The Mutualism Advantage

While a continuum exists in mycorrhizal fungi and plant symbiosis, ranging from parasitic to mutually beneficial, the large majority of these relationships are the latter, with both fungi and plants benefiting from each other and contributing to the health of the larger ecosystem through further entanglement. These kinds of mutualistic relationships have been seen as exceptions, rather than the default across all domains of modern day society. The concept of self-creation, also known as “autopoiesis”, has come to dominate human interactions and ways of life, and so new evidence, terminology and organisation is required. This sentiment is echoed in Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, and also brought urbanist and systems thinker, Beth Dempster to coin the term, “Sympoeisis”, meaning “collectively producing” or “making with” in response to the need to counter-balance and recover from individualistic and competition driven narratives.