Subject: (urth) monkeying with Gene

From: Damien Broderick <damien at ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 21:39:31 +0000

Strictly speaking this should go to the WHORL list except that I'm not
subscribed and it might interest some people here.  It's a kind of
meta-comment, borrowed from my Swedish friend Anders Sandberg, who recently
wrote:

< I'm right now reading the Chinese epic "The Journey to the West", and
enjoying the character of Sun Wukong the monkey king immensely. I
regard good Sun as a kind of transhumanist divinity. He starts out
merely as a rather unique monkey, but gathers skills and knowledge so
that he can become immortal. Then he uses his new knowledge to help
his people, tricks the Dragon of the Eastern sea into giving him an
immense magical weapon, descends into the underworld and erases his
and all the other monkies' names from the Book of Death. As Heaven
tries to intervene he causes trouble up there, becomes super-immortal
by eating the Peaches of Immortality *and* the Pills of Immortality,
is briefly (500 years) trapped by the Buddha under a mountain and for
the rest of the epic acts as a traveling companion and enlightened
advisor for the buddist monk Tripitaka, becoming a saint in the
process. Talk about a career! Sun manages to become a Taoist immortal
and a Buddhist saint *and* have a great time too (OK, those 500 years
under the mountain might have been boring). >

Some little prickles at the back of the neck at the coincidences between
good Sun and certain events in the lifetale of `good Silk' (Son, perhaps,
of the Long Sun).

I haven't read "The Journey to the West" so this might be utterest bogosity.

Damien Broderick

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