Exploring Symbiosis and Interconnection (my obsession with the micro-organisms)

We Are Holons: Exploring Symbiosis and Interconnection

We are holons of other beings. Each of us constitutes a cosmos — a home to countless microscopic organisms. To the tiny beings that inhabit us, our bodies are landscapes. Just as we walk upon the surface of Gaia, contributing to the dynamic balance of the biosphere, microbes thrive within us, shaping and sustaining our inner ecosystems.

We are more microbes than we are ourselves. Bacterial cells outnumber human cells 10 to 1. We are “composed of and decomposed by an ecology of microbes…we carry around more microbes than our own cells.”¹ In other words, we are ecosystems more than we are individuals — microcosms within a macrocosm. We are multi-scale, multilayered, multidimensional beings. We are beings upon beings upon beings.

Dissolving the Illusion of Individuality

The idea of the individual starts to dissolve when we look at holobionts — the complex assemblages of different species that form a functional whole. Lynn Margulis dismantled the linear narrative of evolution when she revealed that we are the result of a symbiogenetic fusion between two prokaryotes. As she wrote, “…in the great cell symbioses, those of evolutionary moment that led to organelles, the act of mating is, for all practical purposes, forever.”² Our very cells are the legacy of a merger between two ancient bacterial ancestors.

This shift in perception invites us to rethink kinship and ecology. If symbiosis lies at the root of our existence, how might the interactions within our microbiomes teach us about the larger symbiotic relationships that sustain Earth’s ecosystems? Looking at the micro-scale might give us the humility we need to adopt a more participatory and partnership-oriented worldview — one that sees the bigger picture. Like pixels on a screen, each of us is part of the whole image.

Learning about Earth’s ecosystems begins with understanding microorganisms. They teach us that symbiosis creates life, both inside us and around us.³ How might tending to the environments we inhabit — being in sacred symbiosis with place and other beings — help us deepen our relationship with the living world? “It seems important to soften our boundaries: intellectually and bodily.”⁴

What is a Holobiont?

A holobiont is not a single organism functioning separately from others. Instead, it is a collection of closely associated species and organisms whose collective functioning keeps the whole alive.

Bionts (the individual organisms within a holobiont) develop in symbiotic collaboration with bacteria, viruses, and fungi to form an ecological unit. These relationships allow us to digest food, produce key minerals, protect against disease, and shape the development of our immune systems and behavior.⁵

Where do I begin and end — and where does another being begin? Moving away from a reductionist, linear perspective reveals that there is no clear beginning or end. Instead, we exist in a complex, overlapping web of beings — “interrelated and self-regulating systems, integrated and stabilized by symbiotic processes.”⁶

Symbiosis: The Fabric of Life

Symbiosis is at the heart of the intricate web of life. It is the continuous creation of everything — the relationship between beings that composes reality. “Complexity arises from relational processes, and in the case of evolution, new life emerges through symbiosis.”⁷ Symbiotic relationships create and support one another, nourishing and sustaining the whole. Our interrelationships with other beings — human and more-than-human — compose reality. When we foster kinship with all life, we create symbiotic relationships that support mutual flourishing.

Yet, nature isn’t always harmonious. Symbiosis isn’t just about mutual flourishing — it’s also about struggle and survival. “Species impinged by climatological pressures and scant resources try to eat each other, fail, and at some point, along the way, begin to co-become…the other option is starvation and extinction.”⁸ Symbiosis, then, is a survival tactic. It’s not about the survival of the fittest or eat-or-be-eaten — it’s about co-creating with our wild kin for mutual survival.

Nothing exists in isolation. “Life is a process of addition. A concentration of matter. Even your solitary self must inhale air. Where does life live? In the air or your lungs?”⁹ Henri Bortoft captures a profound truth: “Everything is in everything.”¹⁰ When we begin to think this way, we start to care not only about our own survival and flourishing but about the survival and flourishing of all kin — the Earth, our environment, plants, animals, fungi, microbes, and bacteria. Their survival ensures our survival — and vice versa.

The Power of Motion and Connection

Living systems are both open and closed, autonomous and dependent throughout their existence. Symbiotic relationships sustain and create life. We depend on each other within an ecology of interconnection. As Lynn Margulis wrote, “One system is self-sustaining, creative and operationally closed, while another engages with others and must be thermodynamically open — able to exchange energy and information with its environment.”¹¹

This openness means that life is always in motion — always becoming. We are never static. We are continuously creating and being created. From a thermodynamic perspective, when we move, we dissipate energy. By moving, we return this energy to the system, keeping it in motion and generating regenerative energy.

This moving energy ripples outward, creating symbiotic relationships on a microbiological level. Perhaps it’s as simple as this: to nourish our symbiotic relationships and keep life flourishing, we must keep moving.

References

1 Sheldrake, M., 2021). ‘introduction ’, in Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures. New York: Random House, pp. 22.

2 Margulis, L. (1998) ‘Sex legacy’, in Symbiotic planet: A new look at evolution. New York: Basic Books, pp. 131–131.

3 Morley, J.J. (2019) ‘Symbiosis ’, in Future sacred: The connected creativity of nature. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, pp. 132–132.

4 Strand, S. (2022) We must risk new shapes, We Must Risk New Shapes - by Sophie Strand. Available at: https://sophiestrand.substack.com/p/we-must-risk-new-shapes (Accessed: 05 June 2023).

5 Sheldrake, M. (2021) ‘Introduction ’, in Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures. New York: Random House, pp. 24-24

6 Morley, J.J. (2019a) ‘Entelechy, the Gaia hypothesis ’, in Future sacred: The connected creativity of nature. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, pp. 38–38.

7 Margulis and Guerrero, ‘Two plus two Equals One’ pp 51-51

8 Strand, S. (2022) We must risk new shapes, We Must Risk New Shapes - by Sophie Strand. Available at: https://sophiestrand.substack.com/p/we-must-risk-new-shapes (Accessed: 05 June 2023).

9 Strand, S. (2022) We must risk new shapes, We Must Risk New Shapes - by Sophie Strand. Available at: https://sophiestrand.substack.com/p/we-must-risk-new-shapes (Accessed: 05 June 2023).

10 Bortoft, H. (2013) in The wholeness of nature: Goethe’s way toward a science of conscious participation in nature. Edinburgh: Floris Books.

11 Morley, J.J. (2019a) ‘Complexity consciousness’, in Future sacred: The connected creativity of nature. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, pp. 148-148

12 Nail, T. (2019) Being and motion. Kettering: Oxford University Press.

13 Avatar Way of the Water (film) 2021

14  Sheldrake, M. (2021) ‘Introduction ’, in Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures. New York: Random House, pp. 22–22

15  Sheldrake, M. (2021) ‘Introduction ’, in Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures. New York: Random House, pp. 22–22