Volcanoes and Mushrooms and Friends

Pioneer plants have already taken root on a lava flow from the 2007 eruption of Piton de la Fournaise.

Image credit: MarySloA on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

https://geobites.org/pioneering-plants-tell-us-when-volcanoes-last-erupted/

This is adapted from my long rambly response in an email conversation with some very good friends who care tremendously about the planet, and life, and who are part of the mostly intangible network of mycellium-like friendships that keep me alive.

We – those friends, and I know many more share the experience – talk about the global ecosystem and human systems collapses… we talk about constructive responses on many levels… we plan gardens and political disruptions… we share our grief and frustration and pain about what is happening (and not happening)… and it often overflows into our personal griefs and frustrations and pains.

And not infrequently, we apologize for personal tangents during planning sessions or ecogrief sharing… but we shouldn’t apologize for that.

Those things like we go on ‘tangents’ about, and like the pit I’ve been in for a year now, are directly related aspects of what is happening and what is wrong in the world.

We are wrapped up in issues we think aren’t related… but they are caused by the same mindset feeding the crisis.. a system that doesn’t care, leaders who don’t lead, people who don’t understand/care. We’re breaking because the world is broken. People being uncaring, unkind, not understanding… they’re results of widespread and not entirely conscious feelings of instability, betrayal, loss, fear, denial, frustration – it’s all symptoms of the system breaking.

The patriarchy created a world of self-centredness. A world of greed and disconnectedness.

People are siloed into units (work, family, whatever) and the networks that used to hold us together have been replaced with economic and material networks. That affects our personal lives as much as the planet. It fucks up relationships as much as the environment. It pits people against each other as a default social setting.

We’re losing relationships because we understand things differently.

It’s exacerbated by the effects of increased toxins and heavy metals in our bodies and lives.

Those are cumulative, and the effects include brain damage affecting memory and processing. It also increases depression, lack of motivation, disagreeableness, etc. Given the levels we are living with in the environment and our food supply chain and our bodies, I think this can’t be discounted as part of why the population at large is so busy not giving a fuck and taking cognitive dissonance to whole new levels… and why we’re affected the ways we are.

And think about genetic trauma – HOW much Is accumulated in us now!?

And as disconnected as humans have become, we can’t not feel the Earth’s trauma and symptoms and reactions.

Yeah, we’re now officially locked into a Bladerunner-esque 1.5 degrees of global warming (without that world’s technology) and that’s still probably a watered down version of the truth. The scientists who wrote the October 2018 IPCC report made that clear then - informally and on their own, because the IPCC wouldn’t let them say it.

We all knew that in our bones anyways, though, didn’t we? We knew the official news was only the tip of the iceberg. We knew the damage, and the opposition to change, were mountains to move. We knew we were going to a gunfight with a knife, or to a biological warfare zone with candles and sage. We knew most people are too selfish or too afraid to change, we knew the system won’t allow it, we knew we’d burn out and have problems and draw back and we knew we’d keep doing it anyways.

“That mountain you’ve been trying so hard to move? ...you only had to walk around it.” I forget who said that, but it must have been Rumi or someone similar.

We can’t move the mountain.

But being the way we are, and always growing more in that direction, is how to walk around the mountain. The mountain happens to be a volcano in this story, and it’s starting to erupt, and most folks are still driving up it to pour gas into the fire, and the toll stops and traffic control on that road are operating like it’s a holiday weekend, and we know where the story is going. But there are always pockets of life around volcanoes after eruptions… the beings who couldn’t intervene and put the fire out but walked around the mountain and found places where they were safe and could breathe… the tiny plants and organisms and mycellium in nooks where they somehow survive… and because of them, the jungle might slowly grow back around the mountain someday.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” (Gandhi, of course). We do. That matters.

Others can see, and that creates ripple effects. I wish the ripple was more of a huge sweeping wave of change, but it isn’t. So we keep doing what we do anyways, because it’s the right thing to do, and because it makes more difference than we feel it does – not enough for what we really wanted, but that’s how direct action works even metaphorically… insufficient response ups the ante.

We can push government and industry, but we can’t pick them up and move them. We can only move ourselves.

So we keep working with folks to keep disrupting the house of commons and this whole fucked up daily mass delusion of normalcy. We keep talking, and learning, and talking more. We keep showing others that truth matters more than placating ostriches. We grow more food. We change household products and practices and keep telling people about it. We keep living differently. We keep connecting with people doing similar.We keep walking around the mountain. Sometimes others join. Maybe we can become those little pockets of life around the volcano.

Honestly, I feel more like an upside down turtle in the mud on that road up the mountain. I know at least some of you do too (or something from the same book of dark analogies). Maybe that speaks louder than anything – it would be so much easier to poke our heads back down in the sand, make ourselves and our people who matter more comfortable with our perspectives and actions – but it’s not possible and we don’t even try. We don’t stick our heads back in the mud no matter how much it hurts to hold them up, because being able to hold your head up matters more than being comfortable .If there’s enough upside down turtles on the road, maybe people will start going around the mountain instead of driving up to feed the fire.

And maybe some days we’re grown up environmental teenage mutant ninja turtles and we’ll get in people’s faces.

And maybe the world will look more like Bladerunner than Star Trek for a very long time, but even in Bladerunner there were pieces of hope.

I don’t mean keep slogging. No point all the good people being broken. We pass the stick and take care of ourselves and do what we can when we can and even when we’re broken and don’t see any point – we touch lives and we alter the general flow of things and that changes the future.

I think we're all suffering more... partly because things affect us more, because of all the reasons above as well as for personal reasons like burnout and more... and partly because rottener things are happening, because even people who don't understand that they're being affected ARE being affected, and because the machine is starting to careen down the mountain in all it’s great clanking and smoking earnestness now.

Being broken or squashed or whatever is understandable. Honour it. Healing comes later. And sometimes there are patches of light – like what my friends recently did in the house of commons (a disruption to be proud of), and gardens, and grandkids, and whatever form they take. Take care of plants, of people, of projects, of protests, of what we can when we can… it all matters differently.

Maybe we could use pieces of our reflective (or just plain down or squashed) time to focus on the small quiet things that make more difference than we know… keep surviving and keep being different, because that matters too and it’s more than most are doing.

Part of what I’m saying is in alignment with the Deep Adaptation group… it’s a global group that has grown in response to Jem Bendell’s paper of the same name… it was about exactly hat – instead of fighting… adapt. Deeply. That may sound meek, but the process of adapting, deeply, is the loudest voice on this planet now and humans are the only life form not responding in full force.

I’m glad I know you all, and I’m glad for all those similarly minded people out there whom I don’t know… these things make people like those of you matter even more, and I'd rather suffer with you and share your pain than stick my head back in the muck. I’m glad there’s a whole network of people like us, even if it feels too small and parts are vague… it’s like mycellium, it grows, and it is indomitable even in the face of destruction… microscopic threads and cells have carried life before, and if we continue to exist, might again.

Does that mean the whole point of my three pages of rambling is just “be a mushroom”? If so, mushrooms are pretty incredible whichever way you look at them.

Love,

Ann