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A review by branch_c
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
3.0
A fascinating book, though not entirely in the way I expected it to be. There's an exceptional mixture of aspects here - Pirahã culture, the hardships of jungle life, linguistics, philosophy, and religion. Everett has done a decent job tying all this together into a readable account of his adventures and thoughts. I've always had an interest in language, so to me the linguistic aspect was the most interesting, along with the trials of life in the Amazon.
I was less thrilled with the descriptions of Pirahã culture, mostly because Everett looks at it through the rose-colored glasses of someone whose personal philosophy has been heavily influenced by it. Because their outlook has become part of his worldview, he may tend to emphasize the positive aspects while downplaying the negatives. For example, Everett says "They see themselves as a family - a family in which every member feels obliged to protect and care for every other member" (p. 101). But in the same chapter he discusses an incident in which an orphaned baby was "euthanized" and another case in which a woman died in labor with no help from the villagers. Yes, I understand that in their environment there is often simply nothing they can do about some things, but it seems to me there is vast room for improvement, and their culture as a whole is certainly not one that anyone should want to emulate.
The author develops a concept he calls "immediacy of experience" and ties this to both the culture and the language of the Pirahãs. It's an ambitious idea, but I don't find the conclusions sufficiently justified. For example, he states at one point that "Dreams are not fiction to the Pirahãs. You see one way while awake and another way while asleep but both ways of seeing are real experiences" (p. 131). I doubt the Pirahãs honestly believe this! Surely they often dream about their own friends and family members, right? What happens when they wake up and ask the others what they thought about that experience? Lots of people believe that dreams have some deeper meaning, so I'm not surprised the Pirahãs attach significance to them, but for them to call dreams a "real experience" stretches the meaning of the term "real" too far.
Everett spends a lot of time on the idea that "language and culture are not cognitively isolated from each other" (p. 217). I realize he's reacting to Chomsky and other linguists who would like to see language as "pure" and completely portable from one culture to another. But I think it's fairly obvious that culture and language interact. As a demonstration that language is tied to culture, he gives plenty of evidence for the lack of recursion in Pirahã, which as a non-linguist I find convincing, but I don't think it's such a big issue as he makes it out to be. It seems quite reasonable that there is indeed a genetic "language instinct," possibly even a universal grammar as proposed by Chomsky, and there is also a cognition instinct, and a cultural instinct, and all of these things vary from person to person and from one society to another, blurring into each other as the mind develops. The fact that Pirahã doesn't use recursion in spite of the fact that Chomsky claims the universal grammar contains it is just not all that surprising. There are no doubt plenty of features of human evolution that end up not being used in some or all modern societies. And in the case of recursion, it might well have been useful in Pirahã culture as well, but by random accident the language went down a different path, and now it's reached a "local peak" - maybe it can't change to incorporate recursion at this point because that would require the language to first break down to something less useful and then build itself back up to the higher peak that includes recursion. Evolution doesn't allow such transitions, and it's possible that the evolution of language parallels this.
As far as the Christianity aspect, well, we know from the beginning that Everett's goal is to learn the language so that he can translate the New Testament into Pirahã. So it's a little strange that he doesn't discuss the progress on this at all until near the end of the book, where he says he succeeded in producing a Pirahã version of the Gospel of Mark. The Pirahãs hear it and understand it, but, not surprisingly, are completely uninterested in the message. They don't believe they're lost and see no need to be saved, and most importantly, they don't believe the story of Jesus because there is no evidence for it. Everett attributes this to the "immediacy of experience" principle and pinpoints this as the "last straw" contributing to his own loss of faith (p 271). I applaud him for recognizing this, and I suppose each has to come to this conclusion in his own way, but it's a little surprising that in Everett's case, it took a decade of experience with the Pirahãs to reach it, while he'd likely heard the same message from educated Western atheists and agnostics but disregarded it then.
Finally, Everett takes an unusual turn and puts the search for God in the same category as the search for truth, saying at one point that "it is hard to know what most scientists and philosophers mean when they use the word true" (p. 251). Regarding philosophers, he may be right, but for scientists, it's quite clear! He goes on to ask "Is it possible to live a life without the crutches of religion and truth?" and finishes by suggesting that we "enjoy life as it comes, recognizing the likely futility of searching for truth or God" (p. 273). Again, I applaud him for recognizing that religion is indeed a crutch, but there's no justification for saying the same about truth. Some things really are true about the world, and we have learned many of these things. Many others we might learn in the future, or we might not - the fact that we don't know everything there is to know in no way makes the search futile!
So to me, Everett's conclusions are debatable, but I'm certainly glad I read this book, and I'm impressed with his experiences and the efforts he's made to convey them honestly.
I was less thrilled with the descriptions of Pirahã culture, mostly because Everett looks at it through the rose-colored glasses of someone whose personal philosophy has been heavily influenced by it. Because their outlook has become part of his worldview, he may tend to emphasize the positive aspects while downplaying the negatives. For example, Everett says "They see themselves as a family - a family in which every member feels obliged to protect and care for every other member" (p. 101). But in the same chapter he discusses an incident in which an orphaned baby was "euthanized" and another case in which a woman died in labor with no help from the villagers. Yes, I understand that in their environment there is often simply nothing they can do about some things, but it seems to me there is vast room for improvement, and their culture as a whole is certainly not one that anyone should want to emulate.
The author develops a concept he calls "immediacy of experience" and ties this to both the culture and the language of the Pirahãs. It's an ambitious idea, but I don't find the conclusions sufficiently justified. For example, he states at one point that "Dreams are not fiction to the Pirahãs. You see one way while awake and another way while asleep but both ways of seeing are real experiences" (p. 131). I doubt the Pirahãs honestly believe this! Surely they often dream about their own friends and family members, right? What happens when they wake up and ask the others what they thought about that experience? Lots of people believe that dreams have some deeper meaning, so I'm not surprised the Pirahãs attach significance to them, but for them to call dreams a "real experience" stretches the meaning of the term "real" too far.
Everett spends a lot of time on the idea that "language and culture are not cognitively isolated from each other" (p. 217). I realize he's reacting to Chomsky and other linguists who would like to see language as "pure" and completely portable from one culture to another. But I think it's fairly obvious that culture and language interact. As a demonstration that language is tied to culture, he gives plenty of evidence for the lack of recursion in Pirahã, which as a non-linguist I find convincing, but I don't think it's such a big issue as he makes it out to be. It seems quite reasonable that there is indeed a genetic "language instinct," possibly even a universal grammar as proposed by Chomsky, and there is also a cognition instinct, and a cultural instinct, and all of these things vary from person to person and from one society to another, blurring into each other as the mind develops. The fact that Pirahã doesn't use recursion in spite of the fact that Chomsky claims the universal grammar contains it is just not all that surprising. There are no doubt plenty of features of human evolution that end up not being used in some or all modern societies. And in the case of recursion, it might well have been useful in Pirahã culture as well, but by random accident the language went down a different path, and now it's reached a "local peak" - maybe it can't change to incorporate recursion at this point because that would require the language to first break down to something less useful and then build itself back up to the higher peak that includes recursion. Evolution doesn't allow such transitions, and it's possible that the evolution of language parallels this.
As far as the Christianity aspect, well, we know from the beginning that Everett's goal is to learn the language so that he can translate the New Testament into Pirahã. So it's a little strange that he doesn't discuss the progress on this at all until near the end of the book, where he says he succeeded in producing a Pirahã version of the Gospel of Mark. The Pirahãs hear it and understand it, but, not surprisingly, are completely uninterested in the message. They don't believe they're lost and see no need to be saved, and most importantly, they don't believe the story of Jesus because there is no evidence for it. Everett attributes this to the "immediacy of experience" principle and pinpoints this as the "last straw" contributing to his own loss of faith (p 271). I applaud him for recognizing this, and I suppose each has to come to this conclusion in his own way, but it's a little surprising that in Everett's case, it took a decade of experience with the Pirahãs to reach it, while he'd likely heard the same message from educated Western atheists and agnostics but disregarded it then.
Finally, Everett takes an unusual turn and puts the search for God in the same category as the search for truth, saying at one point that "it is hard to know what most scientists and philosophers mean when they use the word true" (p. 251). Regarding philosophers, he may be right, but for scientists, it's quite clear! He goes on to ask "Is it possible to live a life without the crutches of religion and truth?" and finishes by suggesting that we "enjoy life as it comes, recognizing the likely futility of searching for truth or God" (p. 273). Again, I applaud him for recognizing that religion is indeed a crutch, but there's no justification for saying the same about truth. Some things really are true about the world, and we have learned many of these things. Many others we might learn in the future, or we might not - the fact that we don't know everything there is to know in no way makes the search futile!
So to me, Everett's conclusions are debatable, but I'm certainly glad I read this book, and I'm impressed with his experiences and the efforts he's made to convey them honestly.