Musings on Afterculture

By Natalia Borissova

“We are born from fungi. 600 million years ago we separated from fungi. Fungi are our ancestors.”
– Paul Stamets (Living Green Interview)

What possible intelligent natural systems can we look to for inspiration and guidance in the patterning of our human living environments, and for sketching out a kind of positive vision for a coming “afterculture”? How can we innovate more naturally? Assuming that humans are not the only intelligent organisms on this planet, I would try to look into “plant intelligence” in relation to resilient life after culture. Granted, there’s nothing new in assigning to the “mushroom” the role of a multifunctional “world healer,” nor in trying to engage this intelligent organism in the remediation of culture and transform everything into mushroom magic, but still – when talking about collaboration, culture and life, we can’t overlook the lowly mycelium (the vegetative part of a fungus).

In mycoforestry and mycogardening, mycelium links all the elements of the system together. It unlocks nutrient sources stored in plants and other organisms, converts rocks and organic debris into food, redistributes nutrients to wherever they are most needed, builds the soil and maintains ecosystem diversity. It does essential life-enhancing work at the grassroots and in constant dialogue with its environment. Human intervention damages wild nature, artificial fertilizers cause mycelia to retreat and the soil to lose its vibrancy. But mycelial networks are resilient. They survive catastrophes and are able to re-grow. They remediate poisoned lands, decompose toxic wastes and radioactive pollutants. If fungi can thrive even on toxins, why not to engage them in the remediation of a “toxic” society and the mycofiltration of a contemporary culture – one that is often poisoned by relentless abuse of power and polluted by commodity fetishism, bureaucracy, competition…

I believe one of the most significant problems with contemporary culture is that it tends to focus on the “objects” themselves – surface appearances and pragmatic formal constructs – rather than on relationships, how we treat each other. These relationships are what turn a collection of unrelated “objects” into a functioning system, whether it’s a garden, cultural community, or an ecosystem. By cultivating relationship we can save resources, energy, and labour, and work towards creating a holistic society.

What if we inoculate culture with a mycorrhizal “fungi” to generally enhance its health? And then when the right conditions are created, multifarious fruits can rise up to “poison” the world with beauty and open minds and seed other mycelia that can then propagate through other territories.

When the mycelium exhausts the food sources in one area it expands outward in a circular fashion and the fungus cannibalizes the inner mycelium. It extracts whatever nutrients it can get in there and moves them to the outer, growing regions. Whatever cannot be recycled is shut off from the growing region and allowed to decay. May be it's time to cannibalize the inner core of decaying culture, extract whatever nutrients remain in there and redistribute them according to true needs?

By analogy with mycelia a “resilium” could be compared with a resilient organism which spreads out widely through time and space and pops up in the most unexpected places to spark joyful illuminations. It adsorbs complex reality upside down, digests it externally by relishing enzymes of curiosity, amazement, inventively, and non-discriminative knowledge and makes it available for other organisms to feast on. This method of enzyme releasing and providing food for the others is natural way of resilium's feeding. As soon as enough nutrients are collected in its network, fruiting bodies emerge – flotilla feasts, mountain bear missions, remote sensing flight operations, shroomshops, augmented harvests and many other unique happenings. These materialisations respond to prevailing conditions and circumstances, and can be repeated in various forms as other creatures from all walks of life can join in. The vaster the resilium, the more extravagant the “fruiting bodies” arise from the fertile undergrowth. When they die down, mycelium, the essential part of the organism, is still alive. And it is not a static object. It grows selectively in response to the chemical signals of other members of the ecosystem.

What layout or design of our environment could be called “nature-logical”? I suggest that it is “open” and links many possible organisms into one heterogeneous kingdom of useful relationships and mutually beneficial connections – among microbes, fungi, plants, insects, birds, mammals, and all the other inhabitants of our world, including the human species. Each individual organism has multiple roles and is interconnected within the system; edges are optimised and resources reused. Problems, limitations and mistakes are embraced creatively, and the environment thrives. There is no need to impose connections from the outside. The design of this self-sustaining ecosystem differs from the formal, monocultural approach, where the parts are mostly disconnected from each other, serve just one single purpose, and require a lot of labour and resources to maintain.

Learning from these models and principles, the human addiction to domination and the “mono” attitude could gradually change in favour of rotations and symbiotic communities – just as we in fact are composites and large mosaics of microbes and the disconnected part of one natural whole. What will happen to us?