The mushrooming of catastrophes
Unraveling the webs of destruction
One of the most difficult parts about focusing on socio-environmental issues is constantly feeling overwhelmed by everything I’m learning about as I try to stay informed. Do you ever feel this way?
There are climate catastrophes, then there are species extinctions, then there are forced displacements, genocides and escalations in military violence, old-growth forests being decimated, destructive wildfires, exploited labor, toxic pollutants in water and air, greenwashing by “green” industries… the list is quite literally endless!
In the hour leading up to Marcellus Williams’ execution by the state of Missouri on September 24th, 6 pm Central Time “amid strong innocence claims,” I could do nothing but imagine what he must have been going through in his final moments. I was helplessly refreshing Innocence Project’s Instagram stories, hoping for some miraculous, last-minute intervention. But Williams was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 6:10 pm. And then I broke down and wept.
Oh, how many times can one’s heart break until there is nothing left to break, nothing left to give?
Connecting the threads ~
My dear Kānaka Maoli friend recently asked me about the latest updates in Palestine because she hasn’t had the capacity to keep up. She said that while she is aware that conditions have been unacceptably atrocious for Palestinians, she feels gravely limited in capacity by her existing responsibilities mothering a baby, being in school, working part-time, among other things — and with any additional time she has, having to focus on supporting her own Native community’s struggles.
So I shared with her something I have been thinking about recently — the mushrooming of catastrophe.
In the deep, spiritual ecology spaces, it feels like people often like to use analogies related to fungi as sources of positive inspiration — such as how they teach us to become a part of the rooted, mycelial networks of a place, or how they call on us to value the less visible work of building mutual aid networks “underground.”
Patricia Kaishian has looked to mycology as a queer discipline, turning to fungi as companions for grounding her amphibious sense of identity. And Sophie Strand has used mycelium as a metaphor for understanding the diverse mythologies produced from different places throughout history.
I find fungi to be so powerful in how they seem to blur boundaries, defy individualism, maintain mystery, and turn endings into stories of renewal. I’m also incredibly moved by their subversive nature — how they refuse to be reduced into categories based on fixed roles and relationalities.
Fungi express themselves through such a wide variety of colors, sizes, and forms. The roles they play in different contexts can range drastically as well. And from the limiting, human-centric perspective alone, some mushrooms are scrumptiously nourishing for our bodies. Some are medicinal. Some are psychedelic. Some are toxic. And… some are deadly — like the “death cap”.
So, I started wondering: Rather than romanticize our fungi friends, how might we use them as analogies to also better understand the destructive, deadly forces of society’s webs of colonialist, militarist, and corporatist relations?
The death caps of destruction ~
As someone who is ever so curious to connect the dots between different issues and crises, I had an AHA moment thinking with mycelium in this context… And I look forward to hearing how this resonates with you.
As much as we might try to isolate and reduce different issues to make them feel more targetable and digestible, the reality is that many of our more palpably urgent crises are like the visible mushrooms fruiting from the same extensive mycelial network of empire and global capitalism.
Even if it seems like we might be able to pick away at individual death caps of catastrophe at the surface level, and even when some of these singular fruits disappear in time on their own, the underlying conditions are still ever so present. This means that unless we can eat away at the actual underlying network of power relations, the same conditions remain — making them ripe for another similar crisis to bloom someplace else, sometime else.
I find this analogy to be a potent one because it invites us to think more critically about our theories of change. How do we meaningfully chip away at and rewire our webs of power and not just feed into the more sensationalized yet fleeting spectacles of change?
With these ponderings in mind, I told my friend that her work supporting the food sovereignty of her local community, even if that does not directly address the concurrent genocides going on, nevertheless contributes to the less visible mycelial rewiring of power — one form of divestment from empire’s arteries of extraction.
Nick Estes affirms this call to reclaim power beginning at the local level in my recent interview with him, where we explored the topic of moving beyond electoral politics (to publish on Green Dreamer in October, 2024). When I asked him how we can connect local efforts of community building with global issues abroad that we may be complicit and entangled in, he shares:
“I think that's a really important question. I think a lot of times people tend to pit these things against each other.
[But] there's some really beautiful movements within the Global South, like one would be the MST, the landless workers movement in Brazil — they're very invested in the very same things as your friend and collaborators invested in this creation of local food systems and decolonizing food and agricultural production, but also reclaiming land and creating a new kind of communal culture.
But they're also very concerned about geopolitics, right? Because Brazil produces like 30% of the world's food. But yet there's people starving in Brazil… So what does it mean when the servers of the world’s bread basket, the people who are making the food don't even have access to it?
You can't separate these geopolitical concerns about the value chain of empire from the movements themselves as they're trying to create and build the society that they want to live in. […]
I think creating local, community-based movements and campaigns is the best way to start.”
As always, these are working threads to be continued ~
What do you sense lingering with you, and what other lessons from mycelial worlds have resonated most?
Let’s dream together ~
P.S., I am planning to host a live UPROOTED Zoom gathering for supporting subscribers around the next full moon, on October 19th, 1pm Pacific Time! Thinking we can explore theories of change and fungal teachings a bit more… and share a general full moon heart check ~
Become a subscriber to support this newsletter and join our live digital gatherings! Let’s have tea, release, and dream together ~
P.P.S., Final hours! Registration closes tonight (Sept. 28th) 11 pm Pacific Time for our last and final live cohort of alchemize, Green Dreamer’s audio-based, 12-week program of daily imagination and creative practices! We would love to have you ~ Learn more and join us here.