WEBVTT - Chinese Immortality: Elixirs and Enlightened Beings 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:15.440 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.080 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.240 we are going to be waiting into the murky pool 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.400 of immortality and and the deep waters that lie beyond. 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:29.520 That's right. And since we just celebrated Chinese New Year 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:32.479 and we're now officially in the Year of the Rooster, 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.239 the fire Rooster, uh, it seemed appropriate to focus in 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:41.919 on Chinese immortality because certainly immortality is is big business 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.920 for us humans. And any myth cycle that you find 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.400 is going to have a few immortals jumping around in there. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.080 A few there's usually a lot of yeah, yeah, a 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:59.280 few a lot. You're gonna have some some undying heroes, gods, demigods, etcetera. 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.360 You know, whalen on each other, uh having a lot 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.880 of the emotions about their undying state, that sort of thing. 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:10.560 And there's just each each culture, each myth cycle is 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:12.760 going to have a pretty rich history of this and 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:16.280 and as well as their own mix of universal ideas 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:22.360 and individual cultural ideas regarding UH life, undying. Yeah, I 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.399 think it's very interesting to look at the diversity of 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:29.760 the ideas of transcending death, but like what what they 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.800 all remain or what they all have in common? I 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.920 guess yeah. Uh so, all over the world you see 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.200 ideas about the survival of death or about ways that 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.920 one could prolong ones life indefinitely, um and and there's 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:46.840 so many details that change, like do you do you 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.160 you survive death in some kind of immaterial state? Do 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.040 you go to a different place or do you stay 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.320 in the same place. Are there beings that naturally live 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.320 forever or do they have to do something to sustain 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:01.200 their immort plity? You know, do you have to eat 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:05.480 the fruit of of continued existence? And I don't know. 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:07.960 I love that there there are all these little fruits 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.359 that grow off the tree of the idea of immortality 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.359 that are very different in various But the thing you've 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:16.720 always got there is that you don't want to stop 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.680 being there in your mind, right, Yeah, it's I mean, 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.959 it's part of being human. Our earliest recorded stories, you 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.560 can go back to the Epic of Gilgamesh in there 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.480 there are that there's a plot line there about the 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.400 quest for immortality. But in this episode, we're going to 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:37.800 focus in on Chinese mythology. And when I say focus, 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:42.320 focus is maybe a poor word because Chinese mythology is 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:45.120 a is a is a big tent and we'll get 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.560 into into that as we go here. But but the 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:53.280 Chinese treatment on the idea, uh, definitely have this mix 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:57.920 of like universal ideas concerning living forever as well as 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:02.040 some uniquely Chinese ideas. We also want to you know, 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:03.840 drive home here that you know, we know we have 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.120 a number of Chinese listeners out there or listeners who 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.560 grew up amid Chinese culture, so certainly feel free to 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:11.680 chine in on any of this. I always love to 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.160 hear from folks on on this topic and you help 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.520 clarify things with your experience and provide specific takes on 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.040 traditions and and tales that are often, you know, quite 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.080 varied across the vast time and space of Chinese culture. 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:26.399 Right now, first of all, we should probably just take 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:29.640 another step back from the specifics of Chinese culture and 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.200 just talk about again about why we are so obsessed 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:37.200 with immortality. Yeah, I guess that's a good thing to do. Like, 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:41.360 what what is this concept? Because immortality is not something 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:44.880 that is necessarily found in nature, So why is it 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:48.080 such an obsession? I guess maybe I could frame it 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:50.040 like this, I'm gonna ask a stupid question. I like 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:52.320 doing this on the podcast to ask a stupid question 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:54.320 because a lot of the ideas that I find most 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:58.360 interesting somehow start from intentionally asking a stupid question. And 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:02.640 here it is, why we want to keep living? Why 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.680 do all animals have what appears to be an overwhelming 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:09.680 desire not to die? Part of the answer is going 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.280 to be obvious, of course, right, So if you think 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:16.080 about the evolutionary basis for behaviors and drives that we have, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.880 one of the most basic drives we have is for reproduction, 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.520 of course, but pretty much all the other ones are 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.599 based around survival. So genes that lead an organism to 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:30.240 have more descendants are going to flourish in the gene pool, 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.760 and so organisms that do not desire strongly to survive seem, 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:38.520 like prima facy, to be likely to have fewer descendants. 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:40.719 You're just not going to spread those genes that say 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.799 don't care about living and dying around very much because 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.120 a certain amount of survival is necessary for reproduction. But 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.320 note that I say a certain amount, because here's something 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:56.240 I was just thinking about this last night. Many animals 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.400 reach an age of peak reproductive fitness, after which, even 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.800 if they survive, their ability to reproduce approaches zero. So, 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.120 from an evolutionary basis, how come we don't lose our 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:13.000 will to survive after we've passed childbearing age? Or how 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:17.320 come we don't lose our will to survive if we've suffered, uh, say, 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.480 injury to our reproductive organs or something like that that 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:23.880 prevents us from passing our genes along. What would be 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.479 the evolutionary incentive for selecting genes that make us desire 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.080 to just keep on living, going on and on and on, 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:35.640 even in old age, desiring to just extend indefinitely into 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.159 the future. I'm not sure, but I think that's interesting. 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:40.800 I guess there are There are a few ideas. Maybe 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:45.039 there's the idea that children with surviving grandparents have greater 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:49.120 reproductive fitness because they're adult caregivers, that they've got more 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.560 adult caregivers. Basically, if you've got grandparents, great grandparents and 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:56.719 all that. Uh. But here's another anomaly to think about. 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.920 For complex mammals like human the desire for extended life 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:07.200 doesn't just reside in the brain, but it applies specifically 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:11.599 to the mind rather than the body. And this is 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.240 so that seems obviously well, yeah, of course it would. 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:16.320 You know, your mind is the thing that's thinking. But 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.440 think about this again from a biological perspective. So imagine 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.760 a little weird illustration. You're lying in bed tonight, Robert 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.120 and the robots come for you. The robot sorcerers come 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.080 and sees you out of your bed. Uh. And these 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:35.400 are robot sorcerers that delight in putting humans in weird dilemmas. 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.839 And so they give you two options. You've got option A, 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.640 which is that your brain is going to be destroyed 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:46.240 and an artificially intelligent computer impostor will be implanted in 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.359 your former head and then we'll live out its stays, 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:54.000 controlling your body with all normal function intact as if 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.920 it were still you. Okay, I'm not crazy about that option, 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:59.640 but now let's hear what The next option B is 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.960 that your body will be destroyed, but your brain will 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:06.120 be inserted into a vat atop one of those Boston 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.880 Dynamics darker robots, you know, so they want wandering around 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:12.960 on the on the logs and stuff where you can 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:14.800 live out your days as a brain in a vat 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.800 in a robot body, Robert, which one do you pick? Well? 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:22.520 These are both horrible choices because they both hinge on 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:26.440 the fallacy that that the mind is separate from the body, 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.800 and that we don't have a mind body unity. Oh okay, well, 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.920 but I'm saying you so, you wouldn't You wouldn't prefer 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.120 your consciousness remain intact on the robot. Um I mean 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:40.200 is the is if the robot brain goes into my body, 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.200 is it going to is it going to raise my 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:45.640 kid for me? Oh, let's say it would. Okay, then 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:48.160 I'll go with that like I would rather. It's as 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:50.920 long as the the new robot me cannot tell anybody 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.119 that I actually died. It has to keep going doing 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:58.800 its thing, continue, you know, keeping up with my responsibilities. 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.480 Uh yeah, and uh and keep everybody happy around me. Well, 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:04.600 you could also keep up with your responsibilities as a 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:07.240 brain in a robot boty. That's just gonna upset everybody, 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.920 though nobody wants that at at Christmas dinner. That is 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:14.400 a beautiful answer, Robert, But I sincerely believe that is 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:17.640 not the answer most people would actually choose. Really, most 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.120 people would choose the vat I think you will, Yeah, 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.240 as opposed to having your consciousness destroyed. I've just read 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.200 theereny horror stories about like brains in like Nego brain 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.200 canasters and whatnot, So I think even if it is 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.600 an exceedingly cruddy robot body, I think most people would 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.800 choose to have their consciousness preserved in a robot body 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.640 as opposed to have their body continue to do things 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:43.400 but their consciousness destroyed. Fair enough, Uh, it might not 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:45.680 be immediately clear why that's odd, but think about it 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.960 in the same terms as the past reproductive age example. 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.520 In option A, the impostor AI living in your body 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:58.080 could still reproduce Option B cannot. Uh. So your answer 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:00.960 there is probably the more biological, the intuitive one. But 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.360 I think the answer that I feel confident most people 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.800 would actually give if really faced by these robots sorcerers. Uh, 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:11.040 that that doesn't really make biological sense. So why does 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:15.840 your mind generally prefer its own survival to the survival 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:18.760 of the body that houses it and the genes that 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:23.160 created it. I don't know. To me that that's a 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:27.080 weird conundrum, And you can see this instantiated in many 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:30.920 beliefs about immortality that people have where they continue to 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.880 believe that their minds will go on existing after death, 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:37.679 even after their bodies are destroyed and there's no continued 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.920 possibility of reproduction. Well, I mean, I guess it comes 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.800 back to I think, therefore I am right. If I 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.800 am not conscious of my existence, I don't exist my 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:51.079 my and therefore my consciousness is my existence, even if 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:57.600 it's completely extracted from every other important aspect of existence. Well. Yeah, 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:01.000 I mean, it's certainly experientially clear to me why I 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:04.880 would prefer the the survival of my consciousness. But from 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.080 a third party point of view, if an alien just 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.840 came down and looked at people making that choice, it's 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.880 not obvious why they would be doing that. Uh So, anyway, 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:18.040 I think that's kind of interesting. Another side note, I 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:20.680 wanted to go down. Uh this might be a tangent, 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:23.120 but I also want to say that not everyone in 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.800 history has expressed the view that it's good to desire 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.920 to live forever. Uh. Just one example I wanted to 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.960 think of was the influential twentieth century philosopher Martin Heideger, 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.080 who famously he had this whole logic of the relationship 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:40.960 between authentic existence and the acceptance of death. And in 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.840 this system, basically a person's life is given meaning by 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.800 the fact of its finitude. Uh. The fact that a 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:52.040 person can exist in time, finitely in time, and then 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:56.280 not exist at a later time gives life the possibility 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.680 of a definite, authentic character and kind of makes sense 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.360 to me, right like if if you live forever and 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.160 you always have the potential to change, who are you? Yeah, 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:10.520 I mean, it's kind of like the difference between say, 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:14.960 having a free hour on a given day to you know, 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.559 engage in your hobbies or you know what have you 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:19.959 or a chore around the house, versus having the full 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:22.960 open day. Right now, people's approach this are gonna are 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:26.319 gonna differ, But my approach has my experience has often 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.559 been that if I only have an hour, I'm gonna 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:31.640 be more inclined to make the best out of that hour. 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.920 And if, by some miracle having an entire day, then 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.840 it's it's it's likely to be this unstructured, uh, just 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:41.679 a bout of unproductivity. But it's even worse than that 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.080 from my point of view, because think about, uh, all 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:47.920 of the things that make you you, all the things 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.840 that make you Robert lamb Uh. They're all expressions, I 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:55.840 would say, of choices you make given the finitude of 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:59.600 time and resources. The fact that like you are who 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.280 you are hardly because of which books you've read and 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:07.200 which books you've read. That's just one aspect of your character. Obviously, 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.880 not everything is as a function of the fact that 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:12.840 you don't have time to read all books that exist 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:15.680 in the world, right, Yeah, you have to pick and choose. 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.400 And then this is this is actually a good point 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:22.240 because also the books one has read changes, the books 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:26.360 one remembers changes, the books that one puts stock in 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.400 that too changes, and therefore the expression of self is 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.920 continually transforming. Um, this is something we'll get into it 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:36.440 that when we look at the particular Chinese models here, 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.720 because this is this is the thing, right when we 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:43.760 when we talk about living forever, there's there's this classic 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.080 idea of living forever is also eternal youth. I'm going 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.040 to be young forever. I'm gonna be this idealized version 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:55.280 of myself forever. Whereas which wouldn't really be you as 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.480 you the person who lives for a finite amount of time. Yeah, 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:01.280 that that doesn't match up with the human experience like 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.440 either you would be an inhuman thing this like like 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:08.640 basically like a robot version of me that acts like 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:11.760 like current me forever and never reads any new books, 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.760 never forgets any books that are currently bouncing around my head, 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.079 and it's just in this state, uh, just frozen in time. 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.240 Whereas in reality, like the immortal, I feel like the 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:26.040 the sort of dark Methuselah immortals that we see in 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.800 science fiction are kind of the more intriguing models because 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.800 they often involved like somebody just getting older, older and 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:36.720 more inhuman, you know, just awful awful, super rich old 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.880 men and cyberpunk novels pan Well lo pan to to 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:45.080 draw an example from a you know, an Eastern influenced 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:49.680 Western property, we have a super ancient guy who's cursed 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.080 and just gets worse and worse for never dying, Like 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:56.600 there's not a he just continues to spoil and doesn't 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.400 reach the actual point where you throw him off the shelf. 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:03.480 To quick asterisks on mentioning Heidegger, one of them was, 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:06.280 I hope everything I said is contingent on the fact 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.960 that I understand Heidegger right, which is debatable because his 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.160 ideas are just notoriously hard to understand uses all this 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:17.520 weird specialized terminology. But then the other thing is saying 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:20.360 that you can't really mention Heidegger these days, even his 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:24.880 a political philosophy or seemingly a political philosophy, without also 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.880 mentioning that he was an unrepentant Nazi. Uh. I don't 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:31.520 know if that has any significance to the death philosophy, 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:34.440 But I don't know. Maybe we're thinking about, well, they 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:39.200 sure like skulls. But anyway, so all of that stuff 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:41.320 we've just said aside, I think we can say it's 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:45.520 a decidedly unusual attitude toward death to say that, you know, yeah, 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:47.400 it's a good thing that I'm going to cease to 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.720 exist at some point, uh yeah, Or it's it's it's 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:54.760 easier to embrace it in the abstract, yeah, but when 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:58.880 when the the reapers actually coming around the corner, I 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.040 feel like not every one is going to be as 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.920 game to embrace it. People go to enormous, enormous lengths 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:10.720 to avoid acknowledging death or thinking about the inevitability of death. 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.680 And there's actually the whole psychological framework known as terror 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:19.440 management theory that hypothesizes that much of human culture, A 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.480 lot of what we do as a species is all 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:27.640 built around unconsciously designing frameworks to deny the reality of 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.040 death and put it out of mind. So people apply 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:36.040 this hypothesis to explaining the existence of cultural norms like 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:43.200 rules in society and things like that, traditions, religions, activities 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.840 that we use to entertain ourselves. Art. Uh. And I'm 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:50.480 not going to say whether terror management theory is a 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.400 correct interpretation of human behavior, but I do think it 0:15:54.560 --> 0:16:00.640 has some purchase on our explanatory desires. Obviously, because humans 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:04.800 just so clearly fear death above all else. It's it's 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.800 obvious everybody would have to acknowledge that this is going on. Yeah. 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.920 I feel like, as with a lot of philosophical or 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:15.080 even religious frameworks, I kind of see them as like 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:19.160 a series of lenses that one may employ or or 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:21.560 pull away, depending on how you want to try and 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:25.280 view your your reality. And I feel like terror management 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.520 theory is one of those that, Yeah, I wouldn't want 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.040 to go walking around my life all the time seeing 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:35.160 everything within the framework of terror management theory, but occasionally 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:37.240 it is helpful to pull it down and say, oh, well, 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:40.240 this is it. Is interesting to view this aspect of 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:45.200 the the human experience um in you know, in reference 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:47.480 to our fear of death. Well, Robert, do you think 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:49.840 now we should transition to looking at the idea of 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:54.240 immortality specifically in Chinese mythology. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's go 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.800 ahead and dive in. So the important thing to drive 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.480 home here, of course, is that immortality is are from 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:03.120 a cut in dry topic in Chinese mythology, like they 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.280 don't have a systematic theology of it, right, yeah, and 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:09.560 and and again. Part of this is because Chinese mythology 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:11.560 is the thing that is so deep and wide. It 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.520 covers a great well of time as well as of 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:19.240 a vast geographic landscape. UM plus, a mythic history and 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:22.160 history have long experienced a certain amount of fusion into 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:25.720 a single timeline. And uh we we were chatting about 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:28.840 this before we came into the podcast room. Here you 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:32.560 you also see this, um there's less of a a 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:38.479 fusion and cannon canonization of Chinese mythology. It's not like 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:41.960 what we see in in the West, we say, Greek mythology, 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.640 where you certainly as you grow up in school there's 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.760 sort of a strict pantheon that's thrown at you. There's 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.760 there's more or less a strict canonization of Greek mythology 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:57.440 in classical literature. Um, there's no Homer and Hesiod. Yeah. Yeah, 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.960 that's the thing. In China and Chinese culture, you see 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.840 far fewer examples of of of important artist or writers 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:10.080 taking mythology and then using it to create something new 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:14.879 that in turn, uh, solidifies the tail. So in Chinese 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.320 culture you still have a lot of these different versions 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:23.000 of various myths and folk tales that retain their original form, 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.040 and you'll have, you know, multiple versions of the same 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:28.280 story depending on where you are and when you are. Yeah. 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.920 There is an interesting explanation of the sort of scattered 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:36.120 source nature of Chinese mythology in the intro to one 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:37.720 of the books we were using as a resource for 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.159 this episode, uh, the Handbook of Chinese Mythology by Li 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:45.359 Hui Yang and demming On with Jessica Anderson Turner. And 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:47.200 the intro of this book is good. It it talks 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:49.880 about what a lot of the sources were. But these 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:53.520 fragments that inform our understanding, our modern understanding of Chinese 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:56.080 mythology come from all over the place and in many cases, 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.560 they're they're like just small little inscriptions and things like that, 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.120 and then or some other larger texts that have various 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:05.639 versions of narratives and things like that. But there's not 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:10.400 like a Bible of Chinese mythology, right, Yeah, And sometimes 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:14.359 I like to compare it to to to Hindu mythology, 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.880 and Hinduism is another world where it's just a well 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:22.159 of ideas and religions and traditions all thrown together. But 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:25.399 yet there are there are several key epics that in 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.439 particular that help inform the backbone of the thing. If 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:31.000 you think of a faith as a snake rising up 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.840 through that well, uh, than Hindu mythology might be, you know, 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:38.200 a spiraling snake, but you can you can definitely pinpoint 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:43.760 keep key parts of its anatomy. So in Chinese mythology, 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.679 the line between more mortality and immortality often becomes a 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:51.760 bit blurred. Uh. You know, we mentioned a big trouble 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.800 little China earlier. Um, and this will be not a 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.720 traditional text, not a traditional text, but just I will 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:01.520 mention it one more time in this episode. Ah, I'm 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:03.840 a fan of the film, and I feel like, even 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.360 though it's very much a Western product. It actually does 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:12.000 an okay job giving like a broad treatment of Chinese mythology. 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.640 Uh in that it um you know, it's I feel 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.080 like it has a deceptively deep treatment of certain aspects 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:20.480 of Chinese mythology, even though it kind of plays fast 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:23.480 and loose with everything, but it grounds itself in some 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:26.600 key principles. And certainly we see that with Lopan in 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:31.160 his uh, his immortal and mortal duality. He's he's at 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:35.280 once this this frail old man and this uh, you know, 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:39.720 you know, tin foot tall spirit character. So keep that 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:43.560 in mind, you and as we move forward, Okay, so 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:46.600 as you if you go back all the way to 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:50.119 some of the earlier myths in in China, there's this 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:54.879 presumption of immortality about the primeval gods. So this is 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.680 a concept that falls in line with Judeo Christian concepts 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.679 of the divine, etcetera. And yet gods such as the 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:06.160 Yellow Emperor do suffer defeat and death. Though there's often 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.679 a metamorphosis trope here as well. So you might remember 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.720 from our Great Flood episode, the legendary hero kon Uh 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.359 drowns and becomes a bear or possibly a turtle or 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.959 a dragon depending on which version you're looking at. So 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:24.679 there's a transformation ELM. Yeah, so it's the idea of 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:28.879 living forever is not simply one of retaining your current state, 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:31.840 but transcending to a different state. But also in some 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:34.920 features of Chinese mythology we do see a kind of 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.000 a middle or liminal state of right, like in the 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:42.600 concept of undead creatures, like that they're not exactly immortals 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.200 living forever, not exactly regular mortals. There's something in between 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:50.760 or some state. We we do see some cool examples 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:53.560 of that, and Baryl points out some of these in 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:58.040 her excellent book Chinese Mythology and Introduction, which I highly recommend. 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:02.760 One of them is a woman show who is uh 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:07.480 this deity. She's actually a drought goddess and she's said 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:12.320 to have been born a corpse. Yeah, well maybe you know, 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.359 but take it all in here now. She she lived 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:18.680 through the world of the ten Sons. So there's this 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:22.359 story in the mythology where at one point in the 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.119 in the distant past, the Earth had ten sons in 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:28.280 the sky, or you might conceive this as nine extra 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:32.240 sons or nine extra sons, nine superfluous sons. So what 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:34.160 are you gonna do. There nine extra sons, and it's 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:37.439 scorching the earth. It's burning up all the crops. Uh. 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.600 And this is where ye the archer enters the picture. 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.679 He'll come again, come up again later and he starts 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:47.879 shooting down the surplus sons with his bow. Uh. Saves 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:51.600 the world uh and uh, and then the show is 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:53.960 able to come back to life. So she's affiliated with 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:57.880 with the crab because the crab, and sort of mythic understanding, 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:01.880 sheds its shell and regrows. Ever, so here we see 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.399 an idea of a of an immortal character who is 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.720 also a character that dies, but it's a it's but 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:13.600 there's a continual rebirth. I'm she drives out, but she 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:17.720 comes back. I'm seeing here the uh the myth. Maybe 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:19.800 this is the origin of that myth that was going 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:22.040 around on the internet a few years ago that Arthur 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:26.199 pods like lobsters live forever. Remember that, Yeah, I do 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:28.159 remember that that kind of going around, and it it 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:31.320 does tie into into some of these mythic interpretations of 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.280 what these animals are doing when they mold. From what 0:23:34.320 --> 0:23:37.200 I recall, that turned out to be a very incorrect 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:42.000 understanding of what the research showed. Yes. Now another character 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:45.680