December 9 2024
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Mushrooms are not here to destroy us — or to save us
New York Times
last updated:
Feb 11,2023
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It is grim, but in every post-apocalyptic story line, I wait
for the moment when the characters float their theories about how the world
fell apart, hoping to glean something useful.اضافة اعلان
In HBO’s series “The Last of Us,” survivors of a global
pandemic live in harsh, government-controlled quarantine zones to evade a
parasitic fungus that turns them into zombies. Joel, a smuggler in what remains
of Boston, believes that the ophiocordyceps mutation was delivered through the
food system — contaminated batches of globally shipped flour or sugar spread
the disease too quickly and efficiently for any kind of recall. Over the course
of a long weekend, humanity was wrecked.
The setup sounds pretty conventional for the zombie-thriller
genre, but since the series premiered in January, the response has been a bit
sweaty — panicked, even. Mycologists, fungal biologists, and other
mushroom-world experts have been called on, over and over, to assure us that
while cordyceps species that zombify insects are real, a cordyceps mutation
that thrives in humans is pure fiction.
What got us so rattled?Paul Stamets, one of the US’ best-known mycologists, enjoyed
the first two episodes of the show, but posted afterward on Facebook to
emphasize the fact that no, cordyceps really are not capable of all that. “It
is natural for humans to fear that which is powerful, but mysterious and misunderstood,”
he wrote, wondering if the show played on our deep-seated fear of mushrooms.
In nature, mushrooms happily appear under the grossest and most fractious circumstances, when little else will. They can signal death, thriving in damp, dark rot, blooming in decomposition and nimbly decaying organic matter.
There are about 1.5 million species of fungi, a kingdom that
is neither plant nor animal, and they are some of the strangest and most
marvelous life-forms on the planet, both feared and revered. But our
relationship with mushrooms, particularly in the West, can be fraught — and not
just because misidentifying one might be dangerous.
In nature, mushrooms happily appear under the grossest and
most fractious circumstances, when little else will. They can signal death,
thriving in damp, dark rot, blooming in decomposition and nimbly decaying
organic matter. Never mind that this process is vital and regenerative (and,
witnessed in a time-lapse, weirdly beautiful), it really freaks us out.
When artist Jae Rhim Lee wondered if it was possible for us
to make a collective cultural shift, to approach death and its rituals
differently, and to make smaller environmental impacts when we die, she
designed a burial suit seeded with mushrooms. Nothing could be more natural —
or more horrifyingly taboo — than, instead of eating mushrooms, inviting the
mushrooms to eat us.
Mushrooms have a way of making us consider the things we
prefer to avoid. Though this has not stopped us from
eating them — mushrooms are an ancient food source.
The “stoned ape theory,” which imagines fungus as central to
our evolution, was animated in Louie Schwartzberg’s terrifically pro-mushroom
documentary, “Fantastic Fungi”. One scene shows how early humans might have
eaten mushrooms, including psychedelic ones, off animal dung as they tracked
prey across the savanna, then collectively tripped their way toward language,
weaponry, music, and more.
Small, round buttons are the most cozy, familiar and
recognizable of our edible mushrooms now, but there are hundreds of varieties
we can eat (without tripping). In the pockets of wilderness around my home in
Los Angeles, you might find brownish-orange candy caps; wild, yellowish frills
of chanterelles; and clusters of long-gilled oyster mushrooms. After rain, in
the shady nooks of my own backyard, I see shaggy parasols pop up from time to
time, as if by magic.
In “The Last of Us” a warming climate weaponizes mushrooms against humans — a global disaster of our own making. But in reality, if you scratch just below the surface of our fear, you will find quite the opposite: an almost unreasonable expectation that mushrooms will rescue us, clean up our messes, do our dirty work and reverse all of the damage we are doing to the Earth.
In “The Last of Us” a warming climate weaponizes mushrooms
against humans — a global disaster of our own making. But in reality, if you
scratch just below the surface of our fear, you will find quite the opposite:
an almost unreasonable expectation that mushrooms will rescue us, clean up our
messes, do our dirty work and reverse all of the damage we are doing to the
Earth. It is true that there are species capable of breaking down oils in
saltwater, absorbing radiation, and cleaning toxins from the soil, though it is
also true that they might have better things to do.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of the mycelium, rootlike
threads that connect underground in a vast mycorrhizal matrix so complex,
intelligent and essential, Stamets has called it “the neurological network of
nature.”
That material, which also stores large amounts of carbon
underground and can help plant life survive drought and other stress, is being
used to develop alternatives to leathers, plastics, packaging and building
materials. (Adidas made a concept shoe using a mycelium-based material last
year, which led the company to discuss its “journey to create a more
sustainable world.”)
Lately, we expect mushrooms to save us, too. The zealous
interest in adaptogenic mushrooms — fungi species used medicinally for
centuries in China and other parts of Asia — has created an international
market for lion’s mane, reishi, chaga and cordyceps. We turn to mushrooms to
ease our anxiety, to help us focus, to make us happier and more open-minded, to
make our skin glow, to enhance our memory, to get us to sleep.
Mushrooms are magnificent. But maybe anxiety over a
fictional fungus reflects a flickering awareness that we are, in fact, asking a
bit too much of them.