Fungi, Our Teachers

To survive, we must continuously adapt our ways of being by allowing gatherings to change us. The tree of life is insubstantial as a guiding model for our existence because it writes an elite into its framework, assuming a hierarchy, a top rung built on the backs of other subordinates. Fungi, members of the eponymous eukaryotic kingdom distinct from plants and animals, teach another model. They highlight the unilateral linkage of all living organisms, wherein no singular actor has a dominating, elevated influence. Instead, we are all tied by a web of connections.

Taxonomy is the science of naming, defining and classifying groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics, as all organisms living on Earth today are the modified descendants of common ancestors. The web of life, or the mapping of all evolutionary histories, classifies organisms within eight increasingly specific categories: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Each level of division reflects a major evolutionary change—or speciation event—that led to a whole new lineage of organisms. Mapping these histories and relationships into a cohesive whole reveals a mycelium of life- the holistic network of all our histories, encounters, and relationships. We are networked with everything that exists.

The mycelium of life all begins with a single spore, as illustrated in Peter McCoy’s Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working with Fungi (1). Amidst the infinitely vast landscape of the natural world, these infinitesimal specks wander in search of suitable grounds on which to thrive- as ubiquitous as any God you believe in, unseen except where they bear the fruit of life. There may be as many as 500,000 spores resting atop the pillow on which you lay your head each night (2). Every breath we take is saturated with spores, around 500 in each cubic meter of air in the summer months (1). Certain spores can live dormant for more than 100 years without ever growing (2). Viable spores have even been found in 4,500-year-old glacial ice cores (1). Our bodies could never hope to realize the ethereal, temporal, and spatial rhythms that spores exist within. May wisdom from Fungi soon pervade as extensively as their minute reproductive units. Fungi may be our salvation in capitalist ruin, teaching us how to come together and learn ways of being and surviving in collaboration.

Spores are reliant on and integral to this world. Their journey is like our own on this Earth: spores cannot survive without a nurturing environment. The roughly 0.01% that do land amongst perfect conditions will germinate, growing and forming monokaryotic primary mycelium (1).

These webs of wisps, more diaphanous than hair, are filaments of white tissue one cell thick known as hypha, which weave and thread, branching out in three dimensions and forming a matrix which expands like a firework, like the big bang, to search for nourishment and a compatible mate. Mycelia are decentralized pervading creators, connecting and turning life cycles.

While gathering nutrients, quick growing hypha may assemble with plant roots to form a mycorrhiza, a communicative, symbiotic relationship in which plants yield the sugar they produce via photosynthesis in exchange for nitrogen, phosphates, and aided water uptake, as roots are limited by their slow growth (1). This is the survival tale nature teaches us if we attune ourselves to its teachings- that the natural world is not a barren free-for-all where the weak and unfavorable dwindle, but a haven where bountiful relationships and collaborations boost the survival and wellbeing of all involved. Between 90 and 95 percent of plants have Fungi as symbionts, and it’s possible that plants developed roots soon after they became terrestrial in order to connect with Fungi (2). By learning from Fungi and pairing with Fungi, by honoring the mycelium of life, we too have a better chance at survival.

Without this vital gathering, trees and other plants would be scrawny, malnourished versions of their current selves, in replete numbers, and the entire web of life would suffer (2). Mycorrhiza also trap carbon underground and out of the atmosphere where human action in part has its levels exceeding optimal amounts to support a stable, healthy Earth (1).

Once one viable mycelium finds another compatible mycelium to mate with, the two form a greater mycelial network. Their web grows indefinitely larger, with each hypha extending, until halted by limited food or space or by the triggering of mushroom formation by environmental signals, like optimal temperature and moisture conditions. This greater mycelium then aggregates into a cluster that develops into the fruit bodies we know as mushrooms- mushrooms which produce spores in order to spread their existence elsewhere. Thus, a cycle of life is complete- a cycle which feeds even more cycles of life, turning carbon cycles, nourishing other organisms, ensuring a healthy ecosystem and the mutual survival of all. This can be thought of as an assemblage, or a collection of elements gathered or assembled into an indivisible whole greater than the sum of its parts. The power of assemblage is that the convergence of elements both material and expressive within an encounter can give expression to previously nonexistent realities, thoughts, bodies, affects, spaces, actions, ideas; the gathering of spore and hospitable landscape spurs life beyond the scale of singular survival.

Fungi were the first major organisms to thrive on land. They created the grounds on which all other life, all plants, animals, and evolutions, came to grow (1). Mapping the evolutionary histories, encounters, and relationships of all organisms into a cohesive whole, we see a network branching out like mycelia. All life on Earth, as shown by the mycelia of life, is inextricably linked.

Without air, water, clay, fire, light from the sun, trees for shade and shelter, plants for food and medicine, earthen ground and Fungi underground to live and evolve upon, other people to teach us and heal us, we could not survive on this Earth.

The key to living and surviving amidst capitalist ruins is to accept the mycorrhizal rhizome of life- by coming together as co-constitutive elements, coalescing to thrive and support mutually the being of other lifeforms. The muddied, convoluted truth is that all things belong to a globular aggregate- no one narrative or individual can truthfully, sustainably prevail. Nature is endlessly shifting relational totalities consisting of fluid networks between different entities and their articulations, i.e. expressions. Deleuze and Guattari, who founded assemblage theory in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, insisted on a bottom-up approach to understanding life and phenomena, focusing on functionality that is achieved through entanglement (3).

Fungi are the oldest teachers. They foster an ancient pedagogy still evident in foods, medicines, and customs. Mushrooms contain knowledge outside of reductionist, lab-controlled science- their knowledge lies in connectivity. Walk amidst a forest in quick tread and you may miss the slight treat of their fruit. Likewise, studying their reduced elements in haste overlooks their complexities- witness them wholly, freely, and subjectively.

Science, and largely Western thought in general, has “progressed” to bolster two modalities of thought: reductionism and objectivism. Reductionism is the modus of inquiry where understanding is gained through reducing something into its simplest component parts. Objectivism seeks understanding independent of individual subjects, and therefore outside of any individual perceptions, thoughts, and feelings.

Many Fungi defy such insisted upon, rabbit holes of study, as they are incredibly complex systems with complicated, difficult to detect behaviors that cannot be studied within a lab, that exist only in intricate relation to a whole ecosystem. Perhaps it is for these reasons that Fungi are still not widely understood, with only about 1.5% of all Fungi classified to date (1). “Virtually every known mycological rule has exceptions” and specification of mushrooms comes from continuously shifting, localized encounters with the environment, so speciation should be thought of in relation (2).  Understanding of mushrooms does not arise from viewing them as discrete, independent subjects; they grow at the miraculous spur of ideal timing meeting moisture level meeting ample food meeting season meeting often an anomalous amount of other circumstances. Fungi do not sum up nicely. They thrive in the muddy assemblage of both material and imperceptible conditions that characterize nature.

We do not know how to sustain in the U.S. Capitalist mores co-mingling with our dominant notions of survival teach us to stockpile bunkers and shut the rest of the world out. When all we know is a rudimentary every-man-for-themselves egoist ethos, when we’re unwilling to navigate precarious, unstable conditions with collaborative, versatile stamina, no one survives in the end. In the midst of the current COVID-19 outbreak breeding widespread panic in the face of pandemic, America, the touted home of freedom and innovation, is struggling to keep the outbreak under wraps. We do not have a free vaccine, or free healthcare for that matter, and the burden of receiving adequate care and testing is put on the individual (Abelson). As we face sweeping shutdown of businesses, many people are without work and ability to pay their rent, with no assurance of security. Engaging with the public, whether voluntarily or not, may endanger ones own life and the lives of others. More than ever, we see that the health of each of us rests on the health of all.

Currently, many people are dying due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Many more do not care. Objectivism ignores certain subjects left out of dominant narratives and the construction of systems and national frames, but entices us to think and act predominantly for our individual selves when in conjunction with the rampant individualism that marks America. Immunocompromised people are presently forgotten because they do not fit capitalist narratives which deny recognition of humanness in disability and see value in human life only so far as it can “function,” or participate vigorously in the commodification of its labor. Low income, working class people are forgotten because they do not fit the enticement of “work hard within this system and you’re ensured success,” which subjugates people into living paycheck to paycheck; according to this line of thinking, if people are not financially successful, then they must not be working hard enough and must be shamefully, directly to blame for their circumstance. If we’re to survive in the ruin of capitalism–where individualism bolsters behaviors only done for the individual rather than for the good of others and limits survival rather than augments freedom—we need to start thinking of ourselves as embedded within an assemblage of peoples, systems, history, ideas, and emotions with no element dominating over any other.

No life form can be untangled from its environment. Reality as we know it is created only through the connection of every equally salient constituent object. Living in tandem with the teachings of Fungi by realizing our relationality and entanglement in a mycorrhiza of life, we learn that by supporting the wellness of others, we support the wellness of ourselves, as everyone may be ensured the space and power to assemble, participate, and further contribute to a greater good or healthful totality. By coming together and allowing ourselves to adapt new ways of being and surviving in conjunction with others, human and nonhuman, living and nonliving, we may engineer new realities which support our survival. All our histories are tales of survival. We must continue. The reparation and preservation of life depends on it. 

References:

1. McCoy, Peter. Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working with Fungi. Chthaeus Press, 2016. Print.
2. Millman, Lawrence, and Amy Jean Porter. Fungipedia: A Brief Compendium of Mushroom Lore. Princeton  University Press, 2019. Print.
3. Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press, 1988. Print.
4. Abelson, Reed, and Sarah Kliff. “Waive Fees for Coronavirus Tests and Treatment, Health Experts Urge.”   The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 Mar. 2020,               www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/health/coronavirus-tests-uninsured.html.

Overall inspiration from: Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10581, 2015. Print.

Written by Ruth Samuels