Seduce The Gods

Plant Pornography By Howard Bloom

Evolutionary breakthroughs do not just fashion new kinds of legs, wings, and brains. They do not just generate new forms of individuals. They often create something we overlook when we obsess on the origin of species. They create new networks of interaction, new teams.

And here’s a dirty little secret. Even a seemingly isolated individual like a plant, an animal, a you, or a me is a form of teamwork, a teamwork between twenty trillion cells in a plant and a hundred trillion cells in you or me. Not to mention the 39 trillion bacteria inside you that digest your food for you and protect you from microbial invaders in your nose and throat. Yes, you are a network, a mesh, a team, a community. But that’s not where the teamwork stops.

An individual is a teamwork between you, the seemingly individualistic organism, your colony mates and relatives, your friends and enemies, and your surroundings. Not to mention a culture left to you by 10,000 generations of ancestors. And your obligations to generations yet to come.

You, an individual, are a knot in a network of relationship that pulls in even the energy of a sun 93 million miles away and the photon flows of stars four billion light years away, stars that chill you with awe. Stars that the creatures around you use as navigational signals in the night. Stars that…