The Pirahã tribe, living deep in the Amazon jungle, believes that sleep is harmful: it makes you weak, and when you sleep, it’s as if you die a little and wake up as someone slightly different. Oh, and thirdly—there are snakes everywhere.
The Pirahã sleep four times a day for just 30 minutes at a time, eat only once a day, and change their names roughly once every seven years. They have no concept of counting, and the only missionary who visited them in 1977 failed to convey the meaning of Christianity—and became an atheist himself.
Yet, the core of their culture—“live here and now”—doesn’t seem foolish at all.
