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During the long stillness of the pandemic I went deep into the oral epics. I read the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aeneid and then their modern refactorings in Circe and Lavinia. What struck me was how each of these works began as a living river of words, carried on the tongues of countless tellers before they were ever written down. They were never fixed but always reshaped. This play between repetition and transformation is what gave them power. An epic is not a stone monument. It is a current that carries human memory forward.
The same pattern stirs again in our time. In the Contraptions book club we read the tale of Monkey, another epic born from the flux of oral and popular retellings. Monkey is familiar to many without knowing it. He inspired the incredible Dragon Ball Z series, with its boundless energy and relentless transformations. And he is still capable of returning in new guises. I have begun to imagine what it would mean for Monkey to come “West of the West,” into contemporary California, leaping from myth into our own fractured dreamscape.
Here the remix mechanics described in the essay reveal their strange power. They restore something akin to the improvisational spirit of the storytellers who once roamed the marketplaces of Greece or China. Web3 protocols hold provenance without freezing it. They allow stories to fork, merge, and proliferate like living vines, each branch connected to its root yet free to seek its own light. Collective ownership turns the audience into co-keepers of the myth. Smart contracts replace the dusty chains of copyright with a fluid remembrance of lineage. In this way stories regain their live play.
Monkey King becomes a fun figure for this new-old possibility. Just as he once somersaulted across heaven and earth, he can now vault across ledgers and remix platforms. He can be reborn through each telling, at once ancient trickster and neon rebel. His pilgrimage is not toward a scripture guarded in India but toward the possibility of endless retelling in California and beyond. To play with Monkey in this way is to discover that the true epic is not what is carried but the unending capacity to carry it anew.
The future epics will not be carved into marble or bound in canonical editions. This already happens and in many ways is the defining attribute of culture on the web, which at its core links together and mashes up multiple things. That can look monsterous at times, like the many demons Monkey battles. With the new ability to not just publish and share but also thorughfully link ideas of ownership, a key piece of accountability, perhaps what lies west of the west, this networked world born of the California ideology will be living gardens of stories, tended by many hands, where the trickster still laughs and the river of memory never runs dry.
LMK if you’re down to come play together! I’ll be having fun monkeying around.
During the long stillness of the pandemic I went deep into the oral epics. I read the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aeneid and then their modern refactorings in Circe and Lavinia. What struck me was how each of these works began as a living river of words, carried on the tongues of countless tellers before they were ever written down. They were never fixed but always reshaped. This play between repetition and transformation is what gave them power. An epic is not a stone monument. It is a current that carries human memory forward.
The same pattern stirs again in our time. In the Contraptions book club we read the tale of Monkey, another epic born from the flux of oral and popular retellings. Monkey is familiar to many without knowing it. He inspired the incredible Dragon Ball Z series, with its boundless energy and relentless transformations. And he is still capable of returning in new guises. I have begun to imagine what it would mean for Monkey to come “West of the West,” into contemporary California, leaping from myth into our own fractured dreamscape.
Here the remix mechanics described in the essay reveal their strange power. They restore something akin to the improvisational spirit of the storytellers who once roamed the marketplaces of Greece or China. Web3 protocols hold provenance without freezing it. They allow stories to fork, merge, and proliferate like living vines, each branch connected to its root yet free to seek its own light. Collective ownership turns the audience into co-keepers of the myth. Smart contracts replace the dusty chains of copyright with a fluid remembrance of lineage. In this way stories regain their live play.
Monkey King becomes a fun figure for this new-old possibility. Just as he once somersaulted across heaven and earth, he can now vault across ledgers and remix platforms. He can be reborn through each telling, at once ancient trickster and neon rebel. His pilgrimage is not toward a scripture guarded in India but toward the possibility of endless retelling in California and beyond. To play with Monkey in this way is to discover that the true epic is not what is carried but the unending capacity to carry it anew.
The future epics will not be carved into marble or bound in canonical editions. This already happens and in many ways is the defining attribute of culture on the web, which at its core links together and mashes up multiple things. That can look monsterous at times, like the many demons Monkey battles. With the new ability to not just publish and share but also thorughfully link ideas of ownership, a key piece of accountability, perhaps what lies west of the west, this networked world born of the California ideology will be living gardens of stories, tended by many hands, where the trickster still laughs and the river of memory never runs dry.
LMK if you’re down to come play together! I’ll be having fun monkeying around.
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I love this little article on so many levels. My once and (future? :P) cofounder Varun, made our startup team watch Devdutt's East vs West the myths that mystify Ted talk until we grokked it. Myths provide a way to sorta grasp at the water in which we live, to use that famous "This is Water" talk sorta way. In the "West," we take the worldview of the Abrahamic faiths as a given, even the growing number of secular folks operate within a monolithic paradigm rather than being comfortable with the idea of many truths, circular rather than linear views of history and the like. Rather than yet-another-ponderous take on that, I've been itching on a riff. Monkey King! That figure journeys to the "West" which as Devdutt notes is India from Tang era China (actually still true today). He has a lot of campy adventures that also offer powerful parables of well I suppose everything and nothing, the mysteries of the human yada What if he came West? Today. Planning to FAFO https://pioneeringspirit.xyz/epics-without-end
https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/where-is-the-west-exactly-23442485 Devdutt's article as a link
On a secant a related take on Cosmpolitanism https://substack.com/home/post/p-172110771
Back when ARGO was just starting out, my cofounder made our founding team watch Devdutt Pattanaik’s East versus West: The Myths that Mystify over and over until it sank in. Not just once, not just twice. On repeat. Because if we were going to build something together-- I can from California and a guy from Hyderabad—we had to learn to approach this venture as equals, not as bearers of some invisible hierarchy. The talk is deceptively simple. Devdutt sketches two maps: the Western obsession with linear progress, binaries, and universal truth, and the Eastern tendency to embrace context, cycles, and many truths. He asks us to notice how much of our thinking is inherited mythology disguised as rationality. The West says: one right way. The East says: many ways. Both can inspire, both can blind. That stuck with me. (continued)
Because in California, you can see the absurdity of these categories on full display. We call ourselves the “West,” yet if you stand on the beach and look west, what you see is East Asia. The compass itself becomes a kind of joke. That’s the spirit of West of the West. A Monkey King leaping from ancient China into contemporary California, poking fun at our techno-kings and freeway kingdoms. Monkey for those unfamiliar is an awesome sort of fusionist fable from Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian doctrines with loads of slapstick (also inspired DBZ) If myth is the software we rarely admit we’re running, then Monkey’s trick is to show us the glitches. To laugh at the solemn stories we tell ourselves about destiny, progress, and who counts as civilized. Our venture started with a team learning not to take those categories for granted. Monkey’s venture begins the same way—by asking, with a grin: Where is the West, exactly? https://pioneeringspirit.xyz/epics-without-end
When Americans speak of East and West, they usually mean Christendom on one side and Islam or “others” on the other. But as Devdutt Pattanaik reminds us, the line has shifted with every empire and migration. Once it was Rome against Persia. Once it was Greece staring out at India. The West has never been a place so much as an orientation, a set of stories we tell about who we are in contrast to them. That makes the question for us not a matter of maps but of myths. The West is less longitude and more longing. It is the mask we put on to declare what is modern, rational, universal. But behind the mask is a more ancient pattern: the human tendency to divide and define, to draw frontiers where the winds themselves never stop. This is where the Monkey King series begins. From the mountains of China he leaps, carrying old tales of rebellion and trickery, into California—land of freeways, fire, and futuristic techno-kings https://pioneeringspirit.xyz/epics-without-end
Anyone around here into the various epics? Think of the MCU recently but then also Odyssey, Green Knight etc. I am excited to mess around with these remix mechanics for a refactored monkey king in contemporary California. LMK if you’re down to bounce ideas around https://pioneeringspirit.xyz/epics-without-end
Dive into the world of living epics with @patwater as they explore how stories—like the timeless tale of Monkey—bridge ancient narratives and modern creativity. During the pandemic, the resurgence of these tales illustrates the dynamic blending of repetition and transformation. Just as myths adapt over time, Web3 has the potential to empower collective storytelling, shaping a vibrant community of co-creators. Embrace the journey where contemporary interpretations rise and the river of memory flows endlessly. Let's play together!