Property, recognition, and the temporalities of life. Reading Kopenawa and Albert’s The Falling Sky. Words of a Yanomami Shaman from the perspective of economic philosophy

What is it that people desire when they desire riches? It may seem strange that once all basic needs are fulfilled, individuals would continue to strive for ever more, working ever harder, even at the cost of their own health. Why don’t they just enjoy life, with more time, and less stress, on their hands? Some do, but they tend to be regarded as weirdos by the mainstream of Western societies. Most people seem to understand the point of their work or their investment efforts not in fulfilling basic needs, but in something else. But what? As a philosopher working on economic issues, this is an important question, because it matters for understanding how humans behave in the economic sphere, and what this implies for institutional design. And it is also, simply, a philosophical puzzle: where does this seemingly irrational behavior come from? I got to think again about these issues when reading Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert’s The Falling Sky. Words of a Yanomami Shaman.* This fascinating book developed out of the friendship between an anthropologist and a member of the Yanomami community, who live in the North of Brazil. Kopenawa got to know “white people’s” ways early in his life, working, among other things, as an interpreter, but he returned to his community and became a shaman as well as an activist for indigenous rights.

The collaboration of Kopenawa and Albert provides a unique opportunity for lay people like me to get a glimpse of the very different worldviews that prevail in this community. Of course, trying to do raises all kinds of questions – can a European woman, raised in the Western canon, ever truly understand a culture like that of the Yanonamis? What does it take to delve into the intellectual world of such a different culture? Some elements of Kopenawa’s account are indeed difficult to access from the outside and would require engagement with the deeper spiritual roots of his thinking. But some are also much more accessible, and arguably detachable, to some extent, from the specific spirituality with which they are connected in this culture. Even though we may not understand everything, shouldn’t we let our own ways of thinking be challenged by an author like Kopenawa?

I am encouraged by the fact that Kopenawa himself wanted Western readers to get to know his thinking. He is highly critical of “white people’s” ways, and it is precisely the extreme contrast with the Yanomami worldview that has, in my view, something to teach us. I will focus mostly on the chapter “Merchandise Love” in which Kopenawa contrast the attitude to property among white people and his own community. When presenting interesting views on the Western desire for riches, Kopenawa adds a crucial dimension: the relation to one’s perception of time, and of the temporality of different objects and of human life.

Western reasons for hoarding
In the Western tradition of economic and political thought, one finds at least three types of answers as to why people desire riches, beyond the satisfaction of basic physical needs. The first is that people want to acquire things that they find intrinsically useful or beautiful. I may desire high-quality audio equipment because I genuinely enjoy the quality with which it plays music, and it is the prospects of this sheer pleasure that drives me. In similar ways, people may desire gadgets out of a fascination with their technical ingenuity. Sometimes, such a fascination with things takes a certain extent of expertise: only the true connoisseur can understand the subtleties of, say, different historical jazz recordings. In others, it is the physical enjoyment: savoring good chocolate does not require connoisseurship.

The second motive is different, and can in fact stand in tension with the first one: it has to do with safety rather than enjoyment, and leads to hoarding rather than spending. Human beings are risk-averse creatures, and the future is uncertain. Having some amount of property – especially money, in this case – gives one the assurance that one will be able to deal with unforeseen eventualities or misfortunes. This is the point of having a “nest egg,” and often, its importance lies in safety not only for oneself, but also for one’s loved ones. Max Weber argued, famously and controversially, that Western Protestants accumulated riches not in order to satisfy any “worldly” desires but in order to indicate, to themselves and others, that they were among the “chosen ones” who would enter the hereafter. This can be understood as another version of the desire for safety, in a strangely distortion: it is about the certainty that one’s soul will be saved.

The third motive turns on questions of status and recognition. Human beings are the kinds of creatures who seek recognition from their peers and shun their scorn or wrath – this seems to be a deeply rooted, maybe evolutionarily caused, feature that explains a lot of their behavior. “It is the vanity, not the ease,” wrote Adam Smith, when explaining why individuals desire certain goods: they anticipate the admiration from others that the possession will bring. Smith was a reader of Rousseau, who had criticized modern man for living only “in the eyes of others.” Smith was more ambivalent about this tendency: the truly wise and virtuous would not fall for it. But if the masses of people want to earn money in order to look good in the eyes of their peers, this motivates them to produce useful goods and services, Smith thought, increasing the welfare of the whole country. His historical situation was a different one from ours: in his time, raising the standard of living of the poorer members of society by increasing production was a plausible proposition; it was about warm clothes and some spices for the food of all people, not about yachts or three transcontinental holidays per year. And in Smith’s time, there was no awareness of environmental harms or pressures on the “planetary boundaries” that this production might cause. In today’s world, what economist Thorstein Veblen would come to call “conspicuous consumption” – the consumption of luxury goods in order to display one’s economic power and social status – looks far more problematic.

White people’s greed
From the perspective of a Yanomami shaman and thinker, this behavior is indeed irrational and wrong. Kopenawa describes the white striving for ever more with a mixture of horror and amusement. After having forgotten the wisdom of their elders, white people “cleared their entire forest to open bigger and bigger gardens” and the search for new tools made them “greedily tear […] minerals out of the ground and the waters” (327). This expansionist drive lead not only to technological developments (bicycles, cars, airplanes…, 338), but also to colonial expansion: after having exhausted their own forests, “they want to do them same thing again where we live” (327). But “that still isn’t enough for them” (338).
This strive for more has to do with the way in which white people’s mind is fixated on “merchandise” as an object of desire. Kopenawa sees an erotic dimension in this strive for more: “their thoughts [were] set on these trade goods, and they became as enamored with them as if they were beautiful women” (327); merchandise is “truly like a fiancée to them” (333), they “treat their merchandise like women with whom they are in love” (339). This might be understood as describing a fascination with products themselves, along the first line of arguments described above.

But ultimately, Kopenawa’s views seem to go more in the direction of a critique of status seeking. An interesting thing to note, in this context, is the term used for “merchandise” in the Yanomamis’ language: matihi (327). It describes “the ornaments with which they [the elders] adorned themselves for reahu feasts,” made from the colorful feathers of different birds (327). This seems to suggest an immediate connection to social prestige: the elderly encourage young men from their households to hunt for matihi before feasts, and “[t]he young girls would admiringly say of a young man adorned with feather ornaments: “How splendid he is! He is covered in matihi!”” (328). The word is also used for the bones and ashes of deceased individuals, which the community cannot “accept to treat carelessly” (328). While there are deeper spiritual dimensions here, what seems clear is that it involves, again, a relation to the social standing of a person.

Kopenawa observes that white people are proud of themselves for possessing many goods: “Aren’t our hands so skilled to craft these things? We are the only ones who are so clever!,” he paraphrases their attitude (327, see also 329, 338). In this passage, it sounds as if it is the ability to produce that is the reason for pride. But elsewhere, Kopenawa suggests that it is possession as such that matters. Acquiring merchandise makes white people feel good about themselves: “Overjoyed, they probably tell themselves: “I am part of the people of merchandise and factories! I possess all these things alone! I am so clever! I am an important man, a rich man!”” (338). The price white people pay for this, however – in purely psychological terms, leaving out harm to others – is that “[t]heir thought remains constantly attached to their merchandise” (338). They are “seized by a limitless desire” (327), which, by definition, can never be satisfied. And something is inevitably lost in the process: they “forgot the beauty of the forest” (327), Kopenawa holds, suggesting that no matter how much progress is made, it may fail to give people what could give most meaning to their lives.

A life without hoarding
Kopenawa is categorical about the Yanomami’s very different attitude to property: “We people of the forest only have pleasure in the evocation of generous men. This is why we possess few things, and we are satisfied with that. We do not want to store great quantities of trade goods in our homes. It would tangle up our minds” (339). The forest, as a natural environment and as a provider of resources, is what gives the Yanomami the certainty that neither they themselves, nor their children, will not go hungry. Kopenawa contrasts the desire of white people to acquire goods for their children with what he would say to his own son: “When I am no longer, […] you will live in your turn in this forest that I am leaving for you. You will hunt and clear gardens to feed your children and grandchildren on this land. Only the forest will never die!” (330). Of course, this is an optimistic assumption – one that may not be transferable to other parts of the world, in which natural provision is less generous. And tragically, it is also not clear whether the forest will indeed “never die” in the Yanomami regions. While their regions enjoy a protected status, the incessant capitalist search for new areas to explore and exploit, which Kopenawa decries, makes their situation precarious.

In traditional Yanomami thinking, the natural environment is assumed to be stable, and to provide the same conditions for future generations. This is one of the reasons for there being no need to hoard, or to try to engage in improvements that would bring “progress” of any kind. Ethnologist Pierre Clastres, in a discussion of the “domestic mode of production” of various indigenous communities, describes this model and its relation to the future in more detail. It is a mode of production for immediate consumption, and as such, it “implies a sort of wager on the future: namely, that it will be made of repetition and not difference, that the earth, the sky and the gods will oversee and maintain the eternal return of the same.” The forest always grows back, ensuring that future generations will be able to harvest its rich fruits. There is no need, and no point, in accumulating in order to create safety for one’s future, or for that of one’s children.

There is, however, another clause in the invocation of the son, which I had up to now omitted: “you will burn my possessions” (330). The burning of the possessions of deceased people is a Yanomami tradition that may seem very strange to outsiders. Kopenawa provides the rationale that if these possessions continued to be around in the community, they would continuously remind the other members of the deceased, which would make it more difficult for them to cope with the loss (329-330). In other words, the psychological well-being of people is given higher priority than the use value that could come from these products – “even if their kin come to lack it” (329).

The relation to objects is thus, in this culture, very different: even among the living ones, “property” does not exist in the same way as in Western cultures, because objects go from hand to hand. As Kopenawa puts it: “[…] we Yanomami do not keep the objects that we make or receive, even if it leaves us impoverished. We soon offer them to those who ask for them. So they rapidly move far away from our hands to constantly pass from one person to another. This is why we do not truly possess any goods of our own” (331). White people, he notes, often make false promises to others, to make them work for themselves, in order to acquire more property; they “constantly mistreat each other because of their merchandise” (333), or even kill each other or the members of other communities, for the acquisition of money or other resources (338).

In contrast, in the Yanomami communities, among those who meet each other at feasts or visit each other’s villages, people are proud not to acquire, but to give away goods: if a guest wants something from them, “We tell him: “I am an inhabitant of the forest, I do not want to own a lot of merchandise. Take this old piece of metal […]. I have already used it enough. I will not refuse it to you. Take it back to your home. You will clear a new garden with it” (332). They do not ask money, or other objects, in return, but know that they can leave this “for another occasion, later” (331). There seem to be strong social norms that support this form of non-commercial reciprocity, with disdain for those who want to keep everything to themselves (334-5).

Such norms are probably needed as a counterweight to the urge to keep things, and the spontaneous fascination with objects, whicg the Yanomami may feel just as much as other people. Kopenawa reports that their “elders” were “very excited” when first seeing “the abundance of strange objects in the white people’s camps” (328). As Albert explains in a note, the objects most appreciated by Yanomami were “improved versions of objects the Yanomami already possessed (metal machetes versus palm wood machetes, knives versus bamboo blades, aluminum pots versus clay pottery, etc.). Genuinely unknown objects only inspired fear or indifference” (549, note 8). This suggests that the Yanomami knew to appreciate the use value of things, while Kopenawa also mentions the admiration of their beauty, and even the admiration of white people for producing such beautiful things – at least in a first reaction, before the Yanomami came to understand that the contact with white people also brought many harmful effects, for example through infectious diseases (329).

The social context in which these norms of gift-giving and reciprocity play out is, of course, a very specific one. As becomes clear throughout the book, the Yanomami live in relatively egalitarian communities, without the kind of exploitation by feudal lords (or international corporations) that all too many members of “white people’s society” are subjected to. For this is something that Kopenawa rarely mentions in his account of white people’s drive to accumulate: some accumulate, while others are exploited for it (and some do both, being exploited and exploiting others in turn). The social logic as a whole, however, is one that Kopenawa, as an outside observer of Western culture, can only describe as driven by accumulation and the ensuing ills and harms.

Time for goods, time for people
A fascinating dimension of Kopenawa’s account is his attention to the different temporalities of material objects, human life, and non-human life. Material objects, he holds, are not worthy of too much human affection because they decay: “Knives get blunt, machetes get chipped, pots get black, hammocks get holes, and the paper skins of money come apart in the rain” (337). He contrasts this short life of things with the regenerative powers of the forest, which is therefore worthier of affection: “For me, only the forest is a precious good. … tree leaves can stiffen and fall, but they will always grow back, as beautiful and bright as before” (337). And yet, humans are also mortal: while their life is longer than that of a knife or a hammock, it is still too short to make the accumulation of things worthwhile: “We know that we will die, this is why we easily give our goods away. Since we are mortal, we think it is ugly to cling too firmly to the objects we happen to possess. We do not want to die greedily clutching them in our hands” (329).

White people, in contrast, produce goods that can outlast them: “The metal of machetes, axes, and knives rusts and gets covered in termite filth, but does not disappear anytime soon. … Merchandise does not die” (329). This – together with the fact that white people do not see the emotional reactions that might be evoked by an object that belonged to a deceased person in a negative way, as the Yanomami do – makes it possible to pass on goods to future generations, as noted earlier. But the wish to pass on something to one’s children and grandchildren is not the only reason for why “white people,” in Kopenawa’s analysis, look towards the future in their drive to accumulate. It is also that they want to be remembered, seeking a kind of immortal presence among the living through the material objects they pass on. This, at least, is Kopenawa’s reading of the historical site of Avebury, with its prehistoric stone monuments, which he saw during a visit to England: “The ancient white people who worked so hard to raise these stones did it so that they could be contemplated after their death and so that their memory would not be lost” (318). Of course, Kopenawa could not have known the motives of these prehistorical builders. But he sees them as belonging to “white people,” and as such, it seems plausible to him to ascribe this orientation towards future fame to them.

This desire of fame is also a core issue in Yanomami thinking, as Kopenawa describes it. But it is not oriented towards a future beyond one’s death It is, instead, direct to those who are one’s contemporaries – a sidewards instead of a forward-looking orientation, as it were. It is extremely important to make one’s guests happy, and the key to doing so is to show generosity: “When a man knows how to be generous, visitors and guests go home satisfied and joyous” (334). Aware not only of their own mortality but also that of their kin, for the Yanomami it matters that “if they came to pass away, we would regret not having proved generous enough with them” (330). And by giving away goods, one can make sure that one’s good reputation spreads further. As Kopenawa imagines saying to a guest whom he gives a gift: “Then [after having used it for a while] you too will give it to someone else. Speak of me to the one who will receive it and to his kin. I want to be regarded with friendship far from my home” (332). Too much generosity might be suspicious: it can raise the suspicion of ulterior motives (335). But in the right dose, generosity is the best use of one’s property, because it leads to fame: “flattering words about this great man constantly spread through the forest. They accompany the thoughts of many men and women, even very far from his house” (335).

Thus, Kopenawa suggests that at its roots, it is a very different conception of space-time, and a different understanding of the temporality of objects, that distinguishes the Yanomami’s from “white people’s” attitude to property. If objects can outlive human beings, they can be passed on to future generations, not only to one’s direct children, but also to imagined generations of successors, down a line that is, potentially, without limit. Objects that live less long are not worth putting one’s heart into. And in any case, from the Yanomamis’ perspective, one should put social relations above personal property: having a reputation for generosity, in ever more distant parts of the forest, is more important than keeping objects to oneself. Where Western commentators have seen the desire for fame to cause people to want more goods, in the Yanomami’s logic, recognition is sought precisely the other way round: not by accumulating, but by giving away.

As to the relation to the next generation, the Yanomami attitude seems indeed an enviable one (though one that is increasingly precarious in a world in which every inch of forest is under threat by extractivist projects). Knowing that their children will be able to satisfy their needs by a living, regenerating environment, there is no need to worry about their safety. The systematic question that this attitude raises, for those in the Western culture, is: what would it take to ensure that the next generations can grow up in an environment in which their needs will be satisfied , so that there is no need to accumulate for their sake? How could a sustainable mode of living and producing be found, such that it is simply not necessary to accumulate as an individual, and that putting social relations above the acquisition of property does not make one look foolish?

If we can take one cue from Kopenawa’s account of Yanomami life, it is that the answer needs to be a collective one. As separate individuals, staring into an unknown future and trying to acquire fame or giving our loved ones some safety, it is unlikely that we would be able to break out of the plight of endless hoarding. But if both the burdens and the benefits of production, and the resources that the natural environment provides, are shared, in communities in which one-sided exploitation is overcome, other options become imaginable.

*This happened as part of a project on rethinking the concept of work (Ammodo Humanities Award 2021), on suggestion of Ana Tossige. The full reference is Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky. Words of a Yanomami Shaman. Trans. by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy, with a Foreword by Bill McKibben. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. All page references in the text are to this edition.