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A review by janthonytucson
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
4.0
If you can get past the first few chapters this book really pays off. I came to this book through my research into our modern conception of time as it is cited across multiple books I have read. The time element presented in the book is indeed important, however I found the aspect of how the Pirahã determine truth statements and modern day pragmatism to be the most profound insight of this book. I've been reading Richard Rorty, William James, and John Dewey and the concept that whether or not something is true in some specific conception of objectivity is really not that important, what is important is if what is claimed to be true works and is relevant to the local context.
Our incessant need to find universal truths, or to turn locally contingent 'truths' into universials, artificially delimits the spread of our possible future potentialities. The Pirahã understand this, Western pragmatic philosophers like Rorty, Dewey, and James get this, and I believe if this conception of truth was allowed to become embedded within our culture, would also become accepted and celebrated; however this epistemological conception of truth would fundamentally alters the logics of modern capitalism, and undermine its hegemonic hold over our homogenized global culture.
The need of capital to define risk parameters necessarily lowers our horizon of what can be true. It would appear that the Pirahã have a much broader and sensuous relationship with truth than any citizen of late modernity.
Our incessant need to find universal truths, or to turn locally contingent 'truths' into universials, artificially delimits the spread of our possible future potentialities. The Pirahã understand this, Western pragmatic philosophers like Rorty, Dewey, and James get this, and I believe if this conception of truth was allowed to become embedded within our culture, would also become accepted and celebrated; however this epistemological conception of truth would fundamentally alters the logics of modern capitalism, and undermine its hegemonic hold over our homogenized global culture.
The need of capital to define risk parameters necessarily lowers our horizon of what can be true. It would appear that the Pirahã have a much broader and sensuous relationship with truth than any citizen of late modernity.