Conclusion

• Author: Randall Kiser
• Profession: International authority on attorney and law firm performance
• Pages: 269-275

10

Conclusion

If peripatetic lawyers journeyed into the Brazilian rainforest and

explored the distant Maici River, they would encounter a tribe

known as the Pirahã. e tribe has about 700 members living

among four villages. e Pirahã visit each other frequently, travel-

ing by canoes. Despite their isolation, they enjoy a sense of superi-

ority and show a disdain for other cultures, believing that they have

“the best possible way of life.”1

Catholic missionaries rst attempted to convert the Pirahã to

Christianity in the 1700s. After a few years they gave up, convinced

that the Pirahã were “the most recalcitrant group they had ever

encountered.”2 Although other missionaries have attempted to

convert the Pirahã after the rst Catholic mission failed, not a sin-

gle Pirahã has ever converted. When Daniel Everett, an evangelical

Christian missionary, related stories from the Bible to the Pirahã in

the late 1970s, they asked him, “What color is Jesus? How tall is he?

When did he tell you these things?”3 Everett answered, “Well, you

know, I’ve never seen him, I don’t know what color he was, I don’t

know how tall he was.”4 e Pirahã responded abruptly, “Well, if

you have never seen him, why are you telling us this?”—eectively

1 Everett, Daniel L. (2013). Recursion and human thought: Why the Pirahã don’t

have numbers. In Brockman, John. inking (p.276). New York: HarperCollins.

2 Ibid. at 280.

3 Ibid. at 277.

4 Ibid.

269