Good Day
I have been lurking for quite a while since my introduction to the nexus by a friend, who will remain anonymous for I actually don't know their name on the nexus...
If they are reading, they will know who I am, based on what follows
I love mushrooms and I hope so do you.
I also started cultivating mushrooms recently and I focus on Ganoderma species, for they are powerful medicines that my father needs and they look wonderful.
I study social anthropology and the plan is to get into ethnomycology, which I define as the study of the relationshit between fungi and humans. I recently joined the local mycological society, as to feel the vibes there.
What interesting times we live in, we are in the 6th extinction event (the 5th was the extinction of dinosaurs), most people have not even noticed that and our economic system is not sustainable forever. Our world appears to be untangling. I see mushrooms as a technology, more on that later, that might enable our species to continue to coinhabit this planet with our non-human companions.
Let me quote the best book I have ever read.
Quote:“We are stuck with the problem of living despite economic and ecological ruination. Neither tales of progress nor of ruin tell us how to think about collaborative survival. It is time to pay attention to mushroom picking. Not that this will save us—but it might open our imaginations.”
― Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
Seeing the world through mushrooms (I do not necessarily mean magic mushrooms) enables one to think in a fascinating way. Borrowing a phrase coined by famous anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, mushrooms are good to think with.
Feeling the vibes in the local mycological society is very interesting, since there seems to be a generational divide (speaking strictly of my myco society). The older generation does somewhat of an old school mycology, mushrooms are seen as the "out there" object of study, "nature" as opposed to what we are "culture". Some have a more intimate relationship with these organisms and experience with the entheogenic mushrooms, but that is a topic for outside the meetings, in private. The younger members are quite different in how we (I include myself here) see mushrooms and the world (through them). Subjects such as medicinal mushrooms (I'd include entheogenic mushrooms here), or mushrooms to revitalize ecologies, to get rid of pesticides, many more applications—in short mushrooms as technology are somewhat prevalent.
Some words on what I mean by "technology". Philosophy of technology is my theoretical forte. Joining a long genealogy of philosophers, I see technology as the way we humans interact with the world. It is not a oneway road, as technology is what mediates our experience, through technology we “send out” our senses and feedback is transduced through the technology, thus guiding our attention and mediating our engagement with the world. Take a hammer for example (This is Heidegger's example). When you use a hammer, is your attention on the hammer? If you know how to use the technology (a hammer), the technology embodied, you don’t focus on it, you focus on the task at hand, on the nail.
The distinction of mind/body is to be abandoned here. There is no mind or body. This dichotomy is a result of interpreting our experience, not all groups (read cultures) draw this distinction. It is thus not universal. Rather it is a part of western philosophy (read ideology) with roots in Greek antiquity, with their ideas of hyle (substance) and morphe (form), but explicitly in the cartesian dualism mind/body.
Why do we need to abandon it? Because it has dire political implications, the subjugation of nature under culture. We need a new philosophy (read ideology). We have many dichotomies roaming around in our heads, not only nature/culture, body/mind. Now, this is really hard to do if you have never been here philosophically, but before reading further, try to find some.
For my purposes there are two relevant ones to tell the story: female/male and emotionality/rationality. Now allow me to blow your mind(/body dichotomy)
Why did I talk about technology again? When we have learned to use a technology, it becomes embodied and withdraws from our attention. You focus on the nail not the hammer. Now consider an idea as a technology. A hammer is for nailing (?) and an idea for thinking and just like the hammer it withdraws from our attention and commonly we don’t even realize that the think through the concepts we have in our heads. I like the phrasing “the technology becomes transparent”, for we start seeing (experiencing) the world through it. Usually when people in “the west" think through the nature/culture dichotomy, you get a wordview where nature is out there and somewhat dangerous, here in the civilized world we have culture, with our technology we conquered and tamed nature. The role technology plays here is not due to its "essence", it's not intrinsic, but because there is a hierarchical notion inherent to this dichotomy: culture controls and tames nature.
Remember the two dichotomies I need for this story? Take female/male, emotionality/rationality, nature/culture, body/mind as philosophically analogous and the dire political implications appear more clearly.
If culture is to control/tame/subjugate nature, then by extension the rational male mind is to control/tame/subjugate the emotional female body.
You surely heard the statent that "Women are more emotional than men" or "women are interested in people, men in objects". A person uttering such (wrong, ethnocentric) ideas thinks through these dichotomies, but because the technology is embodied, transparent, they do not even realize it. They are focussing on the thought (the nail), not the hierarchical dichotomy (the hammer).
If this person insists that "No, I think men and women are different but equal, there is nothing wrong with being emotional", I genuinely believe them, my goal is not to paint such people as essentially bad, yet they invoke the ideological complex built with hierarchical dichotomies.
Another example would be when we Europeans *in our glory and grandeur* discovered the uninhabited Americas, the indigenous people were not regarded as fully human, thus they were part not of culture, but of nature and therefore open to exploitation.
Thinking through these dichotomies legitimized and still legitimises the subjugation of nature/women (and other non-men)/non-Europeans.
It is a hierarchical ideology constructed to exploit "the other". Therefore we need new tools, for there is no mind/body, there is only experience, all is one.
So, how do we do it? What do we do in times of untangling ecologies, no future certain, enveloped in indeterminacy?
How can we transcend our inherited ideology, think outside our technologies?
It starts with scepticism and listening to mushrooms.
I'd like to end the philosophical part of my introduction with another quote, from Anna Tsing:
Quote: What do you do when your world starts to fall apart? I go for a walk, and if I'm really lucky, I find mushrooms. Mushrooms pull me back to my senses, not just—like flowers—through their riotous colors and smell but because they pop up unexpectedly, reminding me of the good fortune of just happening to be there. Then I know that there are still pleasures amidst the terrors of indeterminacy.
― Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
Now after this lenghy philosophy part, why am I here?
I am planning on trying something that i have not seen being tried before. First, as basically a proof of concept, I want to get a clean culture of Amanita muscaria on a petri dish and innoculate some sugar containing beverage, in order to ferment it. This seems to be called a holy grail or ambrosia. While this is very interesting and cool, it is by no means novel.
What I want to try is to repeat this but instead of Amanita muscaria, I use Amanita porphyria or Amanita citrina.
A word of caution, the genus Amanita contains some of the deadliest mushrooms our world has to offer, only experiment if you know what you are doing and still then the experimental process of fermenting with them is still dangerous, because noone knows that compounds are actually produced.
I hope that they would produce bufotenin, since the fruiting bodies contain it and the liquid fermentation of A. muscaria produces ibotenic acid/muscimol. As destiny seems to will it, a specimen of A. porphyria turned up at the meeting of the local mycological society just yesterday. I procured a sporeprint and 3 transfers on agarplates, hopefully I will get a clean culture.
Indeed I plan on keeping you posted even if it comes to nothing. I have not seen this being tried before and I am super excited to try it.
Best wishes and may you always find mushrooms