How thinking changes in an era of instability
One day, many of us woke up to find the world crumbling, or at least learned that it was happening. Coping with pain, loss, grief, and horror, it turns out, is aided not only by antidepressants. For some, mushrooms have become true saviors. No, I’m not talking about microdosing with fly agarics or capsules filled with powdered reishi, lion's mane, or other fungi.
This text explores how mushroom foraging, observing them, and studying their behavior are reshaping our understanding of the world, expanding our thinking, providing new meanings, and helping people continue to contemplate the future and survive amidst constant destruction and instability.
Life on the Ruins
The metaphor of a "crumbling world" signifies a specific political event, like war, for some, while for others, it became a reality during the pandemic. For those with a hyper-conservative perspective, a reevaluation of moral and ethical norms, shifting value paradigms towards greater acceptance of the "other"—those who do not fit their traditional understanding—also represents a destruction of their familiar world.
Amidst all this, the global ecological crisis, various economic challenges, and what we call technological progress continue to generate local technological disasters that evoke apocalyptic narratives in a Eurocentric consciousness. Anthropocentrism leads people to feel guilty about what is happening, while the psyche seeks relief by identifying someone or something to blame for all the evil. Patriarchy? Capitalism? The collective West, the passionate East, the Global South? Big Brother? Yes, they are all to blame. But they are also, in part, us. The circle is complete.
Observing communities of mushroom foragers on social media led me to consider how mushrooms influence people's ability to negotiate despite seemingly wild and tragic contradictions. When the Russian-Ukrainian war escalated, hatred (albeit justified) seeped into comments on posts. The most common wish was for someone marked as an enemy—based on their residence or language—to eat poisonous mushrooms. However, just a year later, in mushroom groups—regardless of whether they were created by people from Ukraine, Russia, or elsewhere—polite communication was evident, including instances where a Russian speaker was responded to in Ukrainian and vice versa.
As human connections crumbled everywhere, mushroom enthusiasts continued to share their finds and knowledge. Their interest in studying these organisms and their passion for foraging proved to be, in a situationally narrow aspect, more significant than politics, nationality, or enmity, and became a unifying force. Why do mushrooms achieve what neither culture nor science could? This may sound untimely, but the aim of this text is to attempt to move away from an anthropocentric, and thus humanistic, view of the world.
It should be noted that mushrooms do not do anything and do not teach us anything; this is merely a personification characteristic of a consciousness still heavily inclined towards anthropomorphism. It is more accurate to say that humanity can learn about the world and change its thinking by understanding the life of mushrooms.
Progress — A Concept from the Past
Anna Levenhaupt Tsjin, in her book "Mushroom at the Edge of the World: On the Possibility of Life on the Ruins of Capitalism," suggests embracing instability as the norm while exploring the phenomenon of matsutake foraging in various parts of the world. She notes that the paradox of our time lies in the lack of certainty about tomorrow, even for those who hope for capitalism.
“Living in a time of turmoil requires much more than attacking those who have plunged us into this turmoil (though, I think, that can be useful, I have no objections). One could look around and notice this strange new world and stretch one’s imagination to grasp its outlines. And that’s where mushrooms come to our aid. The matsutake’s drive to break through on scorched earth allows us to explore the ruins that have become home to all of us,” says the researcher, referencing a historical fact.
After the bombing of Hiroshima, the first organism to sprout on the scorched and contaminated earth was indeed this mushroom. This is not about the clichéd “victory of life over death”—it is beneficial to move away from such metaphors—but about the reassembly of ecosystems amidst the ongoing damage caused by capitalism and the state. Matsutake in Japan became the foundation for a new niche in the economy, creating supply chains and human coalitions that did not exist before.
Today, in the transnational market, mushrooms pass through an intricate network of intermediaries—collectors, buyers, transporters, wholesalers, sellers, and restaurateurs—and it is these connections that have created a new economy on the ruins of degraded forests. This economy relies on informal communications, often based on trust. Moreover, it exemplifies a product that is nearly impossible to alienate in capitalist practices. Matsutake cannot be controlled; it is not cultivated, and its unpredictable appearance cannot be measured by humans. Mushroom foragers live in constant uncertainty, unsure if there will be food tomorrow, if they will have enough money for housing, if resellers will leave early, if the soil will dry up, or if access to the forest will be restricted. In this sense, matsutake foraging is not just survival under capitalism but a way to reassemble life on the ruins of an economy and landscape where stable jobs and social guarantees are virtually nonexistent.
According to Levenhaupt Tsjin, the economy has become precarious worldwide, a state of instability and vulnerability. We must acknowledge that we do not control the situation; we do not even control ourselves. Previous philosophical approaches have become outdated; the modern world demonstrates that there are no goals in life, only life itself in its uncertainty. Humans are not the crown of creation or even the kings of the mountain; our species is one of many capable of creating worlds. And mushrooms have more experience in this regard. The prerogative of world-building has never belonged to humans, but only now have scientists begun to notice this.
At the same time, the concept of progress is losing its significance. If we abandon the simplifying and limiting narrative of the necessity for constant forward development, we can begin to notice other temporal patterns that extend beyond the purely human. By exploring the intricate connections in the lives of mushrooms, we see how organisms, inanimate objects, and landscapes engage in collaborative activities and form complex systems. Such curiosity allows for the creation of new categories, economic and political theories, and cosmologies that take into account the diversity of assemblages and worlds.
In this sense, mycelium ceases to be a metaphor and becomes a model of a way of thinking. Its existence is built on distribution, exchange, plasticity, and the ability to withstand damage, grow in scorched territories, transform, and coordinate essential elements of temporal stability in collaboration with other organisms, both similar and different biological species.
Artificial Intelligence — Not a Threat, but Not a Crutch Either
While humans are afraid, they not only constantly seek scapegoats and seem to put life on pause. They are also prone to concoct conspiracy theories, perceiving threats in everything new or old but different. Are they gaining real security or stability in doing so? No. Are you afraid that AI will leave you jobless, enslave humanity, or press the nuclear button? Fear almost always masquerades as concern for safety, but in reality, it often reproduces helplessness. A fearful person does not want to understand reality; they want to immediately neutralize its image, which is why they see conspiracy where there is complexity and threat where there is otherness.
AI is frightening precisely in this regard—not only as a potential tool for replacing humans, manipulation, or military escalation but as a reminder that old forms of control no longer cope with a world that has become too interconnected, too fast, and not very transparent.
If we assume that observing mushrooms allows us to think about order differently—not as a stable system but as a temporary coincidence of heterogeneous connections—then we can also look at technologies typically regarded as pinnacles of human progress in a new light. Architectures based on decentralization, whether blockchain or learning AI systems, turn out not to be breakthroughs but rather belated attempts to catch up with a reality that has long existed outside human management models.
Decentralized digital systems and AI-based model developments are attempts to build assemblages in a technical environment. Our brains are objectively incapable of processing vast amounts of data at machine speed. In such conditions, artificial intelligence becomes a tool for recognizing patterns in an overly complex environment where human attention can no longer cope. However, we must not fall into the opposite extreme and designate digital agents as "assistants," "prosthetics," or "crutches" for humans.
AI agents are better thought of as dependent yet simultaneously autonomous entities with which humans interact. It cannot be denied that AI influences our thinking; for instance, many people construct phrases in the style of language model texts—and this is just the beginning of our collaboration.
Assemblages of humans with language models and AI can facilitate the expansion of collective thinking. LLMs can help formulate ideas more quickly, reconcile disagreements, and work with large amounts of information. In distributed interactions among many agents, common norms and rules can spontaneously emerge, creating a kind of digital sociality. For humans, this opens up new forms of cooperation, especially where time, expertise, or language accessibility is lacking.
Now, let’s call upon our inner skeptical conservative to discuss the risks and immediately pose clarifying questions that will illuminate the seriousness of these concerns.
Risk 1: AI will begin to structure social reality itself, subtly imposing models of speech, evaluation, and behavior.
Why is this scary? Television or school textbooks also impose these things—and yet, we somehow manage to live.
Risk 2: If AI’s autonomy increases while human control remains weak, a problem arises: who is responsible for a decision made by a hybrid contour of "human-model-infrastructure"?
In such cases, it is crucial to focus on the quality of the decision rather than preemptively asking, "who will be to blame?" Suppose you know who is responsible for initiating military actions where none previously existed. How much easier does that make it?
Risk 3: AI may contribute to the entrenchment of biases and misconceptions.
Yes, that is true. But no more than other technical means have done and continue to do.
Risk 4: Will the assemblage with non-human intelligence lead to a loss of subjectivity?
No. And we will attempt to explain why further.
Risk 5: Will it lead to a loss of agency?
Yes, that may happen, but is it really that frightening? We will explore this in more detail.
Merlin Sheldrake, author of "Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures," advocates for a more modest and precise anthropology where humans are not the main actors but one participant in a vast network of relationships. The researcher goes even further in his reflections, questioning the value of individuality as such.
Based on mycological studies, Sheldrake argues that life depends on exchange, symbiosis, decomposition, and resource redistribution, rather than autonomy. His reflections and conclusions help us abandon the idea that there is a rigid boundary between the "living" and the "non-living," the "self" and the "other," the "organism" and the "environment." His approach encourages us to think of life as a flow through which matter, energy, information, and influence constantly pass. Subjectivity itself does not disappear; however, it is nothing without interactions and interconnections.
When agency slips from human control, a technical and philosophical shift occurs: freedom ceases to be conceived as autonomy, and responsibility as a property of an individual subject. It begins to be distributed across the assemblage, in which a human may remain a participant in what is happening but is no longer the master of the world. Thus, the question is not who has replaced the human but what form of life emerges where action no longer belongs to one.
Humans cling to their agency as an undeniable value because we have grown up in illusions that there is no future without progress and that humans are responsible for how this world should be inherited by someone. This is due to the strong outdated ideas of enlightenment and modernism, which include hierarchy, where one species has proclaimed itself the center of the earth. Within such a paradigm, harmful narratives like "who, if not..." will inevitably arise for humanity and all that exists.
“Progress is embedded in common understandings of what it means to be human. Even under the guise of other concepts—"agency," "consciousness," "intention"—we repeatedly reinforce the notion that humans are distinct from the rest of the living world because they look ahead, while other biological species live only for the day, thus depending on us. As long as we imagine that progress defines humanity, those outside these speculative frameworks have nowhere to go,” notes Anna Levenhaupt Tsjin.
Perhaps it is time to shed human arrogance and acknowledge that AI already performs many functions better than we do? Or that a slime mold, lacking a brain or anything resembling a central nervous system, can solve problems faster and better than you? And this is by no means a reason to be upset or to oppose them.
Assemblage of Intelligences: Human, Slime Mold, Computer
Merlin Sheldrake describes examples of existing cooperations between humans and slime molds in his book, recounting the story of an enthusiastic researcher who often struggled to find his way out of IKEA. He built a maze replicating the store's layout and allowed his slime molds to "search" for the shortest path to the exit. They succeeded.
“See—they are smarter than me,” the researcher laughed.
This conclusion cannot even be considered a metaphor or irony if we do not measure other beings' rationality against human intelligence.
The book also mentions a Japanese experiment with a map of Greater Tokyo, where a slime mold was presented with a set of points simulating urban nodes, and it constructed paths that closely resembled the actual railway network of the Japanese capital within a day. In similar experiments, slime molds reproduced the layouts of US highways and ancient Roman roads in Central Europe.
For building real infrastructure networks, slime molds are the contractor of dreams, capable of quickly identifying and demonstrating the possibility of laying economical, optimal routes. Developers utilize the natural abilities of the single-celled slime mold Physarum polycephalum to control robots and as a biological processor. Biocomputers based on slime molds have several potential advantages over silicon systems: for example, they can solve computational and adaptive tasks with significantly lower energy costs than digital processors. While such assemblages of humans, single-celled organisms, and technology are currently realized in laboratory conditions and prototypes rather than mass products, they have existed for some time. Moreover, cybernetics, as laid out by Norbert Wiener, originally studied processes of control and communication in machines and living organisms.
If we abandon the notion of the world as a system striving for stability and equilibrium and try to view it through the logic of assemblages—temporary, fragile, and lacking a center, as described by Sheldrake and Tsjin—then mushrooms cease to be merely objects of observation or comforting metaphors. They become a means to understand how existence might be structured: not as a totality but as a process of constant reassembly and maintenance of connections.
Mushrooms Truly Expand Our Consciousness
In Sheldrake's book, there is an idea that everyone needs others to live. The way lichens exist, he believes, can prompt us to reconsider our views on "individuals." Once, scientists regarded lichens as a single organism, but now we understand that their survival is a complex relationship between various organisms—two or more. This sentiment is echoed by the researcher of the economy surrounding matsutake.
“Mycelium is the perfect conductor. It has never allowed itself to be shoved into the 'iron cage' of self-reproduction. Like bacteria, some mycelia are engaged in gene exchange during non-reproductive contacts, and many do not allow their genetic material to be identified as belonging to a separate 'individual' or 'species,' let alone a 'population.' When researchers studied the mycelium of what they considered a biological species—the costly Tibetan cordyceps—they found a whole mix of many species. Upon examining the fibers of root mold (Armarilla), they discovered a genetic mosaic that made it impossible to identify an individual organism,” writes Tsjin.
Consider the thought that individuals do not exist. The survival of human bodies depends on other organisms. The microbiota in our intestines, bacteria on our skin, the need for bodily contact with other people and animals, dietary preferences—all point to a multi-species dependency. Are you sure that the decision you made is not the result of moods created by complex interactions of microorganisms influencing biochemical processes within you? Are you truly autonomous?
Modern research is literally dismantling traditional views. Studying biological sciences based on a heteronormative understanding of both sexual and social relationships is becoming a thing of the past. Not because it is a cultural trend. David Giffiths, in his essay "Queer Theory of Lichens," argues that studying lichens allows us to deconstruct these notions, transcend boundaries, and question the binary and heteronormative scientific tradition.
Ecology is changeable, and it is better understood as a complex series of relationships that break down boundaries. There are no norms—and that is the norm. Those who are stranger, more variable, and more complex survive, and we cannot live without other constantly changing beings. We can be grateful to lichens and mushrooms for this lesson.
Toby Spribill, an expert on fungal symbiosis from the University of Alberta, speaks about the limitations humans face when studying complex relationships in nature:
“The human binary view hinders us from asking non-binary questions. Our limitations regarding sexuality prevent us from asking questions about sexuality and so forth. We ask questions from the perspective of our cultural context. This leads to extreme difficulties in dealing with questions about complex symbioses, such as lichens, because we think of ourselves as autonomous individuals, which complicates the path to understanding.”
Where humans are accustomed to erecting boundaries in various senses: between themselves and others, the living and the non-living, the norm and the deviation—fungal assemblages demonstrate the permeability of these boundaries for the sake of coexistence, without fundamentally disrupting differences, preserving the characteristics of all components.
In this sense, "fungal philosophy" does not propose a new identity or a more inclusive model of the subject. It questions the very idea of the subject as an autonomous bearer of will, responsibility, and value. This touches the foundations of systems that require clear boundaries—economics, politics, law. If the individual cannot be distinctly identified, it becomes more challenging to account for, control, and extract value from them.
But this does not mean liberation. Life does not become fairer or more harmonious; we simply begin to notice its complexity—through intersections, dependencies, and partial overlaps of interests. We are unlikely to fully transcend capitalism, the state, and hierarchies, but we can already view them from the outside and not accept their frameworks as the only possible ones.