stevengharms

I just finished Daniel Everett’s “Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes.” This work records his years spent living among the Pirahã, a small indigenous tribe of living along the Amazon in Brazil. Everett was initially sent among them to convert them to Christianity. The modus operandi of his support organization was to study the target civilization and then give them the New Testament in their native language. Therefore, Everett’s background as a linguist made him an ideal missionary. In the end, however, it was the Pirahã who converted him to atheism.

This reminded me of a story told to me by my AP English IV teacher in high school about a peer student who, the day before graduation, renounced his learning, renounced his faith, and left the seminary of Houston Baptist University. I was always struck by this story, about that point on the circle where you loop back around the other way to wherever you started’s anti-pole. To hear of the theme repeated, by a missionary no less, was a yarn I could not ignore.

“Don’t Sleep…” tracks Everett’s travel to the Pirahã village. The opening act covers the culture shock aspects of missionary work. He describes the hardships of life on the Amazon: malaria, caimans (carniverous reptiles who like some human flesh), anacondas, and a riverside-dwelling people who had, in the early stages, little compunction about killing him and his family when he threatened their access to the sugary liquor used as payment by riverside traders.

I classify this as travelogue. It’s fascinating, interesting, and ultimately paints the picture of a happy, clever, naughty, and loving people whose adaptation to their environment is a marvel to learn about.

An important finding in his study is that Everett discovers that Pirahã have an immediate experience bias. Simply, the Pirahã don’t talk about that which they have not experienced or which someone they know has not experienced. This extends into their language in fascinating directions: they don’t have terms for extended ancestors or those individuals’ beliefs, nor do they credit third-party knowledge. This bias as a taboo has completely shaped their world-view such that there is an immediacy to all utterance.

A simple point whereby to grasp the pervasivness of this taboo is that the Pirahã do not use relative clauses or indirect discourse (related linguistic concepts).

Consider: “Julia thinks he is happy” or in Latin, “Julia putat eum beatum esse,” or Dutch “Julia denkt dat hij gelukkig is.” In each of these languages something happens in that “what Julia thinks” bit. Latin changes the “He” to become “him” (“is / he” -> “eum / him”). Dutch inverts the regular verb order to push the verb to the end (“is” / “is”). In each of these cases something that cannot be directly interfaced with is encapsulated by Julia’s reckoning of it. This does not happen in Pirahã. The immediacy bias prevents utterances such as this.

Yet the Pirahã say: “He is happy. This is thought. Julia thinks this.” Come to think of it, maybe Hemingway was a Pirahã. There is an immediacy to each of these simple assertions where veracity can be ascertained. This kinda blew my mind. A language without indirection or subordination.

The extent of this bias is also shown in a different context, the Pirahã report things as either things experienced (I saw Bob in a boat fishing), hearsay (The women say Bob is fishing), or deduction (Bob, his bow and arrow, and his boat are gone, I bet he’s fishing).

Everett spends the second half of the book exploring how his research of Pirahã language fits against his profession as a linguist in academia.

I found the most fascinating chapter to be the chapter on recursion (I’m a programmer, what can I say) in the second half and how it was assumed to exist in all languages and to be a primary component of them (per Chomsky, undermined by Pirahã, contends Everett).

But what of what drew me to the story, the missionary converted? In some ways, it’s the logical conclusion of having worked with the Pirahã for thirty years enmeshed in a world with this experiential bias and the language that favors and advances it.

Dan’s translation of his encounter of Jesus is neither direct experience nor deduction, ergo it is would be in the hearsay register (Strike 1). Neither Dan nor his father had seen Jesus (Strike 2). The offer of the missionary was that Jesus was there to make them happy, but they already were happy (Strike 3).

Oh, and the night after they were told about Jesus, he appeared in their settlement, with a three-foot penis and proceeded to menace their women for sex (while they require “immediacy” dreams as well as supernatural beings do have a “real” place in their world! Think about the ramifications of that!). Needless to say the, to use a coined phrase, “come to Jesus” speech was not going the way the missionary planned.

The relevance of religion was absurd to them. Nature had been there, been good to them, as long as anyone could remember. The Pirahã don’t worry (didn’t even have a word for it!), they don’t fret, they don’t fear death, and seem to be completely happy with their lots and their culture where they talk about fishing, trysts, the river, and generally take care of one another.

I’m not about to propose some Rousseauan / Thoreauean paean to the noble savage, but unfettered by fear about a fate which no one has seen they seem very happy, healthy, and free from the decadent forks of ennui and malaise which seem to constantly drive the occidental to Paxil, Reality TV, and church.

This story is in the book. The book written by Dan Everett. This book opens the mind. The mind of Steven. The very one. Steven recommends the book. The book is by Dan Everett. The book is called “Don’t Sleep, there are Snakes.”

Update: Changed “things” to “thinks” per comment by Dev.

One of the hoariest tropes in horror and suspense tales is when the Dana Scully-type man of reason finds himself, inexplicably, having a Tarot reading session for either himself or the dead. The (usually sensual-) card reader flips the final card and it’s old number XIII, Death, La Mort.

The audience reels back in horror and stares at the cranial portrait lain upon the tableau.

But we should be mindful that Death in the Tarot is not catastrophic ( The Tower is that one ), rather it’s the natural mowing under, the breaking apart of that which was before, in short it is the power which breaks the old so that the new can come. It’s the death in autumn, so that the stalks may be plowed under, it’s the death of primitive or childish ideas so that new ones may come.

Anatole France:

Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c’est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another

From Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard

I dreamt that I was attending a wedding, and in the white dress was my friend who was murdered years ago. She was breathtaking, radiant, and tan. She was the way I remembered her, but with that elusive red tint she tried to get in her hair working exactly the way I knew she always wanted it to be.

I dreamt that the cathedral was large and wooden, clearly Catholic but minus a lot of the kneeling it seemed. Along the exposed ship’s ribs of the supports of the vault there were pennants, standards, and flags.

There was a large organ in the far right corner, with long pipes that bellowed the inevitable Mendelsshon’s ‘Wedding March’.

I awoke and, still under the influence of The Brief History of the Dead, I fancied that I had been called, in dreams, to the City of the recently departed, yet still living in the memories of the living, to witness this event.

As I shuffled out of the bedroom, under the weight of this vivid dream, and into my couch, I wondered if it could be. Could the African folklorists have gotten it right, that there is a tripartite division of being. Could it be that those in the City can channel and invite the wandering psyches of the sleepers in, perhaps only as observers?

And, if there is such a City, and it holds cathedrals, then I must certainly wonder if the answers are given at the end, or if the yearning simply gives way to more mystery.

Vietnam: The VC believe in re-incarnation, Joe doesn’t. Who has more to lose?

Iraq: The fundamentalists believe in martyrdom providing bliss, Joe doesn’t. Who has more to lose?

To this, I ask, should we not be a bit worried about an apocalyptic evangelical leading war in the mid-east and trying to force God’s timetable (apparently God doesn’t believe in setting timetables, like the Pentagon, evidently)?

With these questions rattling around in my head, Arianna Huffington wrote the following piece:

It came during the Q & A session following his speech on Iraq. The first question came from a woman who asked: “[Author Kevin Phillips] makes the point that members of your administration have reached out to prophetic Christians who see the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism as signs of the apocalypse. Do you believe this, that the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism are signs of the apocalypse? And if not, why not?”

The president was clearly taken aback. He reacted as if he’d just seen a burning bush — or had just been asked a really hard math question.

First he hemmed. Then he hawed. Then he hemmed some more.

“Um… uh… I… The answer is, I haven’t really thought of it that way,” he finally spit out. “Here’s how I think of it. The first I’ve heard of that, by the way. I guess I’m more of a practical fellow.” He then abruptly Left Behind the question at hand and went off on a long, standard-issue answer about 9/11 and fighting terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.

…

I mean, come on. The man is a born again, evangelical Christian whose favorite political philosopher is Jesus, has let it be know that God speaks to — and through — him, believes “in a divine plan that supercedes all human plans”… and he wants us to buy that he’s never even heard of, let alone thought about the biblical implications of terrorism in relation to the apocalypse?

—-

Lifted from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/apocalypse-what_b_17664.html

Nicky Hilton asked the following outrageous question:

“I just want to say to these writers, ‘I’m 21 years old, I run two multi-million-dollar companies, I work my ass off. Like, what were you doing that was so fucking important at that age?’ I feel very accomplished for my age.”

To which was replied:

Nicky Hilton asked, “I’m 21 years old, I run two multi-million-dollar companies, I work my ass off. Like, what were you doing that was so fucking important at that age?” I would like to repond to that. When I was 21, I was busy working toward my Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Minnesota. I was the first to synthesize the compound okadaic acid — shown to be the leading cause of breast cancer. - Steven F. Sabes Wayzata, Minnesota

This was brilliantly noted at: CollisionDetection via bOINGbOING

He was referring to the fact that ethical birth-control pills, the only legal form of birth control, made people numb from the waist down.

Most men said their bottom halves felt like cold iron or balsawood. Most women said their bottom halves felt like wet cotton or stale ginger ale. The pills were so effective that you could blindfold a man who had taken one, tell him to recite the Gettysburg Address, kick him in the balls while he was doing it, and he wouldn’t miss a syllable.

…

The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex.

Thus did science and morals go hand in hand.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. “Welcome to the Monkey House”. As collected in: Welcome to the Monkey House

Click Read More for more…

(more…)

Snow Crash was a great book! It’s one of those gold plated volumes of the cyberpunk fiction canon and rightly so. It features all of the standard conventions: cyberspace, rogue-ishly sexy mercenary girls, and a wily hacker with swords.

The part I found most interesting was the discussion of ancient Sumerian myth and “deep neurolinguistic structures”. The idea being that if you could master the fundamental linguistic atoms that humans use to perceive the world you could re-program them. Think a second. Can you think without using words?

No really. Try. Nope? Something changed in how you think when you started realizing you wanted to say something and the big people who bring you food and fresh diapers respond, curiously enough, to sounds associated with those ideas. Fun premise, no?

Continuing on, this book is very much like the other works of Neal Stephenson: adventurous romps across strangely familiar landscapes that you don’t quite recognize.

Interestingly enough Stephenson writes about systems of social control in primitive society. He envisions early men as automata, slave to tradition and information dictated by Witch Doctors (or their equivalents).

(Aside: Hardt and Negri did an excellent breakdown of systems of distributed social control in their book Empire)

Modern man, Stephenson’s characters opine, began when a rational basis for knowledge was formulated. When people integrated the wisdom of Witch Doctors, evaluated it, and then, of their own volition, decided to let pieces of it go.

This is very interesting to me. It reminds me of the slaughter of the Gods when Thales, Anaximander, and Anaxagoras called the myths of Olympus “myths” and boldly urged the Greeks to move towards philo-sophia and science instead of xenophobic fundamentalism and the will of a bunch of nonsensical entities.

Aren’t we glad to have left the Witch Doctor’s wisdom back in the BC era?

Embryonic stem cell debate moves to the Senate President Bush renews his veto threat…[saying] “The use of federal dollars to destroy life is something I simply do not support”

—From CNN.com Source

Hm, apparently the work of moving men from ignorance to science has yet to reach its end.

(Aside: Although I would love to see the man who can’t explain how Social Security is better off in the free market pin down the answer to: “Tell me, Mr. President, where does life begin, exactly, and how do you know?” )

In any case, the Witch Doctor’s apprentice at 1600 Pennsylvania drive notwithstanding, Stephenson also wrote about obsessing over the word and demanding church intercessors for one’s faith. Having grown up Protestant I gave Neal a hearty “Hear, Hear”. I’ve just recently shared my agreement with that sentiment here and am surprised by the synchronicity that brings Snow Crash into my life so shortly after having written that post.

Stephenson offers a splendid quote on page 401 in my edition:

Christ’s gospel is … an attempt to take religion out of the temple, out of the hands of the priesthood, and bring the Kingdom of God to everyone. That is the message explicitly spelled out by his sermons, and it is teh message symbolically embodied in the empty tomb. After the crucifixion, the apostles went to his tob hoping to find his body and instead found nrothing. The message was clear enough: We are not to idolize Jesus, because his ideas stand alone, his church is no longer centralized in one person but dispersed among all the people. People whe were used to the rigid theocracy of the Pharisees couldn’t handle the idea of a popular, nonhierarchical church. They wanted popes and bishops and priests… (Stephenson, Snow Crash, pp 401-2)

I wrote in my book journal, after reading that:

What is Jesus Christ but a koan? Looking for Him, we find only ourselves. Searching ourselves, we find Him. His essence is the latent nothing of Sein (pure being) [cf. Heidegger].

I suppose that it is this mystical Jesus the god-man who told his disciples to forget his body, forget his personage and instead remember his ideals. This is the beauty of the Holy Spirit - a way to make the mystical last forever without the need for the intercessors blocking Pure Communion with God

John 20:22: “And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…’”

Look at that, the Holy Spirit resides in the breath, take Him in, let Him out. Breath gnosis in, breathe gnosis out (take yoga, master pranayama?). I think Christ’s ministry was of subtlety, of the ineffable, of the quantum. The exact opposite of that? Saint Peter’s basilica?

I’m convinced more and more that this eschewing of blind adoration of the word and the pontiff is where Christianity is/was meant to go.

Obviously this train of thought is still developing…pre-Socratic Greek, Gnostic Christian, Zen traditions, Existentialist interpretations of being, Kierkergaard, Sein und Zeit…they all collapse into something somewhere.

Where? What?

In any case, I enjoyed this book very much!