Zarauaha-ppy 35th birthday!

Day one of the 2019 uni calendar officially kicked off today. I'd grown accustomed to the peacefulness of the sparsely-populated Summer-Session campus, where pole position carparks were a dime-a-dozen, so I was somewhat ill-prepared for the onslaught of P-plate-adorned hatchbacks and barely-pubescent High School graduates swarming my peaceful little campus.

To be fair, I had been advised on more than one occasion to be prepared for a full carpark, but my "she'll be right, mate" attitude and staunch reliances on the Guardian Angel for Parking dulled any and all precautionary warnings. Well, today I learned that maybe the Guardian Angel for Parking has limits to her power, and that sometimes she won't be right, mate - the $20 I spent parking nearby being the cost of such a lesson.

As I mentioned, it was the first day of a new session at university, so you'd hope simply learning that sometimes it's wise to heed the advice of others wouldn't be the only nugget I'd absorb for the day.

During one of the moments my attention was trained on my Ethics & Sustainability lecturer, I learned about a tribe that exists deep in the Brazilian rainforest called the Zuruahã. Actually, the Zuruahã are more of an amalgamation of a number of smaller, ancient indigenous tribes from the same area, and stayed in relative isolation from the non-indigenous population until the late 70's. Although they are a collection of neighbouring tribes, they still only number under 200 members total.

The reason the Zuruahã came up in my E&S class was because of a history of voluntary suicide. The information was presented to us in that the people of the Zuruahã routinely commit suicide at around age 35, as they believe in leaving the world while still young and strong, as opposed to old and weak where they're an unproductive burden on the tribe. As we're learning about ethics, our task was to consider our own opinions surrounding suicide and euthanasia, however I found the story itself interesting and worthy of further investigation.

I managed to find a fantastic, well-researched and very thorough report compiled by anthropologist João Dal Poz, which offered clarification on my lecturers claims, along with a stack of further reading. If you're interested, it can be found here.

The statement that suicide at 35 is the ritual practice, welcomed by the Zuruahã tribespeople isn't entirely true, however it's been reported that over 84% of adult deaths are in fact suicides. Whilst the practice is culturally ingrained, the Zuruahã people actually attempt to revive members who've run off to poison themselves, where possible - though it appears suicide is still very fashionable among the Zuruahã, and often stems from personal shame and self-punishment - not necessarily motivated by an "oh I'm 35 now, happy birthday to me - might neck myself today!" It was also found through genealogical studies that most suicides occur between 14-28 years of age.

How do I feel about ritualistic suicide? In this case, kind of ambivalent. As a species, we're incredibly diverse, and applying a universal set of morals or expecting all 8 billion of us to toe the line seems completely unfeasible. Whilst I doubt the practices of the Zuruahã are likely to catch on with mainstream modern societies in the east, west or anywhere else for that matter, I do get a sense that it seems to work for them - and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

That link again to read more about the Zuruahã is here. I certainly found it interesting, and I'm going to sleep tonight having learned a lot more today than I'd expected - and about a topic I hadn't expected to encounter.