Will the Mushroom Save Us?

A review of Merlin Sheldrake's "Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures"

The mighty mushroom, that subterranean maestro of decay and rebirth, thrust into the limelight by some Brit with a name fit for a Tolkien character. Merlin Sheldrake. One can almost picture him hunched over a moss-covered log, muttering incantations to coax forth the fruiting bodies of knowledge from the mycelial network beneath our feet.

Sheldrake has penned a tome that should have been as dry as a desiccated shiitake. Instead, it's a psychedelic journey through the looking glass of our biosystem, revealing a world so bizarre and fascinating that it makes our human endeavors look like a sandbox project.

The Fungal Frontier

Sheldrake manages to keep one foot in reality while the other dances with the fairy rings. He takes us on a mind-bending tour of fungal capabilities that would make even the most ardent techno-utopian envious. These cryptic organisms, it turns out, are nature's ultimate hackers, breaking down complex materials and reshaping them into forms that boggle the mind.

The Plastic Eaters

In a world drowning in petrochemical waste, our fungal friends might be our saviors. Imagine vast fields of mushrooms gobbling up our vast bin of discarded Big Gulp cups and transforming them into compost. It’s so promising and so potentially profitable that I found myself foraging like a pig for truffles, hoping to find public companies where I could invest in this subterranean cash cow.

Fungal Knowing vs. UFO Knowing

Here's where things get truly weird. Sheldrake delves into what I'll call "fungal knowing" – a kind of alien intelligence that exists right under our feet. These organisms possess abilities that make our vaunted human cognition look like a toddler trying to solve differential equations. These critters aren’t just decomposing logs; they’re running some cryptic playbook we’re too dim to read.

This is where my mind starts wandering down darker lanes: there’s a queer kinship between this fungal knowing and what I’ll dub “UFO knowing.” Both are weird as hell, both leave you restless, and both hint at something beyond our puny grasp. Fungal knowing might be the next frontier we ought to prod with our merger and acquisition stick—cautiously, mind you—but UFO knowing? That’s trickier. It could be Satan’s parlor trick, or maybe just the cosmos laughing at us. I haven’t a clue, and I reckon I’ll shuffle off this mortal coil still scratching my head. But ponder it I will, likely over a stiff drink, as the world keeps sprouting strangeness faster than I can keep up.

In the grand scheme of things, we humans are mere blips on the radar of fungal time. Our cities may crumble, our civilizations may fall, but the mycelium will always be there.

So, the next time you see a mushroom pushing through a crack in the sidewalk, give it a nod of respect. It knows things you couldn't begin to comprehend – and it might just hold the key to our survival in this crazy, mixed-up world we've created.