Trans-Geographic Mycelia Formation

Intellectual Intimacy Supplants Shallow Internet Socialization

The Beauty of Mycelia

The familiar mushroom caps that we see in the forest or enjoy as a part of succulent meal are just fruiting bodies of a much more complex and subtle organism. Mushrooms, for significant portion of their life cycle, are predominately occupied with impregnating their host site with root-like mycelia, which are responsible for the discovery and digestion of food matter, and for the absorption and transport of nutrients. Only when this myceliar matrix is robust enough does the mushroom start sprouting its mushroom caps, where it generates and disseminates its spores. This typically happens after some environmental shock, for instance a torrential downpour of rain, or the hammerstrike of a mushroom farmer.

This is the basis for one of my favorite naturalistic metaphors. I think it captures excellently the dynamic that creates productive communities that are able to access higher forms of achievement. The metaphor captures how success is not found all at once, but is the product of slow and consistent development along subtle dimensions, not necessarily visible by all. As such communities develop through the absorption of spiritual and material nutrients, and engage in the refinement of the same, it becomes able to both host and generate an explosive outgrowth of functionality, insight, and beauty, and ascend to a higher stage of operation.

A concrete example of this a certain class of religious community — Jewish and Muslim examples come to my mind most strongly — where the faith of its members and a popular facility with its core rituals allow for the self-organization of devotional communities wherever the faithful are found. Here, the developed inner spiritual life among individuals and their connections God and fellow devotees represents mycelia, and the fruiting bodies are holy communities dedicated to the worship of God.

Intimacy Against Parasocialization

It is not novel to comment that the internet, and in particular the current iteration of social media, encourages shallow forms of socialization, study, and intellection. What precisely can be done about this? Previously I have discussed studying pairs (SPs) and the benefits they confer, and here I would like extend to discussion of its benefits.

I have found that the intellectual intimacy developed by repeated one-on-one study with full focus on the material at hand and the shared mission of understanding it develops a trust between people that is difficult to develop otherwise. While this is not an explicit goal, over the course of intense study — particularly of humanistic texts — it is natural to relate the shared object of study to aspects of one’s own life. These reflections give the study partner a privileged look at the other’s life, and I assert that in this mode of communication, artifice cannot be sustained. It will be too quickly identified as such, especially as the many-angled reflections of one’s soul can be deemed to be part of a coherent whole, or not. Beautifully — while in-person study remains ideal, I have found that internet-based communication does not significant impact these benefits.

This can serve as the bulwark and counteroffensive against the shallow parasocial relationships that the social media industry is monomaniacally invested in propagating. Instead of glancing comments and insults online, one can be engaged with other people in deep ways that develop your facility to process information in other settings. It gives you a sense of others’ souls and your own, and humanizes others. On the basis of this, I assert that if you are bent on starting an internet based movement¹, regardless of whether you would like it to burst into the real world, you would do well to encourage the formation of intellectual intimacy through paired study of core texts of shared value.²

In turn, the intellectual intimacy here transforms into a sort of emotional intimacy, an emotional intimacy that develops when working in the trenches of understanding with another focused soul. These two forms of intimacy can then be the basis of a myceliar flourishing as discussed above, a project that emerges from the preparation and virtue of the network of people that will be responsible for it.

In our current age, impactful projects will require both preparation and virtue, and paired study is a technique that communities can use to ensure their stores of these qualities are never scant. Unlike mushrooms, we must develop and leverage our own social structures that enable ideological takeoff and the achievement of higher states of being. I believe this is possible.

-HC

PS: Please leave a comment mentioning a text you would love to study with a partner.

1. Anna Gát’s Interintellect project is the first internet-first approach to this I’ve seen that ‘gets it’ in a deep way. Check it out.

2. For instance, the joint study of CFang’s Golden Light posts would go a very long way towards ensuring that Milady’s values are spread across the community. I see this as essential to maintaining community identity, and gatekeeping those who seek to undermine it.