Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today,
Speaker 1: we are going to be waiting into the murky pool
Speaker 1: of immortality and and the deep waters that lie beyond.
Speaker 1: That's right. And since we just celebrated Chinese New Year
Speaker 1: and we're now officially in the Year of the Rooster,
Speaker 1: the fire Rooster, uh, it seemed appropriate to focus in
Speaker 1: on Chinese immortality because certainly immortality is is big business
Speaker 1: for us humans. And any myth cycle that you find
Speaker 1: is going to have a few immortals jumping around in there.
Speaker 1: A few there's usually a lot of yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 1: few a lot. You're gonna have some some undying heroes, gods, demigods, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You know, whalen on each other, uh having a lot
Speaker 1: of the emotions about their undying state, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And there's just each each culture, each myth cycle is
Speaker 1: going to have a pretty rich history of this and
Speaker 1: and as well as their own mix of universal ideas
Speaker 1: and individual cultural ideas regarding UH life, undying. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's very interesting to look at the diversity of
Speaker 1: the ideas of transcending death, but like what what they
Speaker 1: all remain or what they all have in common? I
Speaker 1: guess yeah. Uh so, all over the world you see
Speaker 1: ideas about the survival of death or about ways that
Speaker 1: one could prolong ones life indefinitely, um and and there's
Speaker 1: so many details that change, like do you do you
Speaker 1: you survive death in some kind of immaterial state? Do
Speaker 1: you go to a different place or do you stay
Speaker 1: in the same place. Are there beings that naturally live
Speaker 1: forever or do they have to do something to sustain
Speaker 1: their immort plity? You know, do you have to eat
Speaker 1: the fruit of of continued existence? And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I love that there there are all these little fruits
Speaker 1: that grow off the tree of the idea of immortality
Speaker 1: that are very different in various But the thing you've
Speaker 1: always got there is that you don't want to stop
Speaker 1: being there in your mind, right, Yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's part of being human. Our earliest recorded stories, you
Speaker 1: can go back to the Epic of Gilgamesh in there
Speaker 1: there are that there's a plot line there about the
Speaker 1: quest for immortality. But in this episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: focus in on Chinese mythology. And when I say focus,
Speaker 1: focus is maybe a poor word because Chinese mythology is
Speaker 1: a is a is a big tent and we'll get
Speaker 1: into into that as we go here. But but the
Speaker 1: Chinese treatment on the idea, uh, definitely have this mix
Speaker 1: of like universal ideas concerning living forever as well as
Speaker 1: some uniquely Chinese ideas. We also want to you know,
Speaker 1: drive home here that you know, we know we have
Speaker 1: a number of Chinese listeners out there or listeners who
Speaker 1: grew up amid Chinese culture, so certainly feel free to
Speaker 1: chine in on any of this. I always love to
Speaker 1: hear from folks on on this topic and you help
Speaker 1: clarify things with your experience and provide specific takes on
Speaker 1: traditions and and tales that are often, you know, quite
Speaker 1: varied across the vast time and space of Chinese culture.
Speaker 1: Right now, first of all, we should probably just take
Speaker 1: another step back from the specifics of Chinese culture and
Speaker 1: just talk about again about why we are so obsessed
Speaker 1: with immortality. Yeah, I guess that's a good thing to do. Like,
Speaker 1: what what is this concept? Because immortality is not something
Speaker 1: that is necessarily found in nature, So why is it
Speaker 1: such an obsession? I guess maybe I could frame it
Speaker 1: like this, I'm gonna ask a stupid question. I like
Speaker 1: doing this on the podcast to ask a stupid question
Speaker 1: because a lot of the ideas that I find most
Speaker 1: interesting somehow start from intentionally asking a stupid question. And
Speaker 1: here it is, why we want to keep living? Why
Speaker 1: do all animals have what appears to be an overwhelming
Speaker 1: desire not to die? Part of the answer is going
Speaker 1: to be obvious, of course, right, So if you think
Speaker 1: about the evolutionary basis for behaviors and drives that we have,
Speaker 1: one of the most basic drives we have is for reproduction,
Speaker 1: of course, but pretty much all the other ones are
Speaker 1: based around survival. So genes that lead an organism to
Speaker 1: have more descendants are going to flourish in the gene pool,
Speaker 1: and so organisms that do not desire strongly to survive seem,
Speaker 1: like prima facy, to be likely to have fewer descendants.
Speaker 1: You're just not going to spread those genes that say
Speaker 1: don't care about living and dying around very much because
Speaker 1: a certain amount of survival is necessary for reproduction. But
Speaker 1: note that I say a certain amount, because here's something
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about this last night. Many animals
Speaker 1: reach an age of peak reproductive fitness, after which, even
Speaker 1: if they survive, their ability to reproduce approaches zero. So,
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary basis, how come we don't lose our
Speaker 1: will to survive after we've passed childbearing age? Or how
Speaker 1: come we don't lose our will to survive if we've suffered, uh, say,
Speaker 1: injury to our reproductive organs or something like that that
Speaker 1: prevents us from passing our genes along. What would be
Speaker 1: the evolutionary incentive for selecting genes that make us desire
Speaker 1: to just keep on living, going on and on and on,
Speaker 1: even in old age, desiring to just extend indefinitely into
Speaker 1: the future. I'm not sure, but I think that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I guess there are There are a few ideas. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's the idea that children with surviving grandparents have greater
Speaker 1: reproductive fitness because they're adult caregivers, that they've got more
Speaker 1: adult caregivers. Basically, if you've got grandparents, great grandparents and
Speaker 1: all that. Uh. But here's another anomaly to think about.
Speaker 1: For complex mammals like human the desire for extended life
Speaker 1: doesn't just reside in the brain, but it applies specifically
Speaker 1: to the mind rather than the body. And this is
Speaker 1: so that seems obviously well, yeah, of course it would.
Speaker 1: You know, your mind is the thing that's thinking. But
Speaker 1: think about this again from a biological perspective. So imagine
Speaker 1: a little weird illustration. You're lying in bed tonight, Robert
Speaker 1: and the robots come for you. The robot sorcerers come
Speaker 1: and sees you out of your bed. Uh. And these
Speaker 1: are robot sorcerers that delight in putting humans in weird dilemmas.
Speaker 1: And so they give you two options. You've got option A,
Speaker 1: which is that your brain is going to be destroyed
Speaker 1: and an artificially intelligent computer impostor will be implanted in
Speaker 1: your former head and then we'll live out its stays,
Speaker 1: controlling your body with all normal function intact as if
Speaker 1: it were still you. Okay, I'm not crazy about that option,
Speaker 1: but now let's hear what The next option B is
Speaker 1: that your body will be destroyed, but your brain will
Speaker 1: be inserted into a vat atop one of those Boston
Speaker 1: Dynamics darker robots, you know, so they want wandering around
Speaker 1: on the on the logs and stuff where you can
Speaker 1: live out your days as a brain in a vat
Speaker 1: in a robot body, Robert, which one do you pick? Well?
Speaker 1: These are both horrible choices because they both hinge on
Speaker 1: the fallacy that that the mind is separate from the body,
Speaker 1: and that we don't have a mind body unity. Oh okay, well,
Speaker 1: but I'm saying you so, you wouldn't You wouldn't prefer
Speaker 1: your consciousness remain intact on the robot. Um I mean
Speaker 1: is the is if the robot brain goes into my body,
Speaker 1: is it going to is it going to raise my
Speaker 1: kid for me? Oh, let's say it would. Okay, then
Speaker 1: I'll go with that like I would rather. It's as
Speaker 1: long as the the new robot me cannot tell anybody
Speaker 1: that I actually died. It has to keep going doing
Speaker 1: its thing, continue, you know, keeping up with my responsibilities.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, and uh and keep everybody happy around me. Well,
Speaker 1: you could also keep up with your responsibilities as a
Speaker 1: brain in a robot boty. That's just gonna upset everybody,
Speaker 1: though nobody wants that at at Christmas dinner. That is
Speaker 1: a beautiful answer, Robert, But I sincerely believe that is
Speaker 1: not the answer most people would actually choose. Really, most
Speaker 1: people would choose the vat I think you will, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as opposed to having your consciousness destroyed. I've just read
Speaker 1: theereny horror stories about like brains in like Nego brain
Speaker 1: canasters and whatnot, So I think even if it is
Speaker 1: an exceedingly cruddy robot body, I think most people would
Speaker 1: choose to have their consciousness preserved in a robot body
Speaker 1: as opposed to have their body continue to do things
Speaker 1: but their consciousness destroyed. Fair enough, Uh, it might not
Speaker 1: be immediately clear why that's odd, but think about it
Speaker 1: in the same terms as the past reproductive age example.
Speaker 1: In option A, the impostor AI living in your body
Speaker 1: could still reproduce Option B cannot. Uh. So your answer
Speaker 1: there is probably the more biological, the intuitive one. But
Speaker 1: I think the answer that I feel confident most people
Speaker 1: would actually give if really faced by these robots sorcerers. Uh,
Speaker 1: that that doesn't really make biological sense. So why does
Speaker 1: your mind generally prefer its own survival to the survival
Speaker 1: of the body that houses it and the genes that
Speaker 1: created it. I don't know. To me that that's a
Speaker 1: weird conundrum, And you can see this instantiated in many
Speaker 1: beliefs about immortality that people have where they continue to
Speaker 1: believe that their minds will go on existing after death,
Speaker 1: even after their bodies are destroyed and there's no continued
Speaker 1: possibility of reproduction. Well, I mean, I guess it comes
Speaker 1: back to I think, therefore I am right. If I
Speaker 1: am not conscious of my existence, I don't exist my
Speaker 1: my and therefore my consciousness is my existence, even if
Speaker 1: it's completely extracted from every other important aspect of existence. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's certainly experientially clear to me why I
Speaker 1: would prefer the the survival of my consciousness. But from
Speaker 1: a third party point of view, if an alien just
Speaker 1: came down and looked at people making that choice, it's
Speaker 1: not obvious why they would be doing that. Uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of interesting. Another side note, I
Speaker 1: wanted to go down. Uh this might be a tangent,
Speaker 1: but I also want to say that not everyone in
Speaker 1: history has expressed the view that it's good to desire
Speaker 1: to live forever. Uh. Just one example I wanted to
Speaker 1: think of was the influential twentieth century philosopher Martin Heideger,
Speaker 1: who famously he had this whole logic of the relationship
Speaker 1: between authentic existence and the acceptance of death. And in
Speaker 1: this system, basically a person's life is given meaning by
Speaker 1: the fact of its finitude. Uh. The fact that a
Speaker 1: person can exist in time, finitely in time, and then
Speaker 1: not exist at a later time gives life the possibility
Speaker 1: of a definite, authentic character and kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: to me, right like if if you live forever and
Speaker 1: you always have the potential to change, who are you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like the difference between say,
Speaker 1: having a free hour on a given day to you know,
Speaker 1: engage in your hobbies or you know what have you
Speaker 1: or a chore around the house, versus having the full
Speaker 1: open day. Right now, people's approach this are gonna are
Speaker 1: gonna differ, But my approach has my experience has often
Speaker 1: been that if I only have an hour, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be more inclined to make the best out of that hour.
Speaker 1: And if, by some miracle having an entire day, then
Speaker 1: it's it's it's likely to be this unstructured, uh, just
Speaker 1: a bout of unproductivity. But it's even worse than that
Speaker 1: from my point of view, because think about, uh, all
Speaker 1: of the things that make you you, all the things
Speaker 1: that make you Robert lamb Uh. They're all expressions, I
Speaker 1: would say, of choices you make given the finitude of
Speaker 1: time and resources. The fact that like you are who
Speaker 1: you are hardly because of which books you've read and
Speaker 1: which books you've read. That's just one aspect of your character. Obviously,
Speaker 1: not everything is as a function of the fact that
Speaker 1: you don't have time to read all books that exist
Speaker 1: in the world, right, Yeah, you have to pick and choose.
Speaker 1: And then this is this is actually a good point
Speaker 1: because also the books one has read changes, the books
Speaker 1: one remembers changes, the books that one puts stock in
Speaker 1: that too changes, and therefore the expression of self is
Speaker 1: continually transforming. Um, this is something we'll get into it
Speaker 1: that when we look at the particular Chinese models here,
Speaker 1: because this is this is the thing, right when we
Speaker 1: when we talk about living forever, there's there's this classic
Speaker 1: idea of living forever is also eternal youth. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be young forever. I'm gonna be this idealized version
Speaker 1: of myself forever. Whereas which wouldn't really be you as
Speaker 1: you the person who lives for a finite amount of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that doesn't match up with the human experience like
Speaker 1: either you would be an inhuman thing this like like
Speaker 1: basically like a robot version of me that acts like
Speaker 1: like current me forever and never reads any new books,
Speaker 1: never forgets any books that are currently bouncing around my head,
Speaker 1: and it's just in this state, uh, just frozen in time.
Speaker 1: Whereas in reality, like the immortal, I feel like the
Speaker 1: the sort of dark Methuselah immortals that we see in
Speaker 1: science fiction are kind of the more intriguing models because
Speaker 1: they often involved like somebody just getting older, older and
Speaker 1: more inhuman, you know, just awful awful, super rich old
Speaker 1: men and cyberpunk novels pan Well lo pan to to
Speaker 1: draw an example from a you know, an Eastern influenced
Speaker 1: Western property, we have a super ancient guy who's cursed
Speaker 1: and just gets worse and worse for never dying, Like
Speaker 1: there's not a he just continues to spoil and doesn't
Speaker 1: reach the actual point where you throw him off the shelf.
Speaker 1: To quick asterisks on mentioning Heidegger, one of them was,
Speaker 1: I hope everything I said is contingent on the fact
Speaker 1: that I understand Heidegger right, which is debatable because his
Speaker 1: ideas are just notoriously hard to understand uses all this
Speaker 1: weird specialized terminology. But then the other thing is saying
Speaker 1: that you can't really mention Heidegger these days, even his
Speaker 1: a political philosophy or seemingly a political philosophy, without also
Speaker 1: mentioning that he was an unrepentant Nazi. Uh. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that has any significance to the death philosophy,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Maybe we're thinking about, well, they
Speaker 1: sure like skulls. But anyway, so all of that stuff
Speaker 1: we've just said aside, I think we can say it's
Speaker 1: a decidedly unusual attitude toward death to say that, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good thing that I'm going to cease to
Speaker 1: exist at some point, uh yeah, Or it's it's it's
Speaker 1: easier to embrace it in the abstract, yeah, but when
Speaker 1: when the the reapers actually coming around the corner, I
Speaker 1: feel like not every one is going to be as
Speaker 1: game to embrace it. People go to enormous, enormous lengths
Speaker 1: to avoid acknowledging death or thinking about the inevitability of death.
Speaker 1: And there's actually the whole psychological framework known as terror
Speaker 1: management theory that hypothesizes that much of human culture, A
Speaker 1: lot of what we do as a species is all
Speaker 1: built around unconsciously designing frameworks to deny the reality of
Speaker 1: death and put it out of mind. So people apply
Speaker 1: this hypothesis to explaining the existence of cultural norms like
Speaker 1: rules in society and things like that, traditions, religions, activities
Speaker 1: that we use to entertain ourselves. Art. Uh. And I'm
Speaker 1: not going to say whether terror management theory is a
Speaker 1: correct interpretation of human behavior, but I do think it
Speaker 1: has some purchase on our explanatory desires. Obviously, because humans
Speaker 1: just so clearly fear death above all else. It's it's
Speaker 1: obvious everybody would have to acknowledge that this is going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like, as with a lot of philosophical or
Speaker 1: even religious frameworks, I kind of see them as like
Speaker 1: a series of lenses that one may employ or or
Speaker 1: pull away, depending on how you want to try and
Speaker 1: view your your reality. And I feel like terror management
Speaker 1: theory is one of those that, Yeah, I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to go walking around my life all the time seeing
Speaker 1: everything within the framework of terror management theory, but occasionally
Speaker 1: it is helpful to pull it down and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is it. Is interesting to view this aspect of
Speaker 1: the the human experience um in you know, in reference
Speaker 1: to our fear of death. Well, Robert, do you think
Speaker 1: now we should transition to looking at the idea of
Speaker 1: immortality specifically in Chinese mythology. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and dive in. So the important thing to drive
Speaker 1: home here, of course, is that immortality is are from
Speaker 1: a cut in dry topic in Chinese mythology, like they
Speaker 1: don't have a systematic theology of it, right, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and again. Part of this is because Chinese mythology
Speaker 1: is the thing that is so deep and wide. It
Speaker 1: covers a great well of time as well as of
Speaker 1: a vast geographic landscape. UM plus, a mythic history and
Speaker 1: history have long experienced a certain amount of fusion into
Speaker 1: a single timeline. And uh we we were chatting about
Speaker 1: this before we came into the podcast room. Here you
Speaker 1: you also see this, um there's less of a a
Speaker 1: fusion and cannon canonization of Chinese mythology. It's not like
Speaker 1: what we see in in the West, we say, Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: where you certainly as you grow up in school there's
Speaker 1: sort of a strict pantheon that's thrown at you. There's
Speaker 1: there's more or less a strict canonization of Greek mythology
Speaker 1: in classical literature. Um, there's no Homer and Hesiod. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. In China and Chinese culture, you see
Speaker 1: far fewer examples of of of important artist or writers
Speaker 1: taking mythology and then using it to create something new
Speaker 1: that in turn, uh, solidifies the tail. So in Chinese
Speaker 1: culture you still have a lot of these different versions
Speaker 1: of various myths and folk tales that retain their original form,
Speaker 1: and you'll have, you know, multiple versions of the same
Speaker 1: story depending on where you are and when you are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There is an interesting explanation of the sort of scattered
Speaker 1: source nature of Chinese mythology in the intro to one
Speaker 1: of the books we were using as a resource for
Speaker 1: this episode, uh, the Handbook of Chinese Mythology by Li
Speaker 1: Hui Yang and demming On with Jessica Anderson Turner. And
Speaker 1: the intro of this book is good. It it talks
Speaker 1: about what a lot of the sources were. But these
Speaker 1: fragments that inform our understanding, our modern understanding of Chinese
Speaker 1: mythology come from all over the place and in many cases,
Speaker 1: they're they're like just small little inscriptions and things like that,
Speaker 1: and then or some other larger texts that have various
Speaker 1: versions of narratives and things like that. But there's not
Speaker 1: like a Bible of Chinese mythology, right, Yeah, And sometimes
Speaker 1: I like to compare it to to to Hindu mythology,
Speaker 1: and Hinduism is another world where it's just a well
Speaker 1: of ideas and religions and traditions all thrown together. But
Speaker 1: yet there are there are several key epics that in
Speaker 1: particular that help inform the backbone of the thing. If
Speaker 1: you think of a faith as a snake rising up
Speaker 1: through that well, uh, than Hindu mythology might be, you know,
Speaker 1: a spiraling snake, but you can you can definitely pinpoint
Speaker 1: keep key parts of its anatomy. So in Chinese mythology,
Speaker 1: the line between more mortality and immortality often becomes a
Speaker 1: bit blurred. Uh. You know, we mentioned a big trouble
Speaker 1: little China earlier. Um, and this will be not a
Speaker 1: traditional text, not a traditional text, but just I will
Speaker 1: mention it one more time in this episode. Ah, I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of the film, and I feel like, even
Speaker 1: though it's very much a Western product. It actually does
Speaker 1: an okay job giving like a broad treatment of Chinese mythology.
Speaker 1: Uh in that it um you know, it's I feel
Speaker 1: like it has a deceptively deep treatment of certain aspects
Speaker 1: of Chinese mythology, even though it kind of plays fast
Speaker 1: and loose with everything, but it grounds itself in some
Speaker 1: key principles. And certainly we see that with Lopan in
Speaker 1: his uh, his immortal and mortal duality. He's he's at
Speaker 1: once this this frail old man and this uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, tin foot tall spirit character. So keep that
Speaker 1: in mind, you and as we move forward, Okay, so
Speaker 1: as you if you go back all the way to
Speaker 1: some of the earlier myths in in China, there's this
Speaker 1: presumption of immortality about the primeval gods. So this is
Speaker 1: a concept that falls in line with Judeo Christian concepts
Speaker 1: of the divine, etcetera. And yet gods such as the
Speaker 1: Yellow Emperor do suffer defeat and death. Though there's often
Speaker 1: a metamorphosis trope here as well. So you might remember
Speaker 1: from our Great Flood episode, the legendary hero kon Uh
Speaker 1: drowns and becomes a bear or possibly a turtle or
Speaker 1: a dragon depending on which version you're looking at. So
Speaker 1: there's a transformation ELM. Yeah, so it's the idea of
Speaker 1: living forever is not simply one of retaining your current state,
Speaker 1: but transcending to a different state. But also in some
Speaker 1: features of Chinese mythology we do see a kind of
Speaker 1: a middle or liminal state of right, like in the
Speaker 1: concept of undead creatures, like that they're not exactly immortals
Speaker 1: living forever, not exactly regular mortals. There's something in between
Speaker 1: or some state. We we do see some cool examples
Speaker 1: of that, and Baryl points out some of these in
Speaker 1: her excellent book Chinese Mythology and Introduction, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 1: One of them is a woman show who is uh
Speaker 1: this deity. She's actually a drought goddess and she's said
Speaker 1: to have been born a corpse. Yeah, well maybe you know,
Speaker 1: but take it all in here now. She she lived
Speaker 1: through the world of the ten Sons. So there's this
Speaker 1: story in the mythology where at one point in the
Speaker 1: in the distant past, the Earth had ten sons in
Speaker 1: the sky, or you might conceive this as nine extra
Speaker 1: sons or nine extra sons, nine superfluous sons. So what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do. There nine extra sons, and it's
Speaker 1: scorching the earth. It's burning up all the crops. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is where ye the archer enters the picture.
Speaker 1: He'll come again, come up again later and he starts
Speaker 1: shooting down the surplus sons with his bow. Uh. Saves
Speaker 1: the world uh and uh, and then the show is
Speaker 1: able to come back to life. So she's affiliated with
Speaker 1: with the crab because the crab, and sort of mythic understanding,
Speaker 1: sheds its shell and regrows. Ever, so here we see
Speaker 1: an idea of a of an immortal character who is
Speaker 1: also a character that dies, but it's a it's but
Speaker 1: there's a continual rebirth. I'm she drives out, but she
Speaker 1: comes back. I'm seeing here the uh the myth. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is the origin of that myth that was going
Speaker 1: around on the internet a few years ago that Arthur
Speaker 1: pods like lobsters live forever. Remember that, Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: remember that that kind of going around, and it it
Speaker 1: does tie into into some of these mythic interpretations of
Speaker 1: what these animals are doing when they mold. From what
Speaker 1: I recall, that turned out to be a very incorrect
Speaker 1: understanding of what the research showed. Yes. Now another character
Speaker 1: that does she brings up is one sing Tane, who
Speaker 1: is this warrior god character, and he continues to fight
Speaker 1: after being beheaded. So he's he's kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: a headless horseman or a roll in the headless Thompson
Speaker 1: gunner Um. He loses a battle to the Yellow Emperor,
Speaker 1: and so he's essentially a failed hero. He transforms though,
Speaker 1: rather than submit immediately to death, and it's quite a transformation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me about it. Right, here's the here's the quote
Speaker 1: that Beryl rolls up. Sing Tane and the Yellow Emperor
Speaker 1: came to this place and fought for divine rule. The
Speaker 1: Yellow Emperor cut off his head and buried it on
Speaker 1: chang Yang Mountain. Sing Tean made his nipples serve his
Speaker 1: eyes and his navel as a mouth, and brandishing his
Speaker 1: shield and battle axe, he danced whoa nipple ees naval mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's some there's some like old images of this too.
Speaker 1: It's pretty pretty monstrous awesome. But you know, he's stubborn
Speaker 1: and he's he's going to fight to the bitter end,
Speaker 1: even though he's gonna have to transform into something else
Speaker 1: to do it. Okay, So here you've seen a couple
Speaker 1: of examples of of survival of death or some form
Speaker 1: of survival of death or immortality in a liminal or
Speaker 1: middle state, or through metamorphosis or t information. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: see this idea of immortality not as a state of
Speaker 1: eternal youth, but as a change into something stranger, something
Speaker 1: less human, something that's still very much like the biological
Speaker 1: process of aging, only for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: like aging up. You mean that kind of like leveling up. Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're leveling up, you're getting older, because we
Speaker 1: certainly have you know, in the I feel like in
Speaker 1: certainly in western cult ravity universally, this is idea you
Speaker 1: know that you're gonna go over the hill, you're gonna peak,
Speaker 1: and then the uh, the the years on the back end,
Speaker 1: or even the decades in the back end are going
Speaker 1: to be a decline. Right. But in some of these
Speaker 1: mythic ideas of undying beings, there's the sense of you're,
Speaker 1: they're aging, they're getting older and older, stranger and stranger,
Speaker 1: and yet they're still an upward trajectory. And certainly some,
Speaker 1: I mean some human lives are like that. If some
Speaker 1: people don't really get into their prime until their final years.
Speaker 1: Some great writers or artists have produced their finest work
Speaker 1: in those areads. Yeah, but uh, you know, it varies
Speaker 1: from case to case. I wonder if this has something
Speaker 1: to do with a general cultural relevance for the elderly
Speaker 1: and and respect for for the wisdom that comes with age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's an excellent read on it. It does
Speaker 1: match up with the the idea of filial piety, of
Speaker 1: the veneration of ancestors, and the important role of of
Speaker 1: of grandparents in the traditional Chinese family. All right, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back we can have a look at mushrooms
Speaker 1: and grasses of immortality. So Robert tell me about living
Speaker 1: forever through mushrooms. Well, so this is one of those
Speaker 1: areas where in in Chinese culture you have you have
Speaker 1: mythology and folklore, you have you have Taoism, you have Confusism,
Speaker 1: and you you also have like Chinese traditional medicine. So
Speaker 1: that's playing a role in all of this and getting
Speaker 1: in the mix. And so, uh, we their their stories,
Speaker 1: plenty of stories and continued use of the raci mushroom
Speaker 1: or the ling mushroom in China. Uh. They're known for
Speaker 1: their life extending properties and they've been used medicinally for
Speaker 1: at least two thousand years because they have this reputation
Speaker 1: for promoting health and longevity. We talk about this one
Speaker 1: a Christian and I talked about it in our Weird
Speaker 1: Mushrooms episode of the podcast a few months back. And
Speaker 1: traditional Chinese medicine use continues to this day. In ancient
Speaker 1: use of this, uh go back at least to like
Speaker 1: four s b C. Just based on their textual appearance. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: tell me about some kind of mythical plant that's going
Speaker 1: to give it immortality, because you've got to have that
Speaker 1: in your in your mythical basis, right. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you alluded to it in the in the intro.
Speaker 1: You always have like with the tree in the Garden
Speaker 1: of Eden, don't you know, various apples and fruits that
Speaker 1: have divine properties and may give you eternal or long life.
Speaker 1: Then the Greek gods have a tree like that, believe
Speaker 1: they did. I mean yeah, I mean there's a world
Speaker 1: tree in Chinese tradition as well. But they're there also
Speaker 1: is grass. There's a there's mention of the Grass of Immortality. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're numerous magical grasses, but the grass of Immortality pops
Speaker 1: up in the legend of Lady White Snake. This is
Speaker 1: a pretty fun one. So it it grows along with
Speaker 1: other magical plants on the earthly paradise in the Koon
Speaker 1: Loon Mountains. H Lady White Snake was a monster who
Speaker 1: turned into a woman married a kind man, but one
Speaker 1: day her husband sees her in her true form and
Speaker 1: it scares him to death. Yeah, it's kind of like, Uh,
Speaker 1: it reminds me a lot of the Lady in the
Speaker 1: Snow story from Japanese culture, and that was also adapted
Speaker 1: into the Gargoyle story and Tales from the Dark Side
Speaker 1: of the movie. If you remember that one um, there
Speaker 1: was a Gargoya woman who takes mortal form and marry
Speaker 1: as a kind man. So anyway, she's distraught because he's
Speaker 1: dead now. So she flies to the Holy Mount and
Speaker 1: she retrieves the grass of Immortality and and she but
Speaker 1: she has to first convince the immortal Grandfather of the
Speaker 1: South Pole, the god of Longevity, to give it to her.
Speaker 1: And uh, this and this is a very interesting character
Speaker 1: as well as we're going to discuss. Well, don't make
Speaker 1: me wait, tell me about the immortal Grandfather. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: talking about Nanji shing Wing a k A immortal Grandfather
Speaker 1: of the South Pole, also often attributed as as simply Show,
Speaker 1: which literally means longevity and mandarin um. He's also, you know,
Speaker 1: symbolically a jovial old man with a great swollen forehead
Speaker 1: because it's so full of knowledge and astrologically speaking, because
Speaker 1: he's a figure that plays into Chinese astrology. He's also
Speaker 1: the class F giant star Cannabis. You would generally expect
Speaker 1: a person who is a giant star to have a
Speaker 1: quite swollen head. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's he's old,
Speaker 1: he's full of wisdom, and he's he's lined up with
Speaker 1: this particular star. And it makes sense. Canapis playsant into
Speaker 1: a number of different astrological traditions. It's the second brightest
Speaker 1: star in the sky. Uh. And if you're wondering how
Speaker 1: old it is, we're talking fifteen to twenty million years now.
Speaker 1: I was not expecting to make a Dune reference in
Speaker 1: this episode, but this is crazy. In Frank Herbert's done universe,
Speaker 1: the planet Iracous such as the you know, the planet
Speaker 1: dune with the sandworms. Spice is actually orbiting Canapis, so
Speaker 1: the home of the geriatic, the geriatric spice Melange the
Speaker 1: mind expanding, life extending substance. In that fictional universe, it
Speaker 1: orbits the ancient Chinese god of longevity and wisdom. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's by design? I don't know. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: put it past Herbert. I'm not as immersed in Herbert's
Speaker 1: bio biography as many are, so I can't say one.
Speaker 1: I know he doesn't seem to make a lot of
Speaker 1: specifically Eastern references, but he also does seemed to incorporate
Speaker 1: a lot about different does Yeah, I don't know, so
Speaker 1: I would not doubt it. If someone were to, you know,
Speaker 1: to say, oh, he definitely drew interpretation from Johnny's mythology,
Speaker 1: it would it would certainly, it would certainly make sense.
Speaker 1: I'm sensing the onset of a boat. Wait, there's more.
Speaker 1: It's true. In Greek myth, Cannabis was the name of
Speaker 1: the pilot of the fleet of Mentalis, and Mentalais was
Speaker 1: in a tradees. Yeah. So in Greek myth, the tradees
Speaker 1: were the son the sons of the trays uh and
Speaker 1: of course, the Tradees Paul Trades. This is the central
Speaker 1: family in the Dune saga, right, So yeah that if
Speaker 1: you've seen the movie, they're the people with the pugy.
Speaker 1: So the more the more I look at it, the
Speaker 1: more I'm like, surely, surely this is intentional. Yeah. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it's just the most wonderful coincidence for for me personally
Speaker 1: that these two things that I appreciate should be united. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Well, okay, give me more about the immortal
Speaker 1: grandfather himself, so like what's his significance and in their
Speaker 1: whole pan theon Alright, So for a lot of people listening,
Speaker 1: you might have seen him if you go into either
Speaker 1: a Chinese home, a Chinese business, um, you know, Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 1: I certainly noticed a lot of these for the first
Speaker 1: time when I was in China and saw them in
Speaker 1: hotel lobbies because you see these three individuals and and
Speaker 1: Uh and Show and in particular stands out because he
Speaker 1: has that that forehead. So you have these three stars,
Speaker 1: these three gods, and there's a Foo Lou and Show.
Speaker 1: So Foo represents good fortune and we see that symbolized
Speaker 1: in his scholars dress, cradled child and in fact, sometimes
Speaker 1: he's crawling with children like he's infested. Sometimes he has
Speaker 1: a scroll as well. Uh. And then there's a Lou,
Speaker 1: and Lou has a fine clothes, a riyo scepter, and
Speaker 1: he's he's the one you want to venerate for business
Speaker 1: savvy and professional success. And then you have old man
Speaker 1: show with the loaded skull that represents longevity, the wisdom
Speaker 1: that comes with old age. Dallas mythology attributes his ancient
Speaker 1: appearance to ten years in his mother's womb, and and
Speaker 1: that he was actually born an old man. And he
Speaker 1: also often carries the peach of immortality as well, which
Speaker 1: would have been obtained from another longevity god, the Queen
Speaker 1: Mother of the West. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: symbols coming together in his in this particular figure. So
Speaker 1: here we have another specific piece of plant matter of immortality,
Speaker 1: the peach of immortal. Yeah, I mean, if you start
Speaker 1: taking in global myths in general, there's just an entire
Speaker 1: salad buffet of of various things that will give you immortality,
Speaker 1: right down to the bacon bits, peach of immortality, bacon bits,
Speaker 1: fruit of the tree of life, ambrosia else what else. Well,
Speaker 1: if I'm imagining what the shownees all you can eat buffet,
Speaker 1: and you've got the seafood buffet at the end, so
Speaker 1: you get right down to the crab, I guess the
Speaker 1: soft serve of immortality. So coming back this idea of
Speaker 1: aging up, of of the of the body, changing, of
Speaker 1: becoming this uh, this slightly in human aged form. We
Speaker 1: see that with show, and certainly Chinese myth is full
Speaker 1: of immortal and long living creatures, monsters, spirits, including the
Speaker 1: Wutong Shin who you've mentioned before, but one in particular
Speaker 1: ties in with what we're talking about here. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Shan, the dallast immortal body. So there's
Speaker 1: a writing about this from one Zwang Joe who wrote
Speaker 1: about immortality for mortals in reference to an enlightened human sage.
Speaker 1: So he said, so so we can get it. That's
Speaker 1: the idea here is that there's a way for real,
Speaker 1: least certain humans to obtain this. Maybe not you and me,
Speaker 1: but maybe not not enlightened enough, but somebody could get
Speaker 1: it right. So this is what he said. He said,
Speaker 1: there is a holy man living on far away Kushi
Speaker 1: Mountain with skin like ice or snow, and gentle and
Speaker 1: shy like a young girl. He doesn't eat the five grains,
Speaker 1: but sucks the wind, drinks the dew, climbs up on
Speaker 1: the clouds and missed rides of flying dragon, and wanders
Speaker 1: beyond the four seas. By concentrating his spirit, he can
Speaker 1: protect creatures from sickness and plague and make the harvest plentiful.
Speaker 1: So and Barrel points to a number of aspects of
Speaker 1: this account that are noteworthy. So we have a hermit
Speaker 1: on a mountain. You're on a mountain, You're closer to heaven.
Speaker 1: Uh diet list, we have transformed gender, We see meditation,
Speaker 1: travel at will, magical powers of the beneficial nature, and
Speaker 1: UH carrying particular weight. In Dallas philosophy, this figure of
Speaker 1: the of the Chien the or the transcendental being Um.
Speaker 1: Though the particulars you know varied opinion on the exact
Speaker 1: reading Dallas Um Chinese alchemy, mythology, literature, folk tales, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the most famed use of this trope is in
Speaker 1: the the Eight Immortals, which are a group of Dallas
Speaker 1: immortals of feature into various works of art and literature,
Speaker 1: and they even show up in films. Hong Kong action movies,
Speaker 1: even the Drunken Master films. It's been forever since I
Speaker 1: saw one of those, but apparently the Eight Immortals show
Speaker 1: up there. They they they found new forms in comic books,
Speaker 1: so they're they're pretty big, big money. Do they still
Speaker 1: embody these traditional characteristics? Yeah? Yeah, I mean these are
Speaker 1: kind of like the tropes of the the the Old
Speaker 1: Immortal Sage of of Dallas tradition, and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's all quite interesting. I mean, you can take a
Speaker 1: literal reading of them and just say how they're they're magical,
Speaker 1: weird dudes. But I like how the aspects of the
Speaker 1: the enlightened transcendental body here seemed to be supernatural reflections
Speaker 1: of the actual biological factors of old age, right, changes
Speaker 1: in appetite, softening of gender, the potential for solitude, and
Speaker 1: increased empathy. Well, one thing I was looking at this
Speaker 1: and I thought it was quite interesting how some of
Speaker 1: these features that are being associated with this transcendental immortal
Speaker 1: um are actually paralleled in real scientific research on longevity.
Speaker 1: Uh So, for example, one of them is so it's
Speaker 1: an old man who seems to lose some primary sex characteristics.
Speaker 1: And this made me think, well, that sort of goes
Speaker 1: along with some research we have indicating that men can
Speaker 1: see increased longevity through castration. Oh yeah, this is probably
Speaker 1: not the option everyone will end up going for to
Speaker 1: prolong their life. But I just wanted to mention a
Speaker 1: couple of couple of studies. There was a nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine study in the Journal of Gerontology by James Hamilton
Speaker 1: and Gordon Messler UH, and its studied the longevity unfortunately
Speaker 1: in early mid to twentieth century institutionalized men who had
Speaker 1: been forcibly castrated as a result of the eugenics ideology
Speaker 1: of the time. So that's pretty unfortunate circumstances. But what
Speaker 1: they did find out from it was that from so
Speaker 1: they looked at two hundred and ninety seven cast rated
Speaker 1: men and compared them with UH seven hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five age matched controls, so men who were living in
Speaker 1: the same conditions, and they revealed that the castrated men
Speaker 1: had a significantly increased lifespan. I think it was a
Speaker 1: difference of about six years. And if only that those
Speaker 1: that were castrated earlier in life were considered, that the
Speaker 1: effect on lifespan was even more drastic. It was more
Speaker 1: than eleven years. And there was also a study that
Speaker 1: was published in the twelve issue of Current Biology that um.
Speaker 1: It was called the Lifespan of Korean Unix by King
Speaker 1: Kung Jin, Men Chilkoo Lee, and Hannam Park, and they
Speaker 1: said that their goal was to look at the effects
Speaker 1: of castration by analyzing historical Korean unis. So they looked
Speaker 1: at the genealogical records of eighty one historical Korean unix
Speaker 1: and then compared those two similar men of similar socioeconomic
Speaker 1: status but who had not been castrated. And they determined
Speaker 1: that quote, the average lifespan of unis was uh seventy
Speaker 1: plus or minus one point seventy six years, which was
Speaker 1: fourteen point four to nineteen point one years longer than
Speaker 1: the lifespan of non castrated men who had the similar
Speaker 1: station in society. So this all feeds into this body
Speaker 1: of literature that people have been looking at to say
Speaker 1: that perhaps male sex hormones in some way decrease one's
Speaker 1: ability to live to an older age. Well, that raises
Speaker 1: some interesting possibilities then about the possible link between unis
Speaker 1: and this This this trope of the the the aged
Speaker 1: immortal beca I mean, certainly we we had unis in
Speaker 1: China in Chinese tradition. Uh. I don't know, it would
Speaker 1: be interested to come I can explore that more. I
Speaker 1: would love I've long wanted to do an episode on
Speaker 1: UNIX sort of talk about not only the science of units,
Speaker 1: like what's actually happening, but also their role in society,
Speaker 1: which has has very greatly. You've had certainly you've had
Speaker 1: plenty of situations where units are treated as a third gender,
Speaker 1: as a second class kind of citizen, but they have
Speaker 1: also ascended to tremendous power at certain times and in
Speaker 1: certain conditions. I think in many cases you can look
Speaker 1: at it as an analog to the way celibacy was
Speaker 1: practiced in other contexts where there there's like a fear
Speaker 1: of people establishing hereditary corruption. Uh. And in situations like
Speaker 1: that there is often either enforced celibacy or preference for
Speaker 1: castrated men or something like that. Um. But I want
Speaker 1: to go with another example of the the Enlightened Immortal. Uh.
Speaker 1: It says that the Enlightened Immortal what sucks the wind
Speaker 1: and drinks the do that's their diet. I also wanted
Speaker 1: to tied this into the research on the link between
Speaker 1: caloric restriction and longevity, which is not um not fully established.
Speaker 1: I think that we've seen some back and forth in
Speaker 1: the research there, but the idea here is that restricting
Speaker 1: daily food intake below the level of satiation but above
Speaker 1: the level of malnutrition generally, I think what's looked at
Speaker 1: is about a thirty percent reduction below standard intake of
Speaker 1: daily calories could lead to longer lifespan in animals. Uh
Speaker 1: And the effect has been observed in short lived species
Speaker 1: like mice and rats, but the question is wouldn't apply
Speaker 1: to big primates like us. Well, there now been several
Speaker 1: studies looking at long term caloric restriction and REESEUS monkeys
Speaker 1: and the results have been mixed. So there was one
Speaker 1: study in two thousand nine that was a twenty year
Speaker 1: longitudinal adult on set caloric restriction study and REESEUS monkeys
Speaker 1: and they did find that the caloric restriction lead to
Speaker 1: increased lifespan and the REESUS monkeys. Then there was a
Speaker 1: different study published in Nature in twelve that did a
Speaker 1: twenty three year study on Rhesis macaques and it did
Speaker 1: not find It found a very slight increase through caloric
Speaker 1: restriction as compared to a control group, but it was
Speaker 1: not The difference wasn't statistically significant, so they said, you know,
Speaker 1: this is not replicated. But then I found one more
Speaker 1: analysis published in Nature Communications in teen looking at the
Speaker 1: previous twelve study that didn't find support for caloric restriction
Speaker 1: and longevity, and they ended up suggesting that what was
Speaker 1: really going on with the study. The problem there was
Speaker 1: that the control monkeys were effectively actually undergoing caloric restriction.
Speaker 1: Uh so there wasn't a proper control. Basically, all the
Speaker 1: monkeys were having caloric restriction. So, uh so, the jury
Speaker 1: is not not in yet on exactly the relationship there,
Speaker 1: but there are some indications that there could be a
Speaker 1: real connection between to know, being this diet less kind
Speaker 1: of creature, well probably not eating nothing right but more
Speaker 1: than the dew in the wind um, but but less
Speaker 1: than you want to eat, and living much longer than average.
Speaker 1: So yeah, perhaps the just the symbol of this ancient
Speaker 1: stage encompasses, uh some some basic ideas that are helpful
Speaker 1: for living a long life. Right now, that's all well
Speaker 1: and good to say, Oh, well, maybe you should, uh
Speaker 1: maybe you should eat less, Maybe you should be a
Speaker 1: little less masculine, Maybe you should you know, walk around
Speaker 1: in the mountains more. Yeah, that's all well and good.
Speaker 1: But here in modern times, what we want is a pill, right,
Speaker 1: what we want is a drink. What we want is
Speaker 1: a magic potion. It's so much easier, so much easier
Speaker 1: than getting castrated and not eating all the pizza. Yeah. Well, fortunately,
Speaker 1: there is a long history of alchemy in Chinese history
Speaker 1: and in Chinese mythology, so we can turn to automical
Speaker 1: means to produce use the same effect, tell me, you know,
Speaker 1: mythologically speaking. So in Cohen's Biographies of Holy Immortals, this
Speaker 1: is a fourth century tone of immortality and longevity, sorcery,
Speaker 1: counts of supernatural beings and what have you. It contains
Speaker 1: instructions for the creation of various potions, such as one
Speaker 1: for gold. And gold here I'm I'm fairly certain we
Speaker 1: are not to supposed to interpret is simply the element gold.
Speaker 1: It's something something more in line with Western alchemy's sorcerer's stone,
Speaker 1: kind of a thing which itself was not necessarily a stone,
Speaker 1: but a substance. So we get this, this gold, and
Speaker 1: then you simply ingest one pound of the gold to
Speaker 1: cure disease and make quote three worms cry for mercy.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? I guess that like the three
Speaker 1: worms that would like eat its you and aide you.
Speaker 1: You know, you know the three worms. No, I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm confused. Okay, three pounds of the old will make
Speaker 1: you live till the world's end, only till the world's end. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the actual phrasing is essentially like, you
Speaker 1: will live as long as the natural world, like presumably
Speaker 1: you could still like if the world, if you've no
Speaker 1: where to live, you're you're done. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a biological immortality. I guess now I'm interested in
Speaker 1: the differentiation between indefinite immortality, like you will live forever
Speaker 1: versus you will just live for many thousands of years. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: are these effectively actually different propositions? Well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it comes down we we broke it down a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier. Yeah. Are you saying if you say you
Speaker 1: want to live forever? Are you saying I want to
Speaker 1: transform into something cosmic? Are you saying I want to
Speaker 1: be exactly like I am right now forever? I want
Speaker 1: to be basically like I am right now, except I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep getting smarter and stuff, or like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: going to continue to age as I'm aging, but with
Speaker 1: absolutely no stop date, Like I'm just going to get
Speaker 1: just take aging to the limit. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: if you lived until the end of the universe, Uh,
Speaker 1: there'd be nothing left for you to do, right if
Speaker 1: the universe becomes homogeneous, just heat, death, everything is just
Speaker 1: cold darkness. Yeah, I don't know. And if you love
Speaker 1: just hanging out on mountaintops and riding dragons and drinking
Speaker 1: the dew out of the air, like, none of that's
Speaker 1: gonna be around anymore, so why bother? Uh? So three
Speaker 1: three pounds of the gold will get you that far.
Speaker 1: But also you can put it in a corpse. You
Speaker 1: can put a pill of it in a corpse's mouth
Speaker 1: along with some spit and resurrect them from the debt.
Speaker 1: So there's that. I do find it interesting that seems
Speaker 1: to take far less to resurrect the dead and then
Speaker 1: to simply um sustain human life. And definitely all right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and then
Speaker 1: when we come back we will talk about the elixir
Speaker 1: of immortality. So Robert tell me about the elixir of
Speaker 1: immortality in Chinese mythology. All right, So this is of
Speaker 1: all of the various potions and concoctions, this particular magic
Speaker 1: potion is probably the most famous of Chinese immatory immortality
Speaker 1: quest items, okay, in part because it involves a number
Speaker 1: of big name gods and heroes. It concerns the moon.
Speaker 1: So as with all these stories, the details and the
Speaker 1: shape of the narrative changes depending on where you're dipping
Speaker 1: your net in the waters of Chinese myth. But these
Speaker 1: are the basics, okay. So while various shamans and deities
Speaker 1: have access to this elixir, it's primarily a sad associated
Speaker 1: with the Queen Mother of the West, and a jade
Speaker 1: rabbit pounds it in a mortar for so, So imagine this,
Speaker 1: this divine feminine entity, and here is a magical jade
Speaker 1: rabbit pounding something in a in a mortar, and that
Speaker 1: it's creating this potion. And I've seen at least one
Speaker 1: ancient painting or depiction that has that. It's exactly as
Speaker 1: literal as it sounds. It's a rabbit holding a pestle
Speaker 1: pounding in the mortar. Yes, okay, so that's established. Remember ye,
Speaker 1: the archer from earlier we're talking about who's shot down
Speaker 1: the surplus sons, right, we had nine too many. He
Speaker 1: took them out. Well, the Queen Mother of the West
Speaker 1: Uh I guess it, was impressed with this gives him
Speaker 1: the potion so that he might live forever and rule
Speaker 1: over men for ages to come. It makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: he's a big name hero. He either he's rewarded with
Speaker 1: this or he asked for it and he gets it.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. He has a wife, Uh changy okay,
Speaker 1: and she steals it, drinks it, and flees to the moon. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things is that looking at the books
Speaker 1: we used for this episode, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: versions of this myth, and Chinese Uh role in them
Speaker 1: is vastly different depending on which version you read. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like looking in on if you look at
Speaker 1: these these heroes and gods as celebrities, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a celebrity domestic dispute of some sort. So at
Speaker 1: first we can just say, all we know are the basics.
Speaker 1: Here is this potion, she drank it, maybe she stole it,
Speaker 1: and then and then she went to the moon. What happened?
Speaker 1: What are the details? Changy is the villain of this story,
Speaker 1: and in some versions she does sort of get punished, right,
Speaker 1: like she gets turned into a toad or yeah, like
Speaker 1: the earliest versions of it, she's punished by the gods
Speaker 1: for stealing essentially from the gods are stealing a gift
Speaker 1: of the gods, it was not hers, and she's transformed.
Speaker 1: She gets to the moon, but there she's transformed into
Speaker 1: a toad. And the toad is another symbolic animal of immortality.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that you could look up at
Speaker 1: the moon and you could see a tree, a toad, uh,
Speaker 1: and and the rabbit. And we'll get to the tree
Speaker 1: in a bit. But there there are versions that are
Speaker 1: more complex too. So there's one version that I like
Speaker 1: to think of as like the love lady Hawk version. Okay,
Speaker 1: And in this one, he loved Changy so too much
Speaker 1: to drink the potion and become immortal without her. He
Speaker 1: only had the one dose, so he just gave it
Speaker 1: to her for say of keeping. But then he's apprentice
Speaker 1: fing Ming comes along and he's a he's a bad dude.
Speaker 1: He invied the heroic archer wanted his skills and in
Speaker 1: some tales would eventually murder him. Yeah, what they get
Speaker 1: into like a duel with their bows and fing Ming
Speaker 1: can't match him in archery skills, so he clubs them
Speaker 1: to death with I think the bow of a peach tree. Wow, well,
Speaker 1: that's probably cheating in the duel is Yeah, Well, he's
Speaker 1: a he's a bad he's a bad characters. He's not
Speaker 1: gonna play fair. The only way he's gonna defeat he
Speaker 1: is by cheating. So uh. In this particular story, Fingming
Speaker 1: catches wind of this. He finds out that his wife
Speaker 1: has the potion, so he comes to her to take
Speaker 1: it from her, and she won't let him have it.
Speaker 1: She swallows it instead to keep it from falling into
Speaker 1: his vile hands. And she immediately flies into the sky
Speaker 1: and she chose, she chooses the moon to like fuse
Speaker 1: with to become stuck on, become part of however you
Speaker 1: want to interpret that, because it would be arrist to
Speaker 1: her beloved. Uh so remember immortality via transformation. He comes
Speaker 1: home and he's so saddened by all of this that
Speaker 1: he offers fruit and cakes. Is offering to her in
Speaker 1: the first Autumn Moon Festival, or at least in the
Speaker 1: offering that will become Autumn Moon Festival. That that's sad
Speaker 1: but beautiful. Yeah, and I like this, and I feel
Speaker 1: like this is my my favorite of the two two versions.
Speaker 1: We're gonna look at here. Okay, well, what's the other one?
Speaker 1: But the other one is certainly more tragic, uh, And
Speaker 1: this one he is certainly a hero, but then he
Speaker 1: becomes the tyrannical ruler after the fall of the nine
Speaker 1: surplus suns. So he saved the day. But then when
Speaker 1: he actually when it actually comes down to him governing
Speaker 1: and ruling, he proves to be just a horrible dude. Hey,
Speaker 1: this often happens, right, Yeah, I got a military hero.
Speaker 1: They save the day, but I don't know, during peacetime
Speaker 1: they get a little lancy. Yeah, power corrupts. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you, I mean, it makes sense that you
Speaker 1: would see a different interpretation of this through you know,
Speaker 1: all through all these different dynastics chichaels in Chinese history.
Speaker 1: You have some good rulers, you have some terrible rulers,
Speaker 1: you have some beloved uh rulers, and you have some
Speaker 1: despise rulers. So the way you interpret a mythic hero
Speaker 1: like this, a military hero, is bound to be reinterpreted
Speaker 1: depending on what you have to work with. So in
Speaker 1: this version, he's awful, and he obtains the elixir so
Speaker 1: that he can rule forever. And Uh Changy does not
Speaker 1: want this to happen. She can't bear to see the
Speaker 1: people suffer, so she steals the elixir from him, drinks it,
Speaker 1: and then she starts rising up into the sky. He
Speaker 1: shoots arrows at her if she flees to the into
Speaker 1: the sky, and then when she makes it to the moon,
Speaker 1: he dies of anger because he's so enraged by her
Speaker 1: treachery and her escape. Dies of anger. That's intense. And
Speaker 1: then she just occupies the moon and the Autumn Moon festival.
Speaker 1: He comes away for people to thank her for herself
Speaker 1: with sacrifice. Okay, so instead of Ye initiating the festival,
Speaker 1: it's people initiate it, thanking her for saving them from you. Yea.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting. She's it's some sometimes she's vilified and
Speaker 1: punished by the gods, but her character is a lot
Speaker 1: more consistent as opposed to Ye's character. The ego seems
Speaker 1: to swing a lot broader from hero to villain in
Speaker 1: these in these two tellings, at any rate, now on
Speaker 1: the Moon, her life varies depending on when and where
Speaker 1: you're gathering your your story from Uh so she may
Speaker 1: have been turned into the toad perhaps this punishment, and
Speaker 1: also because the toad sheds its skin as in an
Speaker 1: act of mythic immortality. Uh. And in the earlier tales
Speaker 1: she's more punished. In the later ones, they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're more sympathetic to her, and they forget the toad form.
Speaker 1: There she may be forced to pound the elixir into
Speaker 1: the mortar. Though. You also see this version where the
Speaker 1: jade rabbit joins around the moon and then does the
Speaker 1: work for And then to top things off, there is
Speaker 1: a tree on the moon and there's a guy there
Speaker 1: that came apparently to to to like steal immortality. And
Speaker 1: his punishment, he has to continually chop at this tree.
Speaker 1: And every time he chops into it, yet uh, the
Speaker 1: the gouge in the tree heals back up. Oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have kind of, you know, a miss of
Speaker 1: Sissiphus going on on the moon pointless eternal labor. But
Speaker 1: will he live forever in this pointless eternal he will?
Speaker 1: That's kind of the the interesting thing about it, irony,
Speaker 1: he got immortality, it's just a horrible immortality of doing
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over again, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a nice commentary on that, on what we were
Speaker 1: ripping on earlier, the idea like, why would you want
Speaker 1: to live together in a constant state that doesn't change? Well,
Speaker 1: this guy got it um his name Woo Gang by
Speaker 1: the way, Yeah, if you're not living towards something, if
Speaker 1: you're if there's nothing you could ever finish and everything
Speaker 1: is stasis and always stays the same, do you want
Speaker 1: to live forever? Indeed? I mean this is the This
Speaker 1: is why these ideas are so so fun to to
Speaker 1: to talk about, so fun to explore in cultures both
Speaker 1: close to home and uh and distant, because we find
Speaker 1: these universal ideas, these universal questions. Okay, well, maybe we
Speaker 1: should step back and say, uh, what do we make
Speaker 1: of all these uh, these myths and these cultural beliefs,
Speaker 1: Like what what does this have to do with our
Speaker 1: cognition and the way we think about death today? Death
Speaker 1: end immortality? Well, you know, much has been written about
Speaker 1: the manner by which myth and religion emerge from the
Speaker 1: human mind, but the jury is still out on exactly
Speaker 1: what cognitive mechanisms are responsible for belief in such supernatural
Speaker 1: concepts as survival of consciousness, ghosts, gods, etcetera. And much
Speaker 1: of what has been presented in in psychology and in
Speaker 1: these studies is based upon the study of Western populations,
Speaker 1: populations that are heavily influenced by Judeo Christian tradition, maybe
Speaker 1: some Islam, but generally you know, people of the book,
Speaker 1: people that are tied to this particular Abrahamic tradition and
Speaker 1: that have a maybe not totally unified, but more canonical
Speaker 1: prescriptive understanding of what the afterlife is. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: from societies that were have at least been like traditionally
Speaker 1: and historically religious tone. Now this leads out China, though,
Speaker 1: which is a has long been a secular state with
Speaker 1: a history of non religious philosophies and unique varied mythological
Speaker 1: and religious roots. In two thousand fourteen, Dr Melanie Nioff
Speaker 1: and Dr Kelly James Clark embarked on a study sponsored
Speaker 1: by the John Templeton Foundation. And you see Riverside given
Speaker 1: the at least the preliminary title afterlife beliefs and their
Speaker 1: cognitive mechanisms among the Chinese past and present. And this
Speaker 1: is part of the Immortality Project. What's that? Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a let's say, broader like I forget the dollar amount
Speaker 1: is like a big dollar I um uh flight of
Speaker 1: studies that are looking into various topics of circling around
Speaker 1: the concept of immortality. So sadly this is not that
Speaker 1: this is apparently still underway. They're apparently still working on this.
Speaker 1: There's no public study out with this title. Hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: get to see it in the in the near future.
Speaker 1: But still it drives on the importance of when if
Speaker 1: you're gonna look at the relationship between cognition and religion,
Speaker 1: cognition and myth. Uh, you can't just depend on one
Speaker 1: cultural model. You mean like studies on college students exacted
Speaker 1: states in Great Britain or something. Right, Yeah, we see
Speaker 1: the same thing in in uh, in scientific studies all
Speaker 1: over where people have increasingly said, wait, you, how are
Speaker 1: we basing all of this supposed universal understanding on a
Speaker 1: very specific and select subset of human beings? Now? Um,
Speaker 1: all this being said Dr Melanie Nilov also on the
Speaker 1: Thrive Center project is Religion Natural the Chinese Challenge, which
Speaker 1: addresses many of these concerns through two thousand years of
Speaker 1: Chinese culture uh. And it makes the following points, and
Speaker 1: most of these are points for universality. Okay, First, high
Speaker 1: gods as opposed to low gods and Chinese a myth
Speaker 1: served as moral and for enforcers. Okay, So they rewarded
Speaker 1: and punished the behaviors of human and in this we
Speaker 1: see uniformity with global trends toward human and vision gods.
Speaker 1: The theory of a mind powered personification of the human
Speaker 1: minds hunger for for reasons known and unknown, to explain
Speaker 1: the universe. So this begins in early childhood and it
Speaker 1: persists in to adulthood. Mainland Chinese children shared much in
Speaker 1: common with Western children and adults in this so purpose
Speaker 1: based explanations for the world. So example given was when asked,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the deal with mountains? Well, mountains were
Speaker 1: created for climbing, just as hats were created for warmth.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this, I've read about this before. Like children
Speaker 1: having a tendency to assume that things. Uh. If asked
Speaker 1: to give an explanation for the existence of something, they
Speaker 1: explain it in terms of its usefulness to them. So
Speaker 1: like the the reason this table exists is so I
Speaker 1: can sit at it. Well, that might be true. The
Speaker 1: reason this rock exists is so I can skip it
Speaker 1: over the water. Yeah, it's like they have a simplistic
Speaker 1: but very reasonable explanation incorrect explanation often for what the
Speaker 1: one of these things are there. And as we get older,
Speaker 1: we we don't really abandon this line of thinking. We
Speaker 1: just make it a little more complex, right, Well, like
Speaker 1: maybe we know it's not necessarily correct, but we still
Speaker 1: want to feel that way, right Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just this tendency to see purpose in nature. So it's
Speaker 1: a teleological understanding of the world. Um, three to five
Speaker 1: year olds in this particular state, they displayed a natural
Speaker 1: ease and imagining all knowing and all say ing invisible beings.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that our our minds cling
Speaker 1: to intuitive religious ideas. I mean, gods and gods are
Speaker 1: just parents that love us for example. You know, we're
Speaker 1: just taking a relatable human relationship and extrapolating it into
Speaker 1: the supernatural scenario. But we also cling to counterintuitive ideas
Speaker 1: because they stand out, they're quirky, they're memorable, and God's
Speaker 1: after all, they tend to be counterintuitive. I've read a
Speaker 1: little bit about this in in the idea of meme
Speaker 1: theory as well, that like a lot of the memes
Speaker 1: that catch on are those that are familiar enough to
Speaker 1: be tractable to our minds, but also weird enough to
Speaker 1: be memorable. So the thing that that really sticks out
Speaker 1: in our brain and and merits remembering and repetition is
Speaker 1: the thing that's kind of like the thing you know,
Speaker 1: but also different enough that you don't forget it. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of examples that stick with me,
Speaker 1: like to go outside of Chinese mythology and think of
Speaker 1: like say Greek mythology or even Christianity. Like in Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: I instantly think of Zeus turning into random animals to
Speaker 1: have sexual relations with human women. Because when you hear
Speaker 1: about that, especially when you're a kid, you're like, that's
Speaker 1: that's insane. What this makes no sense? Why is that
Speaker 1: even happening. It's so absurd that it sticks with you,
Speaker 1: and it ultimately is kind of is telling about this character,
Speaker 1: this sort of absurd, horrible, kind of tyrannical god. So
Speaker 1: in both the in the study, in both UK and
Speaker 1: Chinese subjects, children had an easier time with counterintuitive ideas
Speaker 1: why a while adults struggled with them. So the ideas
Speaker 1: that you had like some sort of strange idea of
Speaker 1: a god the kids would be more inclined to, but
Speaker 1: to believe in it, the adults would have maybe a
Speaker 1: harder time digesting at all. But they found that quote
Speaker 1: natural intuitions underlying the practice of rituals exists across cultures,
Speaker 1: but the differences found between China and previously considered nations
Speaker 1: suggests that clatural differences may influence the types of rituals practice.
Speaker 1: Specifically in China, a few rituals were found in which
Speaker 1: a spirit or god acts upon humans, such as when
Speaker 1: a priest represents the god in a wedding to people,
Speaker 1: a common ritual type in much of the world. So
Speaker 1: they're saying that that type of thing is not very
Speaker 1: common in Chinese religion. And then they also pointed out
Speaker 1: that since you have a largely secularized society seeing the
Speaker 1: downplaying of religious expression, they predicted that there would be
Speaker 1: a natural inclination for religious thought that would in the
Speaker 1: seculary secularized society leak out in novel ways. So kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, the steams building up, it's got
Speaker 1: to release somehow. If religion is a natural inclination, you know,
Speaker 1: if of all these even though the strangest in the
Speaker 1: more elaborate supernatural beliefs have a grounding in the way
Speaker 1: our brains work. If we are if that is discouraged,
Speaker 1: is still going to have to find a way out.
Speaker 1: And I think this is one of these areas where
Speaker 1: you can you could probably chew on this concept for
Speaker 1: quite some time and find various examples. But the one
Speaker 1: that they pointed to his World of Warcraft what really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they highlighted it is quote an unorthodox vehicle for religious,
Speaker 1: spiritual and moral expression in China. So okay, which I
Speaker 1: can see that. You know, I'm not a World of
Speaker 1: Warcraft player, but I know it is an immersive game
Speaker 1: with a you know, a fairly deep fantasy mythos, full
Speaker 1: of heroes, and I assume God's good and evil battling
Speaker 1: against each other. Yeah, I mean, well, one of the
Speaker 1: things that, uh, that I guess this is implying is
Speaker 1: that you take a secular state and mostly secularized state
Speaker 1: where the importance of religion has greatly decreased um and
Speaker 1: yet people still have I mean, whatever the reason for
Speaker 1: the emergence of religion, it's easy to think about it
Speaker 1: having something to do with the desire for immortality or
Speaker 1: as are, for a belief in immortal beings of some kind,
Speaker 1: some kind of continuing beyond mortality and death. Um. That
Speaker 1: desire probably doesn't go away even if you have a
Speaker 1: mostly secularized state. So like, how does it find expression? Um?
Speaker 1: And so one of the things I'm interested in is
Speaker 1: is the parallels between this thing we've seen throughout uh
Speaker 1: this episode looking at Chinese immortality on immortality through transformation,
Speaker 1: the idea that you transcend your your mortal existence by
Speaker 1: becoming something else. The parallel between that in the secular
Speaker 1: immortality beliefs of trans humanism that we see today. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a common thing now where you'll get all
Speaker 1: these very very smart, you know, technology oriented people saying
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna live forever. I mean there
Speaker 1: are people who think that today, who think they are
Speaker 1: materialists in a non religious sense. Well you can debate
Speaker 1: the extent to which it's religious, but at least in
Speaker 1: a non supernatural sense. They think that they're going to
Speaker 1: have an indefinite lifespan because computers will reach such a
Speaker 1: point of advancement that will be able to download our
Speaker 1: consciousness into them and transform ourselves into this new digital
Speaker 1: existence where you can live indefinitely. Yeah, and then likewise
Speaker 1: you have the Aubrey de Gray kind of approach to longevity,
Speaker 1: like breaking up death into various winnable battles. The war
Speaker 1: against death is a bit too much to consider. But
Speaker 1: if we break it down into I think it's like
Speaker 1: eight different categories. Maybe it's twelve categories. He says, like,
Speaker 1: these are the categories. These are the advancements that need
Speaker 1: to take place for us to essentially defeat death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's trying to reduce the problem to components. So he's saying, like,
Speaker 1: if we can solve these Yeah, I don't remember the
Speaker 1: number either, but it's like, if we can solve these
Speaker 1: eleven problems, Uh, then we will no longer age and die.
Speaker 1: Now that he has met a lot of resistance to that,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who disagree with him
Speaker 1: very strongly, despite his wizardly beard, sagely appearance. Maybe if
Speaker 1: he had just a slightly larger forehead, uh, in an
Speaker 1: appetite for do and wind, we might buy into it more. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: I know you're joking, but I do think he gets
Speaker 1: a lot of mileage out of that beard. It it
Speaker 1: helps he has he he has the the appearance of
Speaker 1: of a wizard who is going to to help you
Speaker 1: achieve your goals. And uh, you know, and if you're
Speaker 1: a an aged individual with a lot of extra research
Speaker 1: dollars floating around, you might be inclined to to fund him.
Speaker 1: You know. One more thing, sorry, I'm still thinking about this,
Speaker 1: the digital consciousness mortality thing that this is so assuming
Speaker 1: you have some kind of materialist conception of consciousness and
Speaker 1: you want to survive forever by having your consciousness downloaded
Speaker 1: into a computer. I'm skeptical of that idea too, by
Speaker 1: the way, because how does that transfer occur? But some
Speaker 1: people think that will happen. Um uh, you have just
Speaker 1: fully abandoned your biological imperatives, Like the genes that built
Speaker 1: your brain, which generated the phenomenon of your mind, are
Speaker 1: just completely gone. Now like in our example where that
Speaker 1: you know, you're you are the brain and the vat
Speaker 1: on the robot. Now, um, what is that existence like?
Speaker 1: And at some point does that existence come back to
Speaker 1: bite you? Well? I mean it comes back to the moon. Right.
Speaker 1: You can imagine obtaining the elixir and being told, hey,
Speaker 1: you sure you want to follow through with this? You know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna fly into the sky and become one with
Speaker 1: the moon or possibly live on the moon. Uh. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's immortality. You've gotta be willing to transform. So
Speaker 1: maybe the idea of the digitizing consciousness, becoming a robot,
Speaker 1: having your brain living a vat like all these are
Speaker 1: just examples of sure, if you want immortality, you need
Speaker 1: to be open to the idea that immortality is transformation.
Speaker 1: And whatever you have now is not what you're going
Speaker 1: to have on the moon. It never is. Nope. All right,
Speaker 1: so there you have it. Uh. You know, you can
Speaker 1: boil it down to specifics. You can certainly pick apart
Speaker 1: the details of Chinese symbolism, homophonic puns, the other particulars,
Speaker 1: but you know, in broader strokes, I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of cohesion between these nit these universal ideas and
Speaker 1: questions concerning immortality, modern scientific inquiries into the possibility of
Speaker 1: immortality and our our hunger for it, uh, and these
Speaker 1: myths and folklore traditions that we've looked at here. Oh
Speaker 1: and on one final note, if you have found this
Speaker 1: particular topic fascinating and you're interested in in Asian society,
Speaker 1: Asian culture, well, you should check out Asia Society and
Speaker 1: Asia Society dot org. It's the leading educational organization dedicated
Speaker 1: to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among people's leaders
Speaker 1: and institutions of Asia and the United States in a
Speaker 1: global context. So we're talking the fields of arts, businesses, culture, education,
Speaker 1: and policy. The society provides insight, generates ideas, and promotes
Speaker 1: collaboration to address present challenges and create a shared future.
Speaker 1: So check them out at AGES Society dot org. They
Speaker 1: have plenty of educational materials. There's a museum in New
Speaker 1: York City. Uh and you can donate and support at
Speaker 1: that website. Now, I know what some of you are
Speaker 1: probably thinking, Hey, Chinese mythology is great, but there are
Speaker 1: these other wonderful wells of of myth out there, and
Speaker 1: they're full of immortals as well. You guys should cover them. Well,
Speaker 1: we very well, we might if there's enough interest out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, immortality. It's a big subject. It's a big subject,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, and I have a feeling that just
Speaker 1: about any major myth cycle is going to have something
Speaker 1: in there that it reflects something a little differently than
Speaker 1: what we looked at here today, so would be uh
Speaker 1: be cool to dive into them and there's enoughs and
Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head and over
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, that's where
Speaker 1: you'll find all the episod you'll find various blog posts, videos,
Speaker 1: links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram,
Speaker 1: you name it, we're probably on. And if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly, as always, you
Speaker 1: can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com