me was a totality of life for our ancestors. The Crow loved war. They lived for it. Two Leggings, a Crow warrior, felt the end of the Crow way of life did not come about with the extermination of the buffalo, but with the extermination of war parties and midnight river crossings in icy waters. “Nothing happened after that. We just lived… There is nothing more to tell.”¹ All too many Crow were crippled with depression.

This leads me to one of the pressing questions of our time: why is depression a plague on the developed world? Twenty nine percent of all US adults now claim to have been diagnosed with depression at one point in their lives², which means that out of three hundred thirty three million citizens in the US, ninety six million of them feel an emptiness of the soul. The numbers rise each year.

My hunch is that there is a hole in our lives the exact shape of the ancient forms of hardship that once molded us and are no more. Not just combat, but all ancient trials that demanded usefulness, purpose, community, risk, and a hardcore awareness of the world around us. What is left is a void, a hole, a purposelessness that can be existentially horrifying if not filled productively. 

I am not unmindful that I am making great leaps of logic and epic assumptions. But when I think of my river crossings on the hunt and the doom of the Crow, my sense is that there is a great wisdom buried here, some natural arrangement that must be understood. It concerns me deeply. 

This might appear to be a paradox. Let us place this paradox in our palm and turn it about to learn what it is.

Let us look at attention: On the one hand, we have an unprecedented level of safety. We can devote our mental energy to whatever we want. On the other hand, we are not compelled by the scalpers in the night to focus our energies on life-and-death matters. It is difficult to imagine a Crow scout on guard dropping behind a boulder and thinking to himself, “I am merely a burden. What is the point of it all?” What follows? The war party’s horses will be stolen, the sleeping warriors will be shot through with arrows, and their scalps will be sawed off with bright blades. On guard, how can he think he is a burden? How can he not know the point of it all?

Let us look at community: On the one hand, technology connects us to millions of other people. On the other hand, there is a crisis of loneliness. What are hundreds of thousands of friends on a social media platform? They are not flesh. They are not fur. They are not unconditional devotion. They are more like virtual versions of the zombie fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis that hijacks the brain of an ant and drives its corpse around.³

Let us look at mortality: On the one hand, we live longer lives and see far less death. We rarely witness the haunting moment in time when someone we care for breaths their last breath. On the other hand, we are reminded less often of the gift that is life. Kipling wrote, “Two thousand pounds of education drops to a ten-rupee jezail.”⁴ Just so, a Crow nourished in ancient wisdom can drop to a tree-whittled arrow and a Navy SEAL with twelve million dollars of training can drop to a one cent bullet. Without the reminder of death, it is easy to forget that we are alive.

Let us look at affluence: On the one hand, we can now pursue an endless array of possessions. On the other hand, they may distract us from the spectacle of life. Like the Crow, I have ridden many horses. I felt a keener sense of life after an hour on a horse than I did when buying my smart phone or even my house for that matter. What is a bit of plastic or a few planks of wood compared to a shared moment with a thousand pounds of consciousness?

Let us look at mentorship: On the one hand, we rarely need to hear harsh words. On the other hand, we are neutered by the lie that “Everyone is a winner” when it would be more profitable to hear, “You must work hard, be disciplined, and set your jaw while crossing the river strewn with ice blocks beneath the moon. Stop complaining. Stop blaming. Be prepared to be laughed at. If you intend to be useful, you must be willing to rip skin, break bones, spit teeth, and die in command of yourself.”

It seems then that the paradox is not so much a paradox as it is proof that we were designed for a different world than the one we have inherited. The burden of ease is the burden of personal initiative.

The optimists of modern times show us graphs and say that our time is the safest and most affluent era humans have lived in. This is true and it is a blessing. But longer life spans, greater access to bread, milk, and eggs, and more televisions and college diplomas does not prove that the average person lives a more meaningful life. Actually, the opposite seems to be the case for ninety six million Americans. These things sustain life but do not nourish the soul.

The optimist says, “This is absurd. We should be post violence, post cold, post discomfort, post enemy. Of course our lives are more meaningful. What value can combat or the miseries of the ancient world possibly add?” These are those who think little of war parties and cold nights. It is significant, however, that many of these optimists only know the modern human condition – and that they nothing of war parties and cold nights.   

What then? Does this mean we should create war parties and measure our worth in scalps? Should we deny our advancements? Our safety? Far from it. My feeling is that if we go backwards and welcome the fall of civilization, we will not find quiet lives of peace-pipes and berry-picking, but rather biblical levels of slaughter and a scorched earth; and yet if we maintain the status quo, we will witness the emptying of souls on a civilizational level. Our only option is to look forward while learning from what lies behind.  

It is legitimate to assume that when Two Leggings said, “Nothing happened after that” in response to the end of war parties, he was mourning the loss of his own way of life and not condemning all of mankind to a feeling of worthlessness.

Enemies still exist: apathy, loneliness, purposelessness, and those who would do evil. Enemies can still be fought; communities can still be forged; possessions can still be minimized; hard counsel can still be given; and a sense of belonging on our pale blue dot in the cosmos can still be fostered.⁵

What is more, we do not need combat to instill a sense of awe and an unquenchable sense of gratitude when we can take a second to stop and look at the patterns of gold, blue, and black on the powdery wings of a butterfly. There is great wisdom here, too.

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1. Nabokov, Peter. Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior. 1967

2. https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-new-highs.aspx

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

4. Rudyard Kipling. Arithmetic of the frontier. https://allpoetry.com/Arithmetic-on-the-Frontier

5. Carl Sagan never lets us down when it comes to viewing the universe with a sense of awe. Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. First edition. New York, Random House, 1994.