The Myth of Separation

The mycelium moved onto the land and began the slow work of terraforming the planet.

It was mostly rocky and barren. They broke down the rock into material that could sustain life and seeded the soil with all varieties of plants that continued to adapt, evolve, and grow alongside the mycelium in peace and balance.

Early in the process, they saw that it was imprecise. Experiments moved slowly and inefficiently when they had to rely on giant sloth poop to develop a healthy supply of avocados.

Some of them were looking for a creature that was strong enough to carry a load, nimble and dexterous, and had a large brain capacity relative to its size. We weren’t the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, the most hygienic, or the best looking, but hominids were a good fit for the role of gardener.

We began our journey toward civilization like other animals. We hunted. We foraged. We planted. We harvested.

We understood our place in the environment and worked alongside the mycelium and the rest of nature to expand the reach of certain plants beyond their natural habitats and guide the process in ways other creatures simply couldn’t.

In the wake of difficult seasons that resulted in death and want, some humans began to view the rest of nature with suspicion. They began to see themselves at odds with nature. They began to see themselves as something separate from nature.

The Myth of Separation is the defining belief that led to The Severance. Not in a moment, but over centuries and generations.

The Myth says that we are civilized and that nature is over there, somewhere else, far away and wild.

Phycomycism says:

There is no nature.
There is no away.
There is no over there.

There Is No Nature

Nature exists, but humanity and civilization are not separate from nature.

We say…

We go into nature.
We protect nature.
We destroy nature.
We build where nature used to be…

We look at our houses and buildings and roads and cars and airplanes and space shuttles and the weapons we’ve devised to destroy ourselves, and we treat all of that as something distinctly different from gardens and forests and coastlines and mountains and fields and oceans and caves and cliffs and valleys and the vast array of wildlife that fills those spaces.

But we exist within those spaces. We are not exempt from them. The plants can weave through the cracks of our foundations and rip our homes apart while the fungi digest everything, turning it back into soil.

There is no nature, because everything is part of nature whether we choose to accept it or not.

There Is No Away

We move things away.
We throw things away.
We don’t worry about things far away…

Companies externalize costs.
Manufacturing moves production somewhere cheaper.
Pollution is allowed downstream.
Trash is hauled to piles and moved out of sight.

But all of the problems still exist.

Away isn’t real. It’s just the part of the system we don’t look at.

Externalized costs are still paid by people who didn’t share in the profits. Cheaper costs for companies leave people without enough money to feed their children. Pollution from China can be inhaled in California. The trash keeps piling up.

There is no away.
We’re all part of one big system.

There Is No Over There

Distance exists. Culture is real. Borders are acknowledged. Communities have different contexts and responsibilities.

But none of those realities actually divides humanity into different types.

Kids living in garbage dumps “over there” are still kids living in garbage dumps in the human world we all inhabit. Phycomycisians struggle to understand how anyone can feel okay with a world that lets that happen and isn’t actively and explicitly working together to stop it. Because we know the planet provides enough when we live in balance.

Humans trapped in compounds making scam calls in miserable conditions on the other side of the planet to make someone a buck don’t exist outside the system just because we can’t see them.

A refugee crisis, famine, exploitation, extreme poverty…

Distance can limit what any individual can realistically do about them, but distance doesn’t make them unrelated.

The Myth of Separation

There Is No Nature
There Is No Away
There Is No Over There

The goal of Phycomycism isn’t to eliminate all differences and boundaries or to revert to a world without cultures or technologies by force or coercion.

We seek to:

• See our place within nature, not separate from it.
• Deeply consider the long-term consequences of our shared human actions.
• Accept our shared humanity and recognize all of humanity as one large “us.”