What if the answers to the onslaught of challenges facing humanity today (including the big one we’re all thinking about) lay right under our noses? Or better yet, right under our feet?
Last night, I had the privilege of watching Fantastic Fungi, a new documentary that seems to have been released just in the nick of time. The film unleashes a wave of information regarding the mycelial networks that are now believed to have evolved on Earth for billions of years.
Upon watching, one realizes that our knowledge of the usefulness of fungi (commonly known as mushrooms, which are really just the fruit of the fungi) is just scratching the surface.
The documentary sheds light on some important discoveries. To name a few, Mycelium can:
Break down unwanted pollutants like oil spills;
Help heal terminal illnesses like cancer
Create biodegradable packaging & regenerative building material
And given the current COVID-19 pandemic, one use case stands out:
Paul Stamets, the film’s main protagonist, might have discovered a fungus that can cure bees of catastrophic viruses that have been destroying whole colonies.
In nature, common wood conk mushrooms release potent antivirals to survive. As reported by the New York Times, one field test of extracts from these fungi reduced the rate of viral infection in bee colonies by 45,000 times as compared to control colonies.
If we can use antivirals from fungi in bee colonies, it is completely reasonable to believe we may eventually use them to stop global pandemics in their tracks. After all, one of the greatest medical discoveries of all time, the antibiotic Penicillin, was derived from the Penicillium fungi.
Who knows, we might even find a way to use mushrooms to fight COVID-19.
Contagions of the Mind
COVID-19 is only one pandemic on the rise, but there is another, more clandestine threat to humanity, a shared delusion of separateness perpetuated by FEAR.
We ask, “Who is to blame for the virus?” Is it the CCP, the WHO, Trump — we want answers, we want to feel safe, and so we lay fault on the supposed outsider.
In our 24/7 media environment, we are consistently bombarded with messages of panic. Imagery of death and destruction keeps our autonomic nervous system in a constant sympathetic, or “fight or flight,” state. This has negative repercussions on our health, immunity, and our collective psyche.
Even before COVID-19 vastly accelerated negativity in our Facebook feeds, fear’s close cousins: depression and anxiety, had grown widespread. According to the WHO, depression is one of the most prevalent ailments in the world — affecting 264 million individuals. Anxiety disorders are the most common illness in the US, affecting 18.1% of our population.
Unsurprisingly, fungi may offer a solution. Treatments using psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in “magical mushrooms,” have had profound results. After a 20+ year war on drugs, a policy started by the Nixon administration who viewed psychedelics as an existential threat to government control, a wave of new research has shown psilocybin to be an effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and treatment-resistant Depression.
Many who undergo psychedelic treatment, report experiencing an “Ego Death.” In other words, they lose their sense of separateness and feel intimately connected to all things.
It’s not surprising that ingesting part of the invisible networks that seemingly connect all life on earth, lead us to feel more connected!
Fungi and Our Evolution
In the 1990s, Terrence Mckenna, one of the founders of the psychedelic movement in the US, shared his “Stoned Ape” hypothesis, which posits that consuming psychedelic mushrooms led to the expansion of human awareness and consciousness.
Given the institutionalized animosity towards psychedelics and mushrooms in the western world at this time, it is not surprising that Mckenna’s theory was relegated to the fringes.
But as Fantastic Fungi points out, 200,000 years ago the size of the human brain inexplicably doubled over an extremely short period of time in terms of evolutionary theory.
According to Michael Pollen’s latest work, How to Change Your Mind, studies have shown that the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms builds new neural pathways (as seen in the below image).
In addition, recent studies of psychedelic compounds for the treatment of Alzheimers suggest that fungi can promote the growth of new neurons!
Given this evidence, is it really so far fetched to believe that psychedelic mushrooms might have shaped the evolution of our neurology? It seems plausible that humans would evolve in relation to the most prevalent organism on Earth, one with whom we share a surprising amount of DNA.
The New Paradigm
If COVID-19 has taught me anything, it is that anything is possible.
If I had told you two months ago, that we’d all be locked away in our homes, wearing masks in the streets, and hoarding toilet paper — you’d have laughed me out of the room.
What other laughable predictions of the future might come to pass?
The current global quarantine offers us all the opportunity for deep self-reflection and contemplation. In truth, we do not need to emerge from this situation with the same fears, anxieties, and beliefs we held when we entered it.
And I believe that as we change ourselves, we change others.
Just as the vast mycelial networks that weave & intertwine to sustain life on this planet lay just below the surface, waiting to be discovered, so too might the Collective Unconscious posited by Jung.
Research into fungus has only recently shown us how plants communicate with each other using an underground internet of sorts; what discoveries might we still make regarding subconscious human communication?
Studies have shown that there is a correlation between the incidence of large group meditations in a city and a reduction in that city’s rate of violence. Of course we do not yet understand how this works.
If an invisible pathogen like COVID-19 can force collective quarantine at a global scale, what other invisible forces might move us to inspired action? We might only need acknowledge their existence.
How connected are we all, really? And how much longer can humanity survive a collective delusion of separateness?
In time, mushrooms might show us the Way.