things I thought while listening to "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake
this is why I don't say every thought that goes through my head
the degree to which plants interact with their environment was not clear to me before - this is a reference to their relationship with fungi
which explains why plants that thrive in a sidewalk crack fail or struggle in a pot of even a garden (they’re so fragile)
there’s a parallel here with wild and domestic horses
humans (predators) prioritize hunting (resource acquisition) over socialization
horses (prey) prioritize socialization (safety) over resource acquisition
resource acquisition is a smaller evolutionary pressure (on grass-eaters who live in grasslands) than predation is
to communicate with horses, we really have to look past our biases and read their actual behavior in their own context
it’s hard
imagine being a truffle fungi and finding out that humans have their olfactory receptors on the inside instead of the outside. I bet they find that really weird and counterproductive. Which… they’re not wrong.
people always wanna find the one single thing that makes something work, but nothing works alone
mushrooms have nonbinary gender; sex is just your mating type
do you remember the ‘choose your own adventure’ books?
mycelium is both particle and wave
mycelial fungi as maze-dwellers; they are the gods of the labyrinth
“mycelium is a body without a body plan” - every cell must be a navigator; can the cells recognize (something, anything)
lichens question autonomy and the boundaries of individuals; we have become part of psychedelic fungi’s extended phenotype, like in art: when you zoom in far enough, even the hard lines a pencil draws on paper are gray areas
does activity have weight?
does energy have weight?
what’s the difference in weight between life and death?
what if death is just cellular stillness?
fungi are gardeners
how good are humans at judging where something will land when falling from directly (or nearly directly) over their head? Like an asteroid, e.g., because we’re not really prey for birds, so our evolution probably didn’t prioritize that skill.