#66: Systems vs. Things.

Systems vs. things. What a revelation to understand personhood better through the beings of fungus.

We are more than matter; matter is but a conduit for the expression of our ever evolving being.

“A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Nature is an event that never stops. As William Bateson, who coined the word genetics, observed, ‘We think of animals and plants [and ourselves] as matter, but they are really systems through which matter is continually passing.’ When we see an organism, from a fungus to a pine tree [to our reflection in the mirror], we catch a single moment in a continual development.”

-Entangled Life, How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake, chapter Living Labyrinth, Random House