Meme #3 - Situational Awareness

Noting the importance of chemical cues for fungi, Merlin Sheldrake writes in Entangled Life: 

[The] mycelium of truffle fungi, like that of most fungal species, actively senses and responds to its surroundings in unpredictable ways. Their hyphae are chemically irritable, responsive, excitable. It is this ability to interpret the chemical emissions of others that allows fungi to negotiate a series of complex trading relationships with trees; to knead away at stores of nutrients in the soil; to have sex; to hunt; or to fend off attackers. (p.41). 

This quote suggests the importance of situational awareness for a fungi lifestyle, hinting that those of us who want to follow the Way of Fungi should be consistently open and responsive to what’s happening in our environments. Obviously, we already do this to various degrees - how could we survive if not? But it’s easy to become distracted and lose focus on what really matters. In fact, this seems fundamental to our natures - at least when we’re not caught up in moments of personal danger. At those times, we can become extremely focused indeed. But a large aspect of life, and a huge sector of the marketplace, is designed to service the human need for divertissement during our “down-times,” offering products like entertainment, new toys, drugs, etc. that sidetrack us away from the everyday grind (or boredom) of life. While these sorts of diversions are a part of life - and maybe even an elemental aspect of “the good life” - they can take on oversized importance and drown out other, quieter facets of the surrounding world. 

These more subtle parts of our environments are often overlooked, and even disparaged, by those of us racing to the next shiny object. This is a shame because they contain, potentially, some of our most meaningful connections. Therefore, let’s challenge a few of our unconscious, programmed behaviors by exploring how to incorporate fungi-like situational awareness into the human experience. We'll start by focusing attention on the most basic level: Personal - what’s going on in our fields of perception? Move up to the next level: Communal - what are the assets and struggles of our neighbors? And finish with the highest level: Global - what’s happening socially, politically, and environmentally to an increasingly fragile Mother Earth?

Personal

Situational awareness of our immediate surroundings extends to the limits of physical perception. We can only “tune into” what we can sense, but that usually goes way beyond our normal habits, which are generally unconscious and consist of our minds floating freely through what are called Default Mode Networks (DMNs). Sheldrake describes these frameworks of mental functioning as, 

When we’re not focusing on much, when our minds are wandering idly, when we’re self-reflecting, when we’re thinking of the past or making plans about the future, it’s our DMN that’s active. (p.110) 

An unexpected sound, like a crash, will pull us out of our DMNs because it denotes a possible threat, but once it’s resolved, we will easily revert to this automatonic intellectual state. This is the dynamic that drove Blaise Pascal’s famous man to cause so many problems to the world because he couldn’t sit quietly alone in a room. As it turns out, our DMNs are often quite boring (if we keep covering the same old, tired ground) or extremely agitating (if we tend to obsess on disturbing collections of worries and cares). So, we seek a distraction, or a series of distractions, to dislodge us from such unpleasant thoughts. Thus, the marketplace for entertainment, new toys, drugs, etc. 

However, focused situational awareness resolves unpleasant reactions to our DMNs and prevents the need to compulsively consume such products. But unlike DMNs, it’s not spontaneous. Instead, it is a practice that must be intentionally initiated and consistently maintained. While important, it doesn’t need to be formal - no yoga studio membership required. It starts by simply taking a deep breath (no matter where we might be), checking in on all five senses, and immersing ourselves in everything that can be reached through direct perception, following the remarkable suggestion made by the title of Ram Dass' book: Be Here Now. This current essay is not a discourse on meditation, which would take us too far afield. For our purpose, it’s enough to just develop the custom of “staying in our bodies,” focusing on how it physically feels to be inside the current moment instead of figuring out how to escape it. Although we may wish otherwise, boredom and/or anxiety cannot be ultimately put right through distraction. That would be like trying to fill up a bucket with a hole in its bottom. Rather, their resolution is a natural consequence of “leaning into the moment” and gauging what’s all around us. It may seem counter-intuitive to get more into an uncomfortable situation rather than get away from it but this type of focus will naturally push away all that is incidental and unwanted, allowing for the process of homing in, and responding to, what really matters to proceed. It’s something that might take some getting used to, but once we do, we can gracefully engage with the next level. 

Communal

Our "neighbors" don't need to be restricted to people living next door. At its most inclusive, the concept contains everyone and everything we encounter during our daily travels. This might include various locals like a power line crew working on utility poles and the crows scavenging near them; the person helping to check out our groceries at the warehouse store two towns away and the river that flows behind the building. This may be an unfamiliar way of thinking but it’s not a nonsensical notion. Crows and rivers are vital parts of the eco-systems that sustain life for everyone in the community and therefore fully deserve our helpfulness, friendliness, and kindness - just like any other neighbor. For instance, imagine how many people a local government would have to hire to remove all the animals that die in a city. The cost would be astronomical, and disease would become rampant without the service. But crows do it for free! Attitudes toward these helpful corvids would shift mightily if we started see them as, “neighbor crow” instead of nuisances that can be dealt with in whatever way we see fit. Likewise, it would be appropriate to respect the life-giving force of “neighbor river” instead of dumping in raw sewage whenever we felt the need. Expanding what we mean by “community” would modify our behavior because we would now see ourselves as just one more facet inside a vast network of other “subjects.” 

The extent of this neighborly web includes everything inside the reach of our transportation and communication technology, which is something that has grown massively over the past few hundred years. Historically, the boundaries of our interactions were set by the speed of our feet - or that of a donkey, horse, or ox. But today, thanks to revolutionary systems like the internet, it also includes people and environments half a world away. In fact, the scope and complexity of our spheres of connection have increased to the point where some of us are finding it hard to cope. There is simply more input to process than our nervous systems evolved to accommodate, and it is becoming overwhelming. Unless we revert to a simpler lifestyle that rejects advanced technology and global connectivity - which seems to work for the Amish - we’re going to need a better way of interpreting and assimilating what’s happening to us. Luckily, a helpful new perspective has been waiting in the wings for almost 30 years and is finally starting to branch its way into our collective consciousness. I’m referring to the Wood Wide Web, which was “discovered” by Suzanne Simard in 1997. 

In Entangled Life, Sheldrake explains that Simard’s work built on the research of David Read, who in 1984, “showed conclusively that carbon could pass between normal green plants through fungal connections.” (p.151) This was in a lab, but then: 

Thirteen years later, in 1997, a Canadian PhD student, Suzanne Simard, published the first study suggesting that carbon could pass between plants in a natural setting. Simard exposed pairs of tree seedlings growing in a forest to radioactive carbon dioxide. After two years, she found that carbon had passed from birch trees to fir trees, which shared a mycorrhizal [fungal] network, but not between birch and cedar, which didn’t. The amount of carbon obtained by the fir trees - on average six percent of the labeled carbon taken up by the birch - was, by Simard’s reckoning, a meaningful transfer: Over time, one would expect this to make a difference to the life of the trees. What’s more, when fir seedlings were shaded - which limited photosynthesis and deprived them of their supply of carbon - they received more carbon from their birch donors than when they were unshaded. Carbon seemed to flow “downhill” between plants, from plenty to scarcity. (p.152) 

This was a paradigm-shifting discovery because instead of competing for the resource of sunlight, the birch and firs seemed to be cooperating and sharing it. But this creates a problem because it violates a principle of natural selection. As Sheldrake asserts: 

These behaviors present a puzzle. At its most basic, the problem is this: Why would plants give resources to a fungus that goes on to give them to neighboring plant - a potential competitor? At first glance it looks like altruism. Evolutionary theory doesn’t cope well with altruism because altruistic behavior benefits the receiver at the cost of the donor. If a plant donor assists a competitor at a cost to itself, its genes are less likely to make it into the next generation. If the altruist’s genes don’t make it into the next generation, the altruistic behavior will soon be weeded out. (p.159) 

After going through several possible explanations, Sheldrake seems to settle on the need to pivot from a plant-centric point of view where trees give away resources to a myco-centric point of view where fungi distribute resources where needed for the health of the overall forest. As he states: 

A mycorrhizal fungus that can keep its various plants alive is at an advantage: a diverse portfolio of plant partners insures it against the death of one of them. If a fungus depends on several orchids, and one of them won’t be able to supply it with carbon until it grows larger, the fungus will benefit from supporting the young orchid while it grows - to let it “take now,” provided it will “pay later.” Adopting a myco-centric perspective helps to avoid the problem of altruism. It also positions fungi front and center: brokers of entanglement able to mediate the interactions between plants according to their own fungal needs. (p.162) 

There is something to be learned from the ability of mycorrhizal networks to stay aware of what’s going on with its neighbors in the forest and respond to their current needs. But fungi are not some sort of removed, Soviet-era politburo committee that makes decisions on where and when to distribute resources. Rather, fungi are connected in real-time to every point in the system at the micro-level. As Sheldrake points out, the entire organism instantly “knows” what is happening even at its most “remote locations.” This is true situational awareness operating at the level of community and it offers a way to envision our own futures. For instance, there are multiple sources of real-time data collected by local governmental and non-governmental agencies that report on the status of various topics like housing, employment, environmental health, and more. It seems reasonable to create a fungi-like web of connection between these various nodes that organizes and responds to the information so that the appropriate type and number of resources can be allocated to the correct positions - directed by the goal of maintaining the overall health of the entire community. The data is already there and getting more voluminous by the day. What’s lacking is the ability (and political will) to organize, interpret, and make decisions based on it. Mycorrhizal networks are a model to emulate in this regard. I believe it’s an idea that can work at both the local and global levels, which brings us to the final section. 

Global

The pressures faced by the planet reflect the pressures faced by local communities - writ large. Basic resources like clean drinking water are becoming scarcer and some areas of our “global village” are carrying more than their fair share of the burden - just like historically marginalized populations within cities. Centralized bodies like the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Bank are attempting to cut through the political jockeying of individual states to understand the needs of the entire planet and direct resources for the overall health of the 8 billion or so people living on it. But these organizations themselves are beset by internal and external politics and a disheartening lack of vision. The complexity and scope of the situation is becoming so great that the current challenge is not situational awareness, but simply to not become completely numbed-out by the immensity of it all. In my mind, it’s just too complicated to be managed by the normal functioning of our primate brains. Instead, we need to switch gears and move into a different way of operating - transitioning, I would suggest, to a fungal orientation. This just might work if we are able to maintain focus and concentration on what really matters; if we use tools that are not dependent of the good will of centralized bodies that are run by folks most benefitting from our current nightmare; and if we have the daring to step outside of our human-centric frame of reference and into a fungi-centric one instead. 

Mycorrhizal networks demonstrate the power of real-time interconnectivity and actions directed by the goal of overall, eco-system health. Somehow, we must bypass the many intentional and non-intentional barriers that exist so we can emulate this type of behavior at the global level. The first step is: Don’t numb out. Rather, use the tips discussed in the first section of this essay to stay grounded and focused. The second step is to develop and maintain a neighborly attitude toward everyone and everything in our local and global communities. And the third step is to access the tools that can construct webs of interconnectivity, deploying a fungi-like approach to learn where there is “plenty” and direct it downhill to where there is “lack.” But this can’t be done through pie-in-the-sky idealism or violent revolution. Both have proven to be pretty thin soup when it comes to bringing about real change. Rather, it must be an approach that runs parallel to the current patterns of human activity - under the radar (or below ground if we continue the fungi metaphor) because it would be a direct challenge to the status quo. 

There are plenty of good-hearted people working at governmental and non-governmental agencies who would be able to deploy this type of perspective during the normal course of their work. I am one of them. I’ve worked for a major U.S. city for the last 15 years and I can attest that there is a lot that gets done underneath all the political bickering reported in the news. Most times, the political leaders are not really concerned by how the work is accomplished as long as their goals are broadly moving forward. This allows for a lot of autonomous decision making by “career service” people on how initiatives should proceed. Believe it or not, there is often room for innovation. Right now, freely available on the internet, there are: 1) Geographic nodes of data collection on issues like climate, demographics, income, and more; 2) Open-source tools that can organize and make sense of it all; and 3) AI programs that allow for real-time, fungal-like responsiveness to the information. There are millions of hacks like me all over the world who could use tools like these to design and implement fungi-like webs that monitor, decipher, and decide how to move a variety of projects forward. Of course, sooner or later, these processes will bump into political considerations and will need to be adjusted accordingly, perhaps even stepping back from their ultimate potential. But one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that political contingencies can change quickly and projects that were stalled one year can get the green light the next. It just takes patience, which fungi seem to have a lot of.