Morkulv wrote:What in the world are you guys talking about? Lycanthropy is a mental-disease wich makes patients delusional and act like beasts, much like rabies. There is nothing more to it. Look it up if you don't believe me, you can even get medication for it.
We're talking about the Lycanthropy that the mental disease of the same name got it's name from. The mental disease "Lycanthropy" wouldn't be named that if Lycanthropy didn't previously exist as the name for werewolves.
I know you're more than bright enough to know what we're talking about isn't the mental disease, Morkulv. Don't be so pedantic.
On not dying: Outliving one's body was kind of a given with my premise. I had in mind transplantation of consciousness. This opens up all kinds of new ideas--colonization of virtual worlds, artificial bodies that don't need atmospheres, and the like. When you get into this realm, population issues are solvable, and cancer becomes a nuisance reminder that it may be time to upgrade, rather than the life-ending terror it is for so many people today. When you see every day so many people trapped in disease and chronic pain, I seriously have to question the ethics of not working towards transhumanism. But, that's continuing an off-topic veer, one for which I'm directly responsible, too. (My apologies to Dreamer.)
On pre-Wright Brothers to Armstrong and Alden: I agree that that's an amazing jump in technology in such a relatively short amount of time, especially considering how much, say, the year 1100 and the year 1200 looked so similar. (China had a number of innovations, I suspect. But Central America looked pretty bloody both years, and Europe looked about the same. Sure, there were subtle changes, but the difference between 1900 and 2000 by comparison is pretty mind-blowing.) Still, engineering a werewolf is a pretty daunting task, and it's not exactly a high priority. There's a lot of people who want to fly, and getting to the moon was a matter of bragging rights between two dueling superpowers. By comparison, lycanthropy is a niche that hasn't had mainstream appeal since maybe eight thousand years ago, in the hunter-gatherer days.
Other things will have to be invented first to get us there, anyway. And, those other things have other ramifications. By the time werewolves are possible, whether it's in 2050 or if it's not figured out until, say, 2550 or 3200, other things will have surely been figured out that are both along the way and easier to do, that are also more marketable and in demand. Among them would be medical advances like the cure for cancer, as well as possibly the transhuman technologies that keep trying to steer me off topic. To make a shape-shifting werewolf, one would need to understand genetics enough to design from scratch a substantial amount of new DNA code to build a body that can do it. By the time one has that kind of knowledge, one would have already figured out just about every genetic disorder and how to fix it--so things like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia would be a part of history books. One would have learned how to do basic genetic techniques, like "cutting and pasting," so today's "should we ban human cloning?" debates would seem as quaint as people in the 1910s worrying about the automobile scaring horses. And, if you can build something that changes from a person to a wolf, you could by that point have easily figured out how to make a person with anatomic deformities such as a damaged spine shape-shift into someone who's anatomically intact. Surgery as we know it today would be obsolete, and orthopedics would be less about Vicodin refills while praying that the next epidural block works and more about whether you want a strong and stocky look or a svelt and dexterous form. In short, by the time werewolves are possible, we'll almost have to find a cure for just about everything along the way.
So, let's do it!
Taking a Gestalt approach, since it's the "in" thing...
Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language wrote:ly'can-thrope, n. [Gr. lykanthropos, a wolf-man; lykos, a wolf, and anthropos, man.]
1. A man fabled to have been transformed into a wolf and endowed with its savage propensities; a werewolf.
2. A person afflicted with lycanthropy; one who imagines himself to be a wolf, and acts in conformity with his delusion.
ly-can'thro-py, n. [Gr. lykanthropia, madness in which one imagines himself a wolf, from lykanthropos, a wolf-man, lycanthrope.]
1. The belief that one can transform himself or another into a wolf.
2. In pathology, a kind of erratic melancholy or madness, in which the patient supposes himself to be a wolf.
So, as you see, the meaning of lycanthrope as being a shape-shifting werewolf is given first, before the psychiatric meaning. This is taken from a dictionary older than I am, but common usage I have observed over the last couple of decades gives the same prominence to the non-psychiatric meaning.
Now do you think we could get this discussion back on track? Thanks in advance.
Now that I think if it. It would sure be funny if it did happen. It wouldn't turn out so well and I think that's why it would be kind of funny to see a man made werewolf. Imagine the hours of fun, just watching it....sigh. I'd have one of my own, but I'd just end up accidentally killing it or something like that. I'd forget to feed it, that's for sure.
Sigh...Good boy. Let's get some ham.