Realms of Myth Playlist, Part 10: Chinese Immortality

Explore tales and traditions from Taoist sorcery, alchemy and Chinese folktales.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today,
we are going to be waiting into the murky pool
of immortality and and the deep waters that lie beyond.

(00:25):
That's right. And since we just celebrated Chinese New Year
and we're now officially in the Year of the Rooster,
the fire Rooster, uh, it seemed appropriate to focus in
on Chinese immortality because certainly immortality is is big business
for us humans. And any myth cycle that you find

(00:46):
is going to have a few immortals jumping around in there.
A few there's usually a lot of yeah, yeah, a
few a lot. You're gonna have some some undying heroes, gods, demigods, etcetera.
You know, whalen on each other, uh having a lot
of the emotions about their undying state, that sort of thing.

(01:07):
And there's just each each culture, each myth cycle is
going to have a pretty rich history of this and
and as well as their own mix of universal ideas
and individual cultural ideas regarding UH life, undying. Yeah, I
think it's very interesting to look at the diversity of
the ideas of transcending death, but like what what they

(01:29):
all remain or what they all have in common? I
guess yeah. Uh so, all over the world you see
ideas about the survival of death or about ways that
one could prolong ones life indefinitely, um and and there's
so many details that change, like do you do you
you survive death in some kind of immaterial state? Do

(01:50):
you go to a different place or do you stay
in the same place. Are there beings that naturally live
forever or do they have to do something to sustain
their immort plity? You know, do you have to eat
the fruit of of continued existence? And I don't know.
I love that there there are all these little fruits
that grow off the tree of the idea of immortality

(02:10):
that are very different in various But the thing you've
always got there is that you don't want to stop
being there in your mind, right, Yeah, it's I mean,
it's part of being human. Our earliest recorded stories, you
can go back to the Epic of Gilgamesh in there
there are that there's a plot line there about the
quest for immortality. But in this episode, we're going to

(02:33):
focus in on Chinese mythology. And when I say focus,
focus is maybe a poor word because Chinese mythology is
a is a is a big tent and we'll get
into into that as we go here. But but the
Chinese treatment on the idea, uh, definitely have this mix
of like universal ideas concerning living forever as well as

(02:57):
some uniquely Chinese ideas. We also want to you know,
drive home here that you know, we know we have
a number of Chinese listeners out there or listeners who
grew up amid Chinese culture, so certainly feel free to
chine in on any of this. I always love to
hear from folks on on this topic and you help
clarify things with your experience and provide specific takes on
traditions and and tales that are often, you know, quite

(03:21):
varied across the vast time and space of Chinese culture.
Right now, first of all, we should probably just take
another step back from the specifics of Chinese culture and
just talk about again about why we are so obsessed
with immortality. Yeah, I guess that's a good thing to do. Like,
what what is this concept? Because immortality is not something

(03:41):
that is necessarily found in nature, So why is it
such an obsession? I guess maybe I could frame it
like this, I'm gonna ask a stupid question. I like
doing this on the podcast to ask a stupid question
because a lot of the ideas that I find most
interesting somehow start from intentionally asking a stupid question. And
here it is, why we want to keep living? Why

(04:02):
do all animals have what appears to be an overwhelming
desire not to die? Part of the answer is going
to be obvious, of course, right, So if you think
about the evolutionary basis for behaviors and drives that we have,
one of the most basic drives we have is for reproduction,
of course, but pretty much all the other ones are

(04:23):
based around survival. So genes that lead an organism to
have more descendants are going to flourish in the gene pool,
and so organisms that do not desire strongly to survive seem,
like prima facy, to be likely to have fewer descendants.
You're just not going to spread those genes that say
don't care about living and dying around very much because

(04:45):
a certain amount of survival is necessary for reproduction. But
note that I say a certain amount, because here's something
I was just thinking about this last night. Many animals
reach an age of peak reproductive fitness, after which, even
if they survive, their ability to reproduce approaches zero. So,
from an evolutionary basis, how come we don't lose our

(05:08):
will to survive after we've passed childbearing age? Or how
come we don't lose our will to survive if we've suffered, uh, say,
injury to our reproductive organs or something like that that
prevents us from passing our genes along. What would be
the evolutionary incentive for selecting genes that make us desire
to just keep on living, going on and on and on,

(05:31):
even in old age, desiring to just extend indefinitely into
the future. I'm not sure, but I think that's interesting.
I guess there are There are a few ideas. Maybe
there's the idea that children with surviving grandparents have greater
reproductive fitness because they're adult caregivers, that they've got more
adult caregivers. Basically, if you've got grandparents, great grandparents and

(05:52):
all that. Uh. But here's another anomaly to think about.
For complex mammals like human the desire for extended life
doesn't just reside in the brain, but it applies specifically
to the mind rather than the body. And this is
so that seems obviously well, yeah, of course it would.

(06:14):
You know, your mind is the thing that's thinking. But
think about this again from a biological perspective. So imagine
a little weird illustration. You're lying in bed tonight, Robert
and the robots come for you. The robot sorcerers come
and sees you out of your bed. Uh. And these
are robot sorcerers that delight in putting humans in weird dilemmas.

(06:35):
And so they give you two options. You've got option A,
which is that your brain is going to be destroyed
and an artificially intelligent computer impostor will be implanted in
your former head and then we'll live out its stays,
controlling your body with all normal function intact as if
it were still you. Okay, I'm not crazy about that option,

(06:56):
but now let's hear what The next option B is
that your body will be destroyed, but your brain will
be inserted into a vat atop one of those Boston
Dynamics darker robots, you know, so they want wandering around
on the on the logs and stuff where you can
live out your days as a brain in a vat
in a robot body, Robert, which one do you pick? Well?

(07:18):
These are both horrible choices because they both hinge on
the fallacy that that the mind is separate from the body,
and that we don't have a mind body unity. Oh okay, well,
but I'm saying you so, you wouldn't You wouldn't prefer
your consciousness remain intact on the robot. Um I mean
is the is if the robot brain goes into my body,

(07:40):
is it going to is it going to raise my
kid for me? Oh, let's say it would. Okay, then
I'll go with that like I would rather. It's as
long as the the new robot me cannot tell anybody
that I actually died. It has to keep going doing
its thing, continue, you know, keeping up with my responsibilities.
Uh yeah, and uh and keep everybody happy around me. Well,

(08:02):
you could also keep up with your responsibilities as a
brain in a robot boty. That's just gonna upset everybody,
though nobody wants that at at Christmas dinner. That is
a beautiful answer, Robert, But I sincerely believe that is
not the answer most people would actually choose. Really, most
people would choose the vat I think you will, Yeah,
as opposed to having your consciousness destroyed. I've just read

(08:23):
theereny horror stories about like brains in like Nego brain
canasters and whatnot, So I think even if it is
an exceedingly cruddy robot body, I think most people would
choose to have their consciousness preserved in a robot body
as opposed to have their body continue to do things
but their consciousness destroyed. Fair enough, Uh, it might not

(08:43):
be immediately clear why that's odd, but think about it
in the same terms as the past reproductive age example.
In option A, the impostor AI living in your body
could still reproduce Option B cannot. Uh. So your answer
there is probably the more biological, the intuitive one. But
I think the answer that I feel confident most people
would actually give if really faced by these robots sorcerers. Uh,

(09:07):
that that doesn't really make biological sense. So why does
your mind generally prefer its own survival to the survival
of the body that houses it and the genes that
created it. I don't know. To me that that's a
weird conundrum, And you can see this instantiated in many
beliefs about immortality that people have where they continue to

(09:30):
believe that their minds will go on existing after death,
even after their bodies are destroyed and there's no continued
possibility of reproduction. Well, I mean, I guess it comes
back to I think, therefore I am right. If I
am not conscious of my existence, I don't exist my
my and therefore my consciousness is my existence, even if

(09:51):
it's completely extracted from every other important aspect of existence. Well. Yeah,
I mean, it's certainly experientially clear to me why I
would prefer the the survival of my consciousness. But from
a third party point of view, if an alien just
came down and looked at people making that choice, it's
not obvious why they would be doing that. Uh So, anyway,

(10:14):
I think that's kind of interesting. Another side note, I
wanted to go down. Uh this might be a tangent,
but I also want to say that not everyone in
history has expressed the view that it's good to desire
to live forever. Uh. Just one example I wanted to
think of was the influential twentieth century philosopher Martin Heideger,
who famously he had this whole logic of the relationship

(10:37):
between authentic existence and the acceptance of death. And in
this system, basically a person's life is given meaning by
the fact of its finitude. Uh. The fact that a
person can exist in time, finitely in time, and then
not exist at a later time gives life the possibility
of a definite, authentic character and kind of makes sense

(11:00):
to me, right like if if you live forever and
you always have the potential to change, who are you? Yeah,
I mean, it's kind of like the difference between say,
having a free hour on a given day to you know,
engage in your hobbies or you know what have you
or a chore around the house, versus having the full
open day. Right now, people's approach this are gonna are

(11:22):
gonna differ, But my approach has my experience has often
been that if I only have an hour, I'm gonna
be more inclined to make the best out of that hour.
And if, by some miracle having an entire day, then
it's it's it's likely to be this unstructured, uh, just
a bout of unproductivity. But it's even worse than that
from my point of view, because think about, uh, all

(11:45):
of the things that make you you, all the things
that make you Robert lamb Uh. They're all expressions, I
would say, of choices you make given the finitude of
time and resources. The fact that like you are who
you are hardly because of which books you've read and
which books you've read. That's just one aspect of your character. Obviously,

(12:07):
not everything is as a function of the fact that
you don't have time to read all books that exist
in the world, right, Yeah, you have to pick and choose.
And then this is this is actually a good point
because also the books one has read changes, the books
one remembers changes, the books that one puts stock in
that too changes, and therefore the expression of self is

(12:30):
continually transforming. Um, this is something we'll get into it
that when we look at the particular Chinese models here,
because this is this is the thing, right when we
when we talk about living forever, there's there's this classic
idea of living forever is also eternal youth. I'm going
to be young forever. I'm gonna be this idealized version
of myself forever. Whereas which wouldn't really be you as

(12:55):
you the person who lives for a finite amount of time. Yeah,
that that doesn't match up with the human experience like
either you would be an inhuman thing this like like
basically like a robot version of me that acts like
like current me forever and never reads any new books,
never forgets any books that are currently bouncing around my head,

(13:16):
and it's just in this state, uh, just frozen in time.
Whereas in reality, like the immortal, I feel like the
the sort of dark Methuselah immortals that we see in
science fiction are kind of the more intriguing models because
they often involved like somebody just getting older, older and
more inhuman, you know, just awful awful, super rich old

(13:36):
men and cyberpunk novels pan Well lo pan to to
draw an example from a you know, an Eastern influenced
Western property, we have a super ancient guy who's cursed
and just gets worse and worse for never dying, Like
there's not a he just continues to spoil and doesn't
reach the actual point where you throw him off the shelf.

(13:59):
To quick asterisks on mentioning Heidegger, one of them was,
I hope everything I said is contingent on the fact
that I understand Heidegger right, which is debatable because his
ideas are just notoriously hard to understand uses all this
weird specialized terminology. But then the other thing is saying
that you can't really mention Heidegger these days, even his

(14:20):
a political philosophy or seemingly a political philosophy, without also
mentioning that he was an unrepentant Nazi. Uh. I don't
know if that has any significance to the death philosophy,
But I don't know. Maybe we're thinking about, well, they
sure like skulls. But anyway, so all of that stuff
we've just said aside, I think we can say it's

(14:41):
a decidedly unusual attitude toward death to say that, you know, yeah,
it's a good thing that I'm going to cease to
exist at some point, uh yeah, Or it's it's it's
easier to embrace it in the abstract, yeah, but when
when the the reapers actually coming around the corner, I
feel like not every one is going to be as
game to embrace it. People go to enormous, enormous lengths

(15:05):
to avoid acknowledging death or thinking about the inevitability of death.
And there's actually the whole psychological framework known as terror
management theory that hypothesizes that much of human culture, A
lot of what we do as a species is all
built around unconsciously designing frameworks to deny the reality of

(15:27):
death and put it out of mind. So people apply
this hypothesis to explaining the existence of cultural norms like
rules in society and things like that, traditions, religions, activities
that we use to entertain ourselves. Art. Uh. And I'm

(15:47):
not going to say whether terror management theory is a
correct interpretation of human behavior, but I do think it
has some purchase on our explanatory desires. Obviously, because humans
just so clearly fear death above all else. It's it's
obvious everybody would have to acknowledge that this is going on. Yeah.

(16:08):
I feel like, as with a lot of philosophical or
even religious frameworks, I kind of see them as like
a series of lenses that one may employ or or
pull away, depending on how you want to try and
view your your reality. And I feel like terror management
theory is one of those that, Yeah, I wouldn't want
to go walking around my life all the time seeing

(16:31):
everything within the framework of terror management theory, but occasionally
it is helpful to pull it down and say, oh, well,
this is it. Is interesting to view this aspect of
the the human experience um in you know, in reference
to our fear of death. Well, Robert, do you think
now we should transition to looking at the idea of
immortality specifically in Chinese mythology. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's go

(16:54):
ahead and dive in. So the important thing to drive
home here, of course, is that immortality is are from
a cut in dry topic in Chinese mythology, like they
don't have a systematic theology of it, right, yeah, and
and and again. Part of this is because Chinese mythology
is the thing that is so deep and wide. It
covers a great well of time as well as of

(17:14):
a vast geographic landscape. UM plus, a mythic history and
history have long experienced a certain amount of fusion into
a single timeline. And uh we we were chatting about
this before we came into the podcast room. Here you
you also see this, um there's less of a a
fusion and cannon canonization of Chinese mythology. It's not like

(17:38):
what we see in in the West, we say, Greek mythology,
where you certainly as you grow up in school there's
sort of a strict pantheon that's thrown at you. There's
there's more or less a strict canonization of Greek mythology
in classical literature. Um, there's no Homer and Hesiod. Yeah. Yeah,
that's the thing. In China and Chinese culture, you see

(18:01):
far fewer examples of of of important artist or writers
taking mythology and then using it to create something new
that in turn, uh, solidifies the tail. So in Chinese
culture you still have a lot of these different versions
of various myths and folk tales that retain their original form,

(18:23):
and you'll have, you know, multiple versions of the same
story depending on where you are and when you are. Yeah.
There is an interesting explanation of the sort of scattered
source nature of Chinese mythology in the intro to one
of the books we were using as a resource for
this episode, uh, the Handbook of Chinese Mythology by Li
Hui Yang and demming On with Jessica Anderson Turner. And

(18:45):
the intro of this book is good. It it talks
about what a lot of the sources were. But these
fragments that inform our understanding, our modern understanding of Chinese
mythology come from all over the place and in many cases,
they're they're like just small little inscriptions and things like that,
and then or some other larger texts that have various
versions of narratives and things like that. But there's not

(19:05):
like a Bible of Chinese mythology, right, Yeah, And sometimes
I like to compare it to to to Hindu mythology,
and Hinduism is another world where it's just a well
of ideas and religions and traditions all thrown together. But
yet there are there are several key epics that in
particular that help inform the backbone of the thing. If

(19:28):
you think of a faith as a snake rising up
through that well, uh, than Hindu mythology might be, you know,
a spiraling snake, but you can you can definitely pinpoint
keep key parts of its anatomy. So in Chinese mythology,
the line between more mortality and immortality often becomes a
bit blurred. Uh. You know, we mentioned a big trouble

(19:51):
little China earlier. Um, and this will be not a
traditional text, not a traditional text, but just I will
mention it one more time in this episode. Ah, I'm
a fan of the film, and I feel like, even
though it's very much a Western product. It actually does
an okay job giving like a broad treatment of Chinese mythology.

(20:12):
Uh in that it um you know, it's I feel
like it has a deceptively deep treatment of certain aspects
of Chinese mythology, even though it kind of plays fast
and loose with everything, but it grounds itself in some
key principles. And certainly we see that with Lopan in
his uh, his immortal and mortal duality. He's he's at
once this this frail old man and this uh, you know,

(20:35):
you know, tin foot tall spirit character. So keep that
in mind, you and as we move forward, Okay, so
as you if you go back all the way to
some of the earlier myths in in China, there's this
presumption of immortality about the primeval gods. So this is
a concept that falls in line with Judeo Christian concepts

(20:57):
of the divine, etcetera. And yet gods such as the
Yellow Emperor do suffer defeat and death. Though there's often
a metamorphosis trope here as well. So you might remember
from our Great Flood episode, the legendary hero kon Uh
drowns and becomes a bear or possibly a turtle or
a dragon depending on which version you're looking at. So

(21:21):
there's a transformation ELM. Yeah, so it's the idea of
living forever is not simply one of retaining your current state,
but transcending to a different state. But also in some
features of Chinese mythology we do see a kind of
a middle or liminal state of right, like in the
concept of undead creatures, like that they're not exactly immortals

(21:42):
living forever, not exactly regular mortals. There's something in between
or some state. We we do see some cool examples
of that, and Baryl points out some of these in
her excellent book Chinese Mythology and Introduction, which I highly recommend.
One of them is a woman show who is uh

(22:02):
this deity. She's actually a drought goddess and she's said
to have been born a corpse. Yeah, well maybe you know,
but take it all in here now. She she lived
through the world of the ten Sons. So there's this
story in the mythology where at one point in the
in the distant past, the Earth had ten sons in

(22:25):
the sky, or you might conceive this as nine extra
sons or nine extra sons, nine superfluous sons. So what
are you gonna do. There nine extra sons, and it's
scorching the earth. It's burning up all the crops. Uh.
And this is where ye the archer enters the picture.
He'll come again, come up again later and he starts
shooting down the surplus sons with his bow. Uh. Saves

(22:47):
the world uh and uh, and then the show is
able to come back to life. So she's affiliated with
with the crab because the crab, and sort of mythic understanding,
sheds its shell and regrows. Ever, so here we see
an idea of a of an immortal character who is
also a character that dies, but it's a it's but
there's a continual rebirth. I'm she drives out, but she

(23:13):
comes back. I'm seeing here the uh the myth. Maybe
this is the origin of that myth that was going
around on the internet a few years ago that Arthur
pods like lobsters live forever. Remember that, Yeah, I do
remember that that kind of going around, and it it
does tie into into some of these mythic interpretations of
what these animals are doing when they mold. From what

(23:34):
I recall, that turned out to be a very incorrect
understanding of what the research showed. Yes. Now another character
that does she brings up is one sing Tane, who
is this warrior god character, and he continues to fight
after being beheaded. So he's he's kind of a you know,

(23:54):
a headless horseman or a roll in the headless Thompson
gunner Um. He loses a battle to the Yellow Emperor,
and so he's essentially a failed hero. He transforms though,
rather than submit immediately to death, and it's quite a transformation. Yeah,
tell me about it. Right, here's the here's the quote
that Beryl rolls up. Sing Tane and the Yellow Emperor

(24:17):
came to this place and fought for divine rule. The
Yellow Emperor cut off his head and buried it on
chang Yang Mountain. Sing Tean made his nipples serve his
eyes and his navel as a mouth, and brandishing his
shield and battle axe, he danced whoa nipple ees naval mouth. Yeah,
and there's some there's some like old images of this too.

(24:37):
It's pretty pretty monstrous awesome. But you know, he's stubborn
and he's he's going to fight to the bitter end,
even though he's gonna have to transform into something else
to do it. Okay, So here you've seen a couple
of examples of of survival of death or some form
of survival of death or immortality in a liminal or
middle state, or through metamorphosis or t information. Yeah, we

(25:01):
see this idea of immortality not as a state of
eternal youth, but as a change into something stranger, something
less human, something that's still very much like the biological
process of aging, only for lack of a better word,
like aging up. You mean that kind of like leveling up. Yeah, Like, yeah,
you're you're you're leveling up, you're getting older, because we
certainly have you know, in the I feel like in

(25:24):
certainly in western cult ravity universally, this is idea you
know that you're gonna go over the hill, you're gonna peak,
and then the uh, the the years on the back end,
or even the decades in the back end are going
to be a decline. Right. But in some of these
mythic ideas of undying beings, there's the sense of you're,
they're aging, they're getting older and older, stranger and stranger,

(25:45):
and yet they're still an upward trajectory. And certainly some,
I mean some human lives are like that. If some
people don't really get into their prime until their final years.
Some great writers or artists have produced their finest work
in those areads. Yeah, but uh, you know, it varies
from case to case. I wonder if this has something

(26:06):
to do with a general cultural relevance for the elderly
and and respect for for the wisdom that comes with age. Yeah,
I think that's an excellent read on it. It does
match up with the the idea of filial piety, of
the veneration of ancestors, and the important role of of
of grandparents in the traditional Chinese family. All right, well,

(26:27):
maybe we should take a quick break and then when
we come back we can have a look at mushrooms
and grasses of immortality. So Robert tell me about living
forever through mushrooms. Well, so this is one of those
areas where in in Chinese culture you have you have

(26:48):
mythology and folklore, you have you have Taoism, you have Confusism,
and you you also have like Chinese traditional medicine. So
that's playing a role in all of this and getting
in the mix. And so, uh, we their their stories,
plenty of stories and continued use of the raci mushroom
or the ling mushroom in China. Uh. They're known for

(27:09):
their life extending properties and they've been used medicinally for
at least two thousand years because they have this reputation
for promoting health and longevity. We talk about this one
a Christian and I talked about it in our Weird
Mushrooms episode of the podcast a few months back. And
traditional Chinese medicine use continues to this day. In ancient

(27:29):
use of this, uh go back at least to like
four s b C. Just based on their textual appearance. Okay, well,
tell me about some kind of mythical plant that's going
to give it immortality, because you've got to have that
in your in your mythical basis, right. Oh yeah, yeah,
I think you alluded to it in the in the intro.
You always have like with the tree in the Garden

(27:50):
of Eden, don't you know, various apples and fruits that
have divine properties and may give you eternal or long life.
Then the Greek gods have a tree like that, believe
they did. I mean yeah, I mean there's a world
tree in Chinese tradition as well. But they're there also
is grass. There's a there's mention of the Grass of Immortality. Uh,

(28:12):
they're numerous magical grasses, but the grass of Immortality pops
up in the legend of Lady White Snake. This is
a pretty fun one. So it it grows along with
other magical plants on the earthly paradise in the Koon
Loon Mountains. H Lady White Snake was a monster who
turned into a woman married a kind man, but one
day her husband sees her in her true form and

(28:34):
it scares him to death. Yeah, it's kind of like, Uh,
it reminds me a lot of the Lady in the
Snow story from Japanese culture, and that was also adapted
into the Gargoyle story and Tales from the Dark Side
of the movie. If you remember that one um, there
was a Gargoya woman who takes mortal form and marry
as a kind man. So anyway, she's distraught because he's

(28:58):
dead now. So she flies to the Holy Mount and
she retrieves the grass of Immortality and and she but
she has to first convince the immortal Grandfather of the
South Pole, the god of Longevity, to give it to her.
And uh, this and this is a very interesting character
as well as we're going to discuss. Well, don't make

(29:18):
me wait, tell me about the immortal Grandfather. Yes, we're
talking about Nanji shing Wing a k A immortal Grandfather
of the South Pole, also often attributed as as simply Show,
which literally means longevity and mandarin um. He's also, you know,
symbolically a jovial old man with a great swollen forehead

(29:42):
because it's so full of knowledge and astrologically speaking, because
he's a figure that plays into Chinese astrology. He's also
the class F giant star Cannabis. You would generally expect
a person who is a giant star to have a
quite swollen head. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's he's old,
he's full of wisdom, and he's he's lined up with
this particular star. And it makes sense. Canapis playsant into

(30:05):
a number of different astrological traditions. It's the second brightest
star in the sky. Uh. And if you're wondering how
old it is, we're talking fifteen to twenty million years now.
I was not expecting to make a Dune reference in
this episode, but this is crazy. In Frank Herbert's done universe,
the planet Iracous such as the you know, the planet

(30:26):
dune with the sandworms. Spice is actually orbiting Canapis, so
the home of the geriatic, the geriatric spice Melange the
mind expanding, life extending substance. In that fictional universe, it
orbits the ancient Chinese god of longevity and wisdom. Do
you think that's by design? I don't know. I wouldn't

(30:47):
put it past Herbert. I'm not as immersed in Herbert's
bio biography as many are, so I can't say one.
I know he doesn't seem to make a lot of
specifically Eastern references, but he also does seemed to incorporate
a lot about different does Yeah, I don't know, so
I would not doubt it. If someone were to, you know,
to say, oh, he definitely drew interpretation from Johnny's mythology,

(31:09):
it would it would certainly, it would certainly make sense.
I'm sensing the onset of a boat. Wait, there's more.
It's true. In Greek myth, Cannabis was the name of
the pilot of the fleet of Mentalis, and Mentalais was
in a tradees. Yeah. So in Greek myth, the tradees
were the son the sons of the trays uh and
of course, the Tradees Paul Trades. This is the central

(31:33):
family in the Dune saga, right, So yeah that if
you've seen the movie, they're the people with the pugy.
So the more the more I look at it, the
more I'm like, surely, surely this is intentional. Yeah. Otherwise
it's just the most wonderful coincidence for for me personally
that these two things that I appreciate should be united. Wow,
that's interesting. Well, okay, give me more about the immortal

(31:56):
grandfather himself, so like what's his significance and in their
whole pan theon Alright, So for a lot of people listening,
you might have seen him if you go into either
a Chinese home, a Chinese business, um, you know, Chinese restaurant.
I certainly noticed a lot of these for the first
time when I was in China and saw them in
hotel lobbies because you see these three individuals and and

(32:19):
Uh and Show and in particular stands out because he
has that that forehead. So you have these three stars,
these three gods, and there's a Foo Lou and Show.
So Foo represents good fortune and we see that symbolized
in his scholars dress, cradled child and in fact, sometimes

(32:41):
he's crawling with children like he's infested. Sometimes he has
a scroll as well. Uh. And then there's a Lou,
and Lou has a fine clothes, a riyo scepter, and
he's he's the one you want to venerate for business
savvy and professional success. And then you have old man
show with the loaded skull that represents longevity, the wisdom

(33:03):
that comes with old age. Dallas mythology attributes his ancient
appearance to ten years in his mother's womb, and and
that he was actually born an old man. And he
also often carries the peach of immortality as well, which
would have been obtained from another longevity god, the Queen
Mother of the West. So there are a lot of

(33:24):
symbols coming together in his in this particular figure. So
here we have another specific piece of plant matter of immortality,
the peach of immortal. Yeah, I mean, if you start
taking in global myths in general, there's just an entire
salad buffet of of various things that will give you immortality,
right down to the bacon bits, peach of immortality, bacon bits,

(33:45):
fruit of the tree of life, ambrosia else what else. Well,
if I'm imagining what the shownees all you can eat buffet,
and you've got the seafood buffet at the end, so
you get right down to the crab, I guess the
soft serve of immortality. So coming back this idea of
aging up, of of the of the body, changing, of
becoming this uh, this slightly in human aged form. We

(34:08):
see that with show, and certainly Chinese myth is full
of immortal and long living creatures, monsters, spirits, including the
Wutong Shin who you've mentioned before, but one in particular
ties in with what we're talking about here. So we're
talking about the Shan, the dallast immortal body. So there's

(34:31):
a writing about this from one Zwang Joe who wrote
about immortality for mortals in reference to an enlightened human sage.
So he said, so so we can get it. That's
the idea here is that there's a way for real,
least certain humans to obtain this. Maybe not you and me,

(34:53):
but maybe not not enlightened enough, but somebody could get
it right. So this is what he said. He said,
there is a holy man living on far away Kushi
Mountain with skin like ice or snow, and gentle and
shy like a young girl. He doesn't eat the five grains,
but sucks the wind, drinks the dew, climbs up on
the clouds and missed rides of flying dragon, and wanders

(35:15):
beyond the four seas. By concentrating his spirit, he can
protect creatures from sickness and plague and make the harvest plentiful.
So and Barrel points to a number of aspects of
this account that are noteworthy. So we have a hermit
on a mountain. You're on a mountain, You're closer to heaven.
Uh diet list, we have transformed gender, We see meditation,

(35:35):
travel at will, magical powers of the beneficial nature, and
UH carrying particular weight. In Dallas philosophy, this figure of
the of the Chien the or the transcendental being Um.
Though the particulars you know varied opinion on the exact
reading Dallas Um Chinese alchemy, mythology, literature, folk tales, et cetera.

(35:58):
Perhaps the most famed use of this trope is in
the the Eight Immortals, which are a group of Dallas
immortals of feature into various works of art and literature,
and they even show up in films. Hong Kong action movies,
even the Drunken Master films. It's been forever since I
saw one of those, but apparently the Eight Immortals show
up there. They they they found new forms in comic books,

(36:23):
so they're they're pretty big, big money. Do they still
embody these traditional characteristics? Yeah? Yeah, I mean these are
kind of like the tropes of the the the Old
Immortal Sage of of Dallas tradition, and I think it's
it's all quite interesting. I mean, you can take a
literal reading of them and just say how they're they're magical,

(36:44):
weird dudes. But I like how the aspects of the
the enlightened transcendental body here seemed to be supernatural reflections
of the actual biological factors of old age, right, changes
in appetite, softening of gender, the potential for solitude, and
increased empathy. Well, one thing I was looking at this
and I thought it was quite interesting how some of

(37:06):
these features that are being associated with this transcendental immortal
um are actually paralleled in real scientific research on longevity.
Uh So, for example, one of them is so it's
an old man who seems to lose some primary sex characteristics.
And this made me think, well, that sort of goes

(37:27):
along with some research we have indicating that men can
see increased longevity through castration. Oh yeah, this is probably
not the option everyone will end up going for to
prolong their life. But I just wanted to mention a
couple of couple of studies. There was a nineteen sixty
nine study in the Journal of Gerontology by James Hamilton
and Gordon Messler UH, and its studied the longevity unfortunately

(37:51):
in early mid to twentieth century institutionalized men who had
been forcibly castrated as a result of the eugenics ideology
of the time. So that's pretty unfortunate circumstances. But what
they did find out from it was that from so
they looked at two hundred and ninety seven cast rated
men and compared them with UH seven hundred and thirty

(38:13):
five age matched controls, so men who were living in
the same conditions, and they revealed that the castrated men
had a significantly increased lifespan. I think it was a
difference of about six years. And if only that those
that were castrated earlier in life were considered, that the
effect on lifespan was even more drastic. It was more

(38:36):
than eleven years. And there was also a study that
was published in the twelve issue of Current Biology that um.
It was called the Lifespan of Korean Unix by King
Kung Jin, Men Chilkoo Lee, and Hannam Park, and they
said that their goal was to look at the effects

(38:57):
of castration by analyzing historical Korean unis. So they looked
at the genealogical records of eighty one historical Korean unix
and then compared those two similar men of similar socioeconomic
status but who had not been castrated. And they determined
that quote, the average lifespan of unis was uh seventy

(39:19):
plus or minus one point seventy six years, which was
fourteen point four to nineteen point one years longer than
the lifespan of non castrated men who had the similar
station in society. So this all feeds into this body
of literature that people have been looking at to say
that perhaps male sex hormones in some way decrease one's

(39:40):
ability to live to an older age. Well, that raises
some interesting possibilities then about the possible link between unis
and this This this trope of the the the aged
immortal beca I mean, certainly we we had unis in
China in Chinese tradition. Uh. I don't know, it would

(40:00):
be interested to come I can explore that more. I
would love I've long wanted to do an episode on
UNIX sort of talk about not only the science of units,
like what's actually happening, but also their role in society,
which has has very greatly. You've had certainly you've had
plenty of situations where units are treated as a third gender,
as a second class kind of citizen, but they have

(40:21):
also ascended to tremendous power at certain times and in
certain conditions. I think in many cases you can look
at it as an analog to the way celibacy was
practiced in other contexts where there there's like a fear
of people establishing hereditary corruption. Uh. And in situations like
that there is often either enforced celibacy or preference for

(40:44):
castrated men or something like that. Um. But I want
to go with another example of the the Enlightened Immortal. Uh.
It says that the Enlightened Immortal what sucks the wind
and drinks the do that's their diet. I also wanted
to tied this into the research on the link between
caloric restriction and longevity, which is not um not fully established.

(41:07):
I think that we've seen some back and forth in
the research there, but the idea here is that restricting
daily food intake below the level of satiation but above
the level of malnutrition generally, I think what's looked at
is about a thirty percent reduction below standard intake of
daily calories could lead to longer lifespan in animals. Uh

(41:29):
And the effect has been observed in short lived species
like mice and rats, but the question is wouldn't apply
to big primates like us. Well, there now been several
studies looking at long term caloric restriction and REESEUS monkeys
and the results have been mixed. So there was one
study in two thousand nine that was a twenty year
longitudinal adult on set caloric restriction study and REESEUS monkeys

(41:53):
and they did find that the caloric restriction lead to
increased lifespan and the REESUS monkeys. Then there was a
different study published in Nature in twelve that did a
twenty three year study on Rhesis macaques and it did
not find It found a very slight increase through caloric
restriction as compared to a control group, but it was

(42:14):
not The difference wasn't statistically significant, so they said, you know,
this is not replicated. But then I found one more
analysis published in Nature Communications in teen looking at the
previous twelve study that didn't find support for caloric restriction
and longevity, and they ended up suggesting that what was

(42:36):
really going on with the study. The problem there was
that the control monkeys were effectively actually undergoing caloric restriction.
Uh so there wasn't a proper control. Basically, all the
monkeys were having caloric restriction. So, uh so, the jury
is not not in yet on exactly the relationship there,
but there are some indications that there could be a

(42:57):
real connection between to know, being this diet less kind
of creature, well probably not eating nothing right but more
than the dew in the wind um, but but less
than you want to eat, and living much longer than average.
So yeah, perhaps the just the symbol of this ancient
stage encompasses, uh some some basic ideas that are helpful

(43:20):
for living a long life. Right now, that's all well
and good to say, Oh, well, maybe you should, uh
maybe you should eat less, Maybe you should be a
little less masculine, Maybe you should you know, walk around
in the mountains more. Yeah, that's all well and good.
But here in modern times, what we want is a pill, right,
what we want is a drink. What we want is

(43:42):
a magic potion. It's so much easier, so much easier
than getting castrated and not eating all the pizza. Yeah. Well, fortunately,
there is a long history of alchemy in Chinese history
and in Chinese mythology, so we can turn to automical
means to produce use the same effect, tell me, you know,
mythologically speaking. So in Cohen's Biographies of Holy Immortals, this

(44:06):
is a fourth century tone of immortality and longevity, sorcery,
counts of supernatural beings and what have you. It contains
instructions for the creation of various potions, such as one
for gold. And gold here I'm I'm fairly certain we
are not to supposed to interpret is simply the element gold.
It's something something more in line with Western alchemy's sorcerer's stone,

(44:32):
kind of a thing which itself was not necessarily a stone,
but a substance. So we get this, this gold, and
then you simply ingest one pound of the gold to
cure disease and make quote three worms cry for mercy.
What does that mean? I guess that like the three
worms that would like eat its you and aide you.

(44:52):
You know, you know the three worms. No, I don't.
I'm confused. Okay, three pounds of the old will make
you live till the world's end, only till the world's end. Well,
I think that the actual phrasing is essentially like, you
will live as long as the natural world, like presumably
you could still like if the world, if you've no

(45:13):
where to live, you're you're done. So it's kind of
like a biological immortality. I guess now I'm interested in
the differentiation between indefinite immortality, like you will live forever
versus you will just live for many thousands of years. Yeah, Like,
are these effectively actually different propositions? Well, yeah, I mean
it comes down we we broke it down a little

(45:34):
bit earlier. Yeah. Are you saying if you say you
want to live forever? Are you saying I want to
transform into something cosmic? Are you saying I want to
be exactly like I am right now forever? I want
to be basically like I am right now, except I'm
gonna keep getting smarter and stuff, or like I'm I'm
going to continue to age as I'm aging, but with
absolutely no stop date, Like I'm just going to get

(45:57):
just take aging to the limit. I mean, I guess
if you lived until the end of the universe, Uh,
there'd be nothing left for you to do, right if
the universe becomes homogeneous, just heat, death, everything is just
cold darkness. Yeah, I don't know. And if you love
just hanging out on mountaintops and riding dragons and drinking

(46:17):
the dew out of the air, like, none of that's
gonna be around anymore, so why bother? Uh? So three
three pounds of the gold will get you that far.
But also you can put it in a corpse. You
can put a pill of it in a corpse's mouth
along with some spit and resurrect them from the debt.
So there's that. I do find it interesting that seems
to take far less to resurrect the dead and then

(46:38):
to simply um sustain human life. And definitely all right, Well,
I think we should take a quick break and then
when we come back we will talk about the elixir
of immortality. So Robert tell me about the elixir of
immortality in Chinese mythology. All right, So this is of

(47:00):
all of the various potions and concoctions, this particular magic
potion is probably the most famous of Chinese immatory immortality
quest items, okay, in part because it involves a number
of big name gods and heroes. It concerns the moon.
So as with all these stories, the details and the
shape of the narrative changes depending on where you're dipping
your net in the waters of Chinese myth. But these

(47:22):
are the basics, okay. So while various shamans and deities
have access to this elixir, it's primarily a sad associated
with the Queen Mother of the West, and a jade
rabbit pounds it in a mortar for so, So imagine this,
this divine feminine entity, and here is a magical jade
rabbit pounding something in a in a mortar, and that

(47:45):
it's creating this potion. And I've seen at least one
ancient painting or depiction that has that. It's exactly as
literal as it sounds. It's a rabbit holding a pestle
pounding in the mortar. Yes, okay, so that's established. Remember ye,
the archer from earlier we're talking about who's shot down
the surplus sons, right, we had nine too many. He
took them out. Well, the Queen Mother of the West

(48:08):
Uh I guess it, was impressed with this gives him
the potion so that he might live forever and rule
over men for ages to come. It makes sense, right,
he's a big name hero. He either he's rewarded with
this or he asked for it and he gets it.
But here's the thing. He has a wife, Uh changy okay,
and she steals it, drinks it, and flees to the moon. Now,

(48:33):
one of the things is that looking at the books
we used for this episode, there are a lot of
versions of this myth, and Chinese Uh role in them
is vastly different depending on which version you read. It's
kind of like looking in on if you look at
these these heroes and gods as celebrities, it's kind of

(48:53):
like a celebrity domestic dispute of some sort. So at
first we can just say, all we know are the basics.
Here is this potion, she drank it, maybe she stole it,
and then and then she went to the moon. What happened?
What are the details? Changy is the villain of this story,
and in some versions she does sort of get punished, right,
like she gets turned into a toad or yeah, like

(49:14):
the earliest versions of it, she's punished by the gods
for stealing essentially from the gods are stealing a gift
of the gods, it was not hers, and she's transformed.
She gets to the moon, but there she's transformed into
a toad. And the toad is another symbolic animal of immortality.
But the idea is that you could look up at
the moon and you could see a tree, a toad, uh,

(49:36):
and and the rabbit. And we'll get to the tree
in a bit. But there there are versions that are
more complex too. So there's one version that I like
to think of as like the love lady Hawk version. Okay,
And in this one, he loved Changy so too much
to drink the potion and become immortal without her. He

(49:56):
only had the one dose, so he just gave it
to her for say of keeping. But then he's apprentice
fing Ming comes along and he's a he's a bad dude.
He invied the heroic archer wanted his skills and in
some tales would eventually murder him. Yeah, what they get
into like a duel with their bows and fing Ming

(50:17):
can't match him in archery skills, so he clubs them
to death with I think the bow of a peach tree. Wow, well,
that's probably cheating in the duel is Yeah, Well, he's
a he's a bad he's a bad characters. He's not
gonna play fair. The only way he's gonna defeat he
is by cheating. So uh. In this particular story, Fingming

(50:37):
catches wind of this. He finds out that his wife
has the potion, so he comes to her to take
it from her, and she won't let him have it.
She swallows it instead to keep it from falling into
his vile hands. And she immediately flies into the sky
and she chose, she chooses the moon to like fuse
with to become stuck on, become part of however you

(50:58):
want to interpret that, because it would be arrist to
her beloved. Uh so remember immortality via transformation. He comes
home and he's so saddened by all of this that
he offers fruit and cakes. Is offering to her in
the first Autumn Moon Festival, or at least in the
offering that will become Autumn Moon Festival. That that's sad
but beautiful. Yeah, and I like this, and I feel

(51:19):
like this is my my favorite of the two two versions.
We're gonna look at here. Okay, well, what's the other one?
But the other one is certainly more tragic, uh, And
this one he is certainly a hero, but then he
becomes the tyrannical ruler after the fall of the nine
surplus suns. So he saved the day. But then when
he actually when it actually comes down to him governing

(51:39):
and ruling, he proves to be just a horrible dude. Hey,
this often happens, right, Yeah, I got a military hero.
They save the day, but I don't know, during peacetime
they get a little lancy. Yeah, power corrupts. And it's
interesting that you, I mean, it makes sense that you
would see a different interpretation of this through you know,
all through all these different dynastics chichaels in Chinese history.

(52:02):
You have some good rulers, you have some terrible rulers,
you have some beloved uh rulers, and you have some
despise rulers. So the way you interpret a mythic hero
like this, a military hero, is bound to be reinterpreted
depending on what you have to work with. So in
this version, he's awful, and he obtains the elixir so

(52:24):
that he can rule forever. And Uh Changy does not
want this to happen. She can't bear to see the
people suffer, so she steals the elixir from him, drinks it,
and then she starts rising up into the sky. He
shoots arrows at her if she flees to the into
the sky, and then when she makes it to the moon,
he dies of anger because he's so enraged by her

(52:46):
treachery and her escape. Dies of anger. That's intense. And
then she just occupies the moon and the Autumn Moon festival.
He comes away for people to thank her for herself
with sacrifice. Okay, so instead of Ye initiating the festival,
it's people initiate it, thanking her for saving them from you. Yea.
So it's interesting. She's it's some sometimes she's vilified and

(53:09):
punished by the gods, but her character is a lot
more consistent as opposed to Ye's character. The ego seems
to swing a lot broader from hero to villain in
these in these two tellings, at any rate, now on
the Moon, her life varies depending on when and where
you're gathering your your story from Uh so she may

(53:30):
have been turned into the toad perhaps this punishment, and
also because the toad sheds its skin as in an
act of mythic immortality. Uh. And in the earlier tales
she's more punished. In the later ones, they're you know,
they're more sympathetic to her, and they forget the toad form.
There she may be forced to pound the elixir into
the mortar. Though. You also see this version where the

(53:51):
jade rabbit joins around the moon and then does the
work for And then to top things off, there is
a tree on the moon and there's a guy there
that came apparently to to to like steal immortality. And
his punishment, he has to continually chop at this tree.
And every time he chops into it, yet uh, the
the gouge in the tree heals back up. Oh no, yeah,

(54:13):
so you have kind of, you know, a miss of
Sissiphus going on on the moon pointless eternal labor. But
will he live forever in this pointless eternal he will?
That's kind of the the interesting thing about it, irony,
he got immortality, it's just a horrible immortality of doing
the same thing over and over again, which is kind
of a nice commentary on that, on what we were

(54:33):
ripping on earlier, the idea like, why would you want
to live together in a constant state that doesn't change? Well,
this guy got it um his name Woo Gang by
the way, Yeah, if you're not living towards something, if
you're if there's nothing you could ever finish and everything
is stasis and always stays the same, do you want

(54:54):
to live forever? Indeed? I mean this is the This
is why these ideas are so so fun to to
to talk about, so fun to explore in cultures both
close to home and uh and distant, because we find
these universal ideas, these universal questions. Okay, well, maybe we
should step back and say, uh, what do we make

(55:14):
of all these uh, these myths and these cultural beliefs,
Like what what does this have to do with our
cognition and the way we think about death today? Death
end immortality? Well, you know, much has been written about
the manner by which myth and religion emerge from the
human mind, but the jury is still out on exactly

(55:36):
what cognitive mechanisms are responsible for belief in such supernatural
concepts as survival of consciousness, ghosts, gods, etcetera. And much
of what has been presented in in psychology and in
these studies is based upon the study of Western populations,
populations that are heavily influenced by Judeo Christian tradition, maybe

(55:57):
some Islam, but generally you know, people of the book,
people that are tied to this particular Abrahamic tradition and
that have a maybe not totally unified, but more canonical
prescriptive understanding of what the afterlife is. Yeah, and also
from societies that were have at least been like traditionally
and historically religious tone. Now this leads out China, though,

(56:24):
which is a has long been a secular state with
a history of non religious philosophies and unique varied mythological
and religious roots. In two thousand fourteen, Dr Melanie Nioff
and Dr Kelly James Clark embarked on a study sponsored
by the John Templeton Foundation. And you see Riverside given
the at least the preliminary title afterlife beliefs and their

(56:47):
cognitive mechanisms among the Chinese past and present. And this
is part of the Immortality Project. What's that? Uh, it's
a let's say, broader like I forget the dollar amount
is like a big dollar I um uh flight of
studies that are looking into various topics of circling around
the concept of immortality. So sadly this is not that

(57:11):
this is apparently still underway. They're apparently still working on this.
There's no public study out with this title. Hopefully we'll
get to see it in the in the near future.
But still it drives on the importance of when if
you're gonna look at the relationship between cognition and religion,
cognition and myth. Uh, you can't just depend on one

(57:32):
cultural model. You mean like studies on college students exacted
states in Great Britain or something. Right, Yeah, we see
the same thing in in uh, in scientific studies all
over where people have increasingly said, wait, you, how are
we basing all of this supposed universal understanding on a
very specific and select subset of human beings? Now? Um,

(57:57):
all this being said Dr Melanie Nilov also on the
Thrive Center project is Religion Natural the Chinese Challenge, which
addresses many of these concerns through two thousand years of
Chinese culture uh. And it makes the following points, and
most of these are points for universality. Okay, First, high
gods as opposed to low gods and Chinese a myth

(58:19):
served as moral and for enforcers. Okay, So they rewarded
and punished the behaviors of human and in this we
see uniformity with global trends toward human and vision gods.
The theory of a mind powered personification of the human
minds hunger for for reasons known and unknown, to explain
the universe. So this begins in early childhood and it

(58:40):
persists in to adulthood. Mainland Chinese children shared much in
common with Western children and adults in this so purpose
based explanations for the world. So example given was when asked,
you know, what's the deal with mountains? Well, mountains were
created for climbing, just as hats were created for warmth.
Oh yeah, this, I've read about this before. Like children

(59:02):
having a tendency to assume that things. Uh. If asked
to give an explanation for the existence of something, they
explain it in terms of its usefulness to them. So
like the the reason this table exists is so I
can sit at it. Well, that might be true. The
reason this rock exists is so I can skip it
over the water. Yeah, it's like they have a simplistic

(59:26):
but very reasonable explanation incorrect explanation often for what the
one of these things are there. And as we get older,
we we don't really abandon this line of thinking. We
just make it a little more complex, right, Well, like
maybe we know it's not necessarily correct, but we still
want to feel that way, right Yeah, I mean it's

(59:47):
just this tendency to see purpose in nature. So it's
a teleological understanding of the world. Um, three to five
year olds in this particular state, they displayed a natural
ease and imagining all knowing and all say ing invisible beings.
So the idea here is that our our minds cling
to intuitive religious ideas. I mean, gods and gods are

(01:00:08):
just parents that love us for example. You know, we're
just taking a relatable human relationship and extrapolating it into
the supernatural scenario. But we also cling to counterintuitive ideas
because they stand out, they're quirky, they're memorable, and God's
after all, they tend to be counterintuitive. I've read a
little bit about this in in the idea of meme

(01:00:29):
theory as well, that like a lot of the memes
that catch on are those that are familiar enough to
be tractable to our minds, but also weird enough to
be memorable. So the thing that that really sticks out
in our brain and and merits remembering and repetition is
the thing that's kind of like the thing you know,

(01:00:49):
but also different enough that you don't forget it. Yeah, Like,
I think a lot of examples that stick with me,
like to go outside of Chinese mythology and think of
like say Greek mythology or even Christianity. Like in Greek mythology,
I instantly think of Zeus turning into random animals to
have sexual relations with human women. Because when you hear
about that, especially when you're a kid, you're like, that's

(01:01:12):
that's insane. What this makes no sense? Why is that
even happening. It's so absurd that it sticks with you,
and it ultimately is kind of is telling about this character,
this sort of absurd, horrible, kind of tyrannical god. So
in both the in the study, in both UK and
Chinese subjects, children had an easier time with counterintuitive ideas

(01:01:35):
why a while adults struggled with them. So the ideas
that you had like some sort of strange idea of
a god the kids would be more inclined to, but
to believe in it, the adults would have maybe a
harder time digesting at all. But they found that quote
natural intuitions underlying the practice of rituals exists across cultures,

(01:01:55):
but the differences found between China and previously considered nations
suggests that clatural differences may influence the types of rituals practice.
Specifically in China, a few rituals were found in which
a spirit or god acts upon humans, such as when
a priest represents the god in a wedding to people,
a common ritual type in much of the world. So

(01:02:17):
they're saying that that type of thing is not very
common in Chinese religion. And then they also pointed out
that since you have a largely secularized society seeing the
downplaying of religious expression, they predicted that there would be
a natural inclination for religious thought that would in the
seculary secularized society leak out in novel ways. So kind

(01:02:40):
of like you know, the steams building up, it's got
to release somehow. If religion is a natural inclination, you know,
if of all these even though the strangest in the
more elaborate supernatural beliefs have a grounding in the way
our brains work. If we are if that is discouraged,
is still going to have to find a way out.
And I think this is one of these areas where

(01:03:01):
you can you could probably chew on this concept for
quite some time and find various examples. But the one
that they pointed to his World of Warcraft what really, Yeah,
they they highlighted it is quote an unorthodox vehicle for religious,
spiritual and moral expression in China. So okay, which I
can see that. You know, I'm not a World of

(01:03:22):
Warcraft player, but I know it is an immersive game
with a you know, a fairly deep fantasy mythos, full
of heroes, and I assume God's good and evil battling
against each other. Yeah, I mean, well, one of the
things that, uh, that I guess this is implying is
that you take a secular state and mostly secularized state

(01:03:44):
where the importance of religion has greatly decreased um and
yet people still have I mean, whatever the reason for
the emergence of religion, it's easy to think about it
having something to do with the desire for immortality or
as are, for a belief in immortal beings of some kind,
some kind of continuing beyond mortality and death. Um. That

(01:04:08):
desire probably doesn't go away even if you have a
mostly secularized state. So like, how does it find expression? Um?
And so one of the things I'm interested in is
is the parallels between this thing we've seen throughout uh
this episode looking at Chinese immortality on immortality through transformation,
the idea that you transcend your your mortal existence by

(01:04:32):
becoming something else. The parallel between that in the secular
immortality beliefs of trans humanism that we see today. I mean,
this is a common thing now where you'll get all
these very very smart, you know, technology oriented people saying
oh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna live forever. I mean there
are people who think that today, who think they are

(01:04:54):
materialists in a non religious sense. Well you can debate
the extent to which it's religious, but at least in
a non supernatural sense. They think that they're going to
have an indefinite lifespan because computers will reach such a
point of advancement that will be able to download our
consciousness into them and transform ourselves into this new digital

(01:05:16):
existence where you can live indefinitely. Yeah, and then likewise
you have the Aubrey de Gray kind of approach to longevity,
like breaking up death into various winnable battles. The war
against death is a bit too much to consider. But
if we break it down into I think it's like
eight different categories. Maybe it's twelve categories. He says, like,

(01:05:36):
these are the categories. These are the advancements that need
to take place for us to essentially defeat death. Yeah,
he's trying to reduce the problem to components. So he's saying, like,
if we can solve these Yeah, I don't remember the
number either, but it's like, if we can solve these
eleven problems, Uh, then we will no longer age and die.

(01:05:57):
Now that he has met a lot of resistance to that,
there are a lot of people who disagree with him
very strongly, despite his wizardly beard, sagely appearance. Maybe if
he had just a slightly larger forehead, uh, in an
appetite for do and wind, we might buy into it more. Perhaps,
I know you're joking, but I do think he gets

(01:06:17):
a lot of mileage out of that beard. It it
helps he has he he has the the appearance of
of a wizard who is going to to help you
achieve your goals. And uh, you know, and if you're
a an aged individual with a lot of extra research
dollars floating around, you might be inclined to to fund him.

(01:06:38):
You know. One more thing, sorry, I'm still thinking about this,
the digital consciousness mortality thing that this is so assuming
you have some kind of materialist conception of consciousness and
you want to survive forever by having your consciousness downloaded
into a computer. I'm skeptical of that idea too, by
the way, because how does that transfer occur? But some
people think that will happen. Um uh, you have just

(01:07:02):
fully abandoned your biological imperatives, Like the genes that built
your brain, which generated the phenomenon of your mind, are
just completely gone. Now like in our example where that
you know, you're you are the brain and the vat
on the robot. Now, um, what is that existence like?
And at some point does that existence come back to

(01:07:23):
bite you? Well? I mean it comes back to the moon. Right.
You can imagine obtaining the elixir and being told, hey,
you sure you want to follow through with this? You know,
you're gonna fly into the sky and become one with
the moon or possibly live on the moon. Uh. I mean, yeah,
that's that's immortality. You've gotta be willing to transform. So
maybe the idea of the digitizing consciousness, becoming a robot,

(01:07:49):
having your brain living a vat like all these are
just examples of sure, if you want immortality, you need
to be open to the idea that immortality is transformation.
And whatever you have now is not what you're going
to have on the moon. It never is. Nope. All right,
so there you have it. Uh. You know, you can
boil it down to specifics. You can certainly pick apart

(01:08:10):
the details of Chinese symbolism, homophonic puns, the other particulars,
but you know, in broader strokes, I think there's a
lot of cohesion between these nit these universal ideas and
questions concerning immortality, modern scientific inquiries into the possibility of
immortality and our our hunger for it, uh, and these

(01:08:31):
myths and folklore traditions that we've looked at here. Oh
and on one final note, if you have found this
particular topic fascinating and you're interested in in Asian society,
Asian culture, well, you should check out Asia Society and
Asia Society dot org. It's the leading educational organization dedicated
to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among people's leaders

(01:08:52):
and institutions of Asia and the United States in a
global context. So we're talking the fields of arts, businesses, culture, education,
and policy. The society provides insight, generates ideas, and promotes
collaboration to address present challenges and create a shared future.
So check them out at AGES Society dot org. They
have plenty of educational materials. There's a museum in New

(01:09:14):
York City. Uh and you can donate and support at
that website. Now, I know what some of you are
probably thinking, Hey, Chinese mythology is great, but there are
these other wonderful wells of of myth out there, and
they're full of immortals as well. You guys should cover them. Well,
we very well, we might if there's enough interest out there.

(01:09:35):
I mean, immortality. It's a big subject. It's a big subject,
and uh yeah, and I have a feeling that just
about any major myth cycle is going to have something
in there that it reflects something a little differently than
what we looked at here today, so would be uh
be cool to dive into them and there's enoughs and
in the meantime, if you want to check out other
episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head and over

(01:09:56):
the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, that's where
you'll find all the episod you'll find various blog posts, videos,
links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram,
you name it, we're probably on. And if you want
to get in touch with us directly, as always, you
can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

(01:10:26):
other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com