In a thought-provoking conversation on The Optimist Podcast, anthropologist and former elite U.S. Army warrior Philip Folsom offered a compelling explanation for the explosive popularity of Brazilian jiu-jitsu in modern society.
According to Folsom, the martial art’s appeal goes far beyond self-defense or fitness. It succeeds because it recreates the tribal kinship systems that humans are evolutionarily designed to crave.
“Jiu-jitsu is popular because it’s a kinship system,” Folsom explained. “It’s dealing with lethal technology, you’re learning how to break and kill other humans. That sense of trust and safety and responsibility and honor and duty is mandatory if you’re going to participate in such an activity.”
This creates an environment where practitioners form deep bonds of mutual respect and accountability, something largely absent in modern life.
Folsom argues that contemporary society suffers from a catastrophic breakdown of community. “We live a block apart but we’re not hanging out. We don’t have that level of intimacy. Most people listening to this podcast have neighbors whose names they don’t know,” he noted.
This isolation, he suggests, is fundamentally at odds with human nature. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans evolved in tight-knit groups of around 150 people or fewer, where everyone knew each other and depended on one another for survival.
The transition to large cities and anonymous living has severed these ancient connections. “Isolation removes meaning, purpose, significance,” Folsom stated. “It chops the top end off of everything that men find fulfilling in their life.” This loneliness epidemic tracks directly with rising rates of depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide, particularly among men.
Enter jiu-jitsu academies, which Folsom describes as “fully intact tribal systems.” Each academy operates like a small tribe, complete with hierarchy, initiation rituals, and shared values.
New students undergo what instructors literally call “domestication.” It is a process where they learn the academy’s culture, prove their trustworthiness, and earn their place in the community. “They want to find out what you do under stress,” Folsom explained. “They regulate, they correct. There’s always an enforcer.”
What makes jiu-jitsu particularly powerful is its combination of physical challenge and communal belonging. “It’s one of those few places that men go and they go, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been missing,'” Folsom observed.
“Your eyes work for the first time, your soul works for the first time.” The training provides the adversity and stress that humans need to thrive, while the academy structure provides the belonging and status that make life meaningful.
Folsom’s anthropological perspective reveals that jiu-jitsu’s popularity isn’t just a trend, it’s a response to a deep human need. In a world of climate-controlled isolation and digital superficiality, people are desperately seeking authentic connection and meaningful challenge.
“We’re looking for artificial means to create adversity,” he said. “That’s why ice baths are popular, that’s why hunting and Jiu-Jitsu… they’re all just artificial adversity systems.”
The martial art succeeds where modern society fails: it gives people a tribe to belong to, a hierarchy to climb through merit, and brothers-in-arms who literally trust each other with their lives.
As Folsom put it, “Lone wolves don’t do well. They can’t do what they’re built to do, which is collaborate with other wolves, hunt big game, and everyone eats. That’s what we’re designed to do at a cellular level.”
