Can humans live without the concept of time?
According to linguistic research, the Piraha people of the deep forests of Brazil can. These hunter-gatherers apparently live without a sense of time in the way we know it.
Linguist Daniel Everett worked with them for thirty years and found that their language only has present tense. There are no concepts to represent the past or the future, and even they lack a history before the living memory of the present tribe members. Neither they have words for colors and numbers.
Could it be that the Piraha found the "secret of happiness"?
We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Comments
Post a Comment