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vectorj
@vectorj

I've been making my way through The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins in the last couple weeks. Firstly, highly recommended!

The part of the book I'm at goes into how various cultures, specifically Southeast Asian & white Americans and Japanese markets all find a way to coalesce around the procurement and selling of matsutake mushrooms and, for the most part, coexist.

It goes on a lot about how all these different groups of folk come together in an Oregon forest, drawn to it by a common desire: make a living off of picking and selling mushrooms.


Yet despite the common goal, they all live remarkably varied lives. White Americans largely seem motivated by a desire of solitude and true independence. Laotian and Hmong folk find different, but common, means of subsisting and staking out their lots in life. Those that were former war veterans in jungle forests use their tracking and military skills to traverse the forest for mushrooms. They sometimes live together, work in isolation, and butt heads. But the fascinating thing is that the forest allows for these different people to cohabitate and become part of a common outskirt society.

Definitely has me thinking a lot about how everyone has their own interface to the world. We have to engage with the massive amounts of impetus and inputs that simply existing provides us. We all move, if at all possible, to our own rhythm. Some inputs from the world affect us to varying degrees. What affects someone more strongly, may not even be of concern for others.

There's a definite beauty to how various kinds of people have found a way to craft a life for themselves picking mushrooms. How interestingly the forces of history, economics and people have allowed a separate reality that fluctuates in and out with what we all largely think of the status quo of capitalist existence. That other ways of existing can prevail, despite a seemingly dire present.


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