Myco-Nihilism

The geologic record indicates time and again that after mass extinction events fungi become the most dominant life form on the planet. Desiring darkness and cold, feeding on the bodies of the dead and dying, fungi finds the end of the world to be an ideal situation. Variously known as myco-nihilism, or spore-pessimism, this belief circulates among the more misanthropic of the psychedelic naturalists. These rare spore-pessimists find solace in the bizarre theory that fungi have engineered human beings in order to bring about total planetary cataclysm. Though the theory is absurd it has some merit: desiring nothing so much as the perennial cloudy sky of the post-apocalypse, mycelium anticipates this event and speeds us to our terminus with psychedelic precision. In this cosmogony, psychedelics are not healing, but crazy making (psychotomimetic). The giant step forwards that humans underwent through the epiphany of psilocybin is a giant step into the waiting jaws of destruction; the mushrooms lie in wait and will consume our giant ruins. On the one hand this offers a non-human hope in the fact that Terra will nevertheless continue on her cosmic circuit; as Jurassic Park puts it, “life finds a way.” That this “life” happens to be something that humankind can barely yet imagine is more to the point. The living systems of planet earth exert a force far more powerful than any man-made apocalypse.