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Title: Symbiogenetic Desire
Author: Bellamy Fitzpatrick
Language: en
Topics: egoism, ecology, desire, anti-civ, phenomenology, biology
Source: https://www.scribd.com/document/338450206/Symbiogenetic-Desire

Bellamy Fitzpatrick

Symbiogenetic Desire

An Unfortunate Silence

Egoist anarchism has regularly had criticism leveled against it for its

relative silence on issues of ecology. This criticism is well-placed:

other than a few references to how non-human animals are exemplars of

egoism due to their seemingly unalienated relationship with their

desires[1], egoist literature is sorely lacking in this regard. This

lamentable absence likely has to do with the proclivities of its

authorship more than anything else, as an egoist analysis is readily

applicable to ecology.

The identity eliminativism – the denial of oneself as having an

essential self, a perspective that will be defined and developed further

in this piece – implied by egoism is the basis of this ecological

worldview, as one’s sense of self expands to subsume and be subsumed by

one’s habitat and symbiotes. Through such an analysis, one steers clear

of the twin alienations of, on the one hand, the tiny self, that is, the

self as an independent, enclosed, free-willed subject who remains

relatively stable through space and time and who interacts with a world

of objects; and, on the other hand, the reification of the nonhuman

world, that is, the construal of nonhuman organisms as a more or less

unified whole that acts collectively for the Good and into which one can

dissolve oneself or to which one can swear allegiance. Eschewing both of

these alienations, one finds oneself able to experience a symbiogenetic

desire that unites a love of oneself with a love of one’s ecosystem.

The Expansive Self: Identity Eliminativism

An egoist conception of ecology begins with the notion of the expansive

self. The expansive self regards the inner world, our thoughts and

emotions, and the outer world, our phenomenality or sensory experience,

as inseparable, as each reciprocally informs and defines the other.

Insofar as identity can be said to exist, it is our perceptual totality,

shifting from moment to moment. When we walk through the world, all that

we touch and perceive is an extension of ourselves; conversely, there is

no I that exists separately from our phenomenal experience. Thus, the

self subsumes and is subsumed by the world, annihilating this

subject/object dichotomy that alienates us from other beings and places.

If our language sounds strange here, it is because we are trying to talk

about the ineffable. Perception is the basis of existence, but it is

also profoundly difficult to describe with words: the qualitative always

eludes the symbolic; however circumspect and technical or poetic and

pithy the phrase, it can never completely capture the real of our

experience. The phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, while not an anarchist

egoist (actually, for at least part of his life, a Marxist! gasp),

nonetheless beautifully described how perception is neither subjective

nor objective but a gestalt from which the two are artificially

rendered:

“The visible about us seems to rest in itself. It is as though our

vision were formed in the heart of the visible, or as though there were

between it and us an intimacy as close as between the sea and the strand

[...] What there is then are not things first identical with themselves,

which would then offer themselves to the seer, nor is there a seer who

is first empty and who, afterward, would open himself to them – but

something to which we could not be closer than by palpating it with our

look, things we could not dream of seeing ‘all naked’ because the gaze

itself envelops them, clothes them with its own flesh.”[2]

What is traditionally called the object of perception, then, is as much

a part of ourselves as what is traditionally called the subject of

perception – we are so accustomed to think only of the latter as being

truly ourselves. With the dissolution of transitivity of identity, the

importance of perception to identity becomes clearer still. David Hume

is instructive on the point of identity eliminativism, when he observes

that there is no essential substrate, no fixed and quintessential I,

that exists behind his phenomenality or the thoughts and feelings he has

about it; instead, his sensory experience and his reflections of that

experience are the whole of his being. We are not merely a body, which

is only part of our perception, but instead everything we perceive,

everything with which we interact. And among that with which we interact

are of course other beings, meaning that our consciousnesses are

inextricably intertwined.

We are therefore experiencing at all times the ultimately ineffable

phenomenon of nigh-infinitely many mutually co-created consciousnesses.

When we encounter one another, human or nonhuman, being or place, each

becomes forever a part of the other - whatever beauty, strangeness, or

upset that encounter might bring, we know, as those feelings pass from

immediate intensity yet leave us permanently changed, that we have only

encountered a new and stimulating aspect of ourselves with which we were

previously unfamiliar.

The Tiny Selves: The Reification of Identity

To highlight my meaning with a foil, opposite to the expansive self are

various conceptions of what Jason McQuinn has taken to calling “the tiny

self”[3] – the self as mere body, the self as the free-willed bourgeois

economic agent, the self as social role or identity, and so forth. Each

of these is a reified self, an idea of who and what we are that comes

from giving undue weight to one aspect of ourselves, to hypostatizing

one part of our experience and imagining that it is all that we are.

The expansive self is diametrically opposed to these conceptions of self

that characterize the dominant culture: the Cartesian self that sees its

distinctiveness as self- evident or the bourgeois self that imagines a

separable entity that is self-willed and therefore morally entitled to

and responsible for its economic success.

To take just one case here, as I have discussed this issue at greater

length[4] elsewhere , Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (“I think; therefore, I

am”) contains, like every ideology of domination, a subtle

presupposition: “I”. Stirner rejects out of hand the Cartesian split by

describing himself as “creator and creature [Schöpfer und Geschöpf] in

one.”[5] – he does not presuppose himself as a separate entity of his

phenomenal perception but instead recognizes that subjectivity and

objectivity are simply synthetic conceptual frameworks, sometimes useful

instrumental constructions that have no existence beyond our

moment-to-moment imagination of them. Nietzsche similarly repudiated

this atomized self as a linguistic fiction, a mode of thinking imposed

on us by the subject-verb-object structure of our language.[6]

Nature: The Platonic Residue

Yet the expansive self is also the very antithesis of any conception of

Mother Nature, Gaia perspective[7], or other reification of the nonhuman

— it is not advancing the notion that there is some transcendental whole

we could call Life that we might dissolve ourselves into or act on the

behalf of for the Greater Good. While there is certainly a great deal to

draw from the observation that organisms often are deeply enmeshed

symbiotically, that the niches in ecosystems are often mutually

reinforcing; these phenomena are counterposed by the fact that, at

times, organisms also demonstrably act inimically to the stability of

the biosphere: take cyanobacteria, photosynthetic microorganisms whose

evolution might have annihilated most life on Earth 2.3 billion years

ago by filling the atmosphere with oxygen that was toxic to the

anaerobic majority of life. Considering contradictions like this one,

what can it mean to act in accordance with the biosphere?

Even were this not the case, the identification of a Gaia or Life would

be yet another case of self-alienation – we do not experience a

biotic/abiotic totality except in cases of adventurous imagining; and,

to whatever extent there is one, we are surely as much a part of it as

anything else, meaning our desires are its desires. It thus cannot grant

to us any metric of value. Unfortunately, a pernicious desire to

recapitulate this reification of the nonhuman, for "life [to be] about

something bigger than ourselves",[8] persists in anti-civilization

theory today.

The Platonic urge is strong: insofar as we put our weight in recent

archaeological findings[9], the very beginnings of Civilization may be

characterized by believing in things “bigger than ourselves”, things

greater than actual and particular beings or events, things vast and

eternal. Whether it can be said to be an essential human characteristic

is unclear, but it is certainly an urge of present human beings to reify

aspects of their lives, perhaps due to a relationship with

enslavement[10] or depression[11]. Though some seem to think an

ecological perspective entails reifying something great and beautiful

and leaping into it with outstretched arms; an alternative lies in

persistently refusing reification, rather than simply choosing which is

ostensibly the right one.

Symbiogenetic Desire

Biologists, most famously Lynn Margulis[12], employ the beautiful term

symbiogenesis (etymologically meaning something like origin of life

together) to describe the phenomenon in which two or more ostensibly

distinct organisms become so closely intertwined in their lifeways that

they more or less merge into one creature.

By way of example, certain termites are able to digest wood through

having their guts inhabited by protist (complex single-celled organisms)

symbiotes who, in turn, are inhabited by bacterial symbiotes; up to

one-third of a termite’s weight can consist of these creatures, each of

which is dependent on the others for survival. Other species of termites

have their massive nests inhabited by a fungus that acts as a kind of

external stomach for the insects, enabling enhanced digestion. The

fungus occupies a larger volume of the nest and possesses a greater

metabolism than the termites themselves, and it possibly influences the

behavior of the insects through chemical signaling not unlike the kind

that happens among differing organs of the same body.

In the same vein, an immensely distant ancestor of our cells may have

been formed similarly, through smaller and simpler cells fusing into

larger and more complex ones. Margulis’ Symbiogenetic Hypothesis posits

that at least some eukaryotic cells – the complex cells that, in this

case, make up plants and animals – came about through larger cells

engulfing smaller cells, the latter becoming organelles of the former.

A parallel, then, can be drawn between this biological understanding of

inseparability and emergence in the organic and the gestalt sense of

identity - or, perhaps better, lack of identity - described above.

Recognition that each of us is constituted by every other being we

encounter entails a perspective of intimacy, a desire to live as deeply

and vivaciously as possible. As an ecological perspective, then, reveals

itself as one that treats all organisms, humans and nonhuman, as

potential symbiotes, cocreators with whom we can have various

relationships.

Just as one might have a close and intimate, a friendly, a cordial, a

neutral, an antagonistic, or a hostile relationship with a human, one

might have any of those relationships with a non-human. One might

therefore strive toward unions of egoists among the organisms in one’s

habitat, maximizing mutualistic interactions and minimizing antagonistic

ones through Stirner’s understanding of infinitely revisable

collaborations among beings who combine their powers toward the pursuit

of cooperatively achieved, but individually recognized, values. Even

non-animals, surely, experience something, possess a phenomenality, and

have some notion of value, one we can often infer through interspecies

communication; though surely their experience of value is unspeakable

and ultimately incomprehensible to us. Through such unions, we become

symbiotes of one another; our sense of self expands to encompass the

bodies, lives, and values of others through symbiogenetic desire.

Practically, an interspecies union of egoists would surely entail the

abandonment of agriculture, a thoroughly stultifying practice that

homogenizes experience and squelches the diversity of mutually

co-created consciousnesses. Subsistence through some combination,

varying with bioregion, of foraging and horticulture/permaculture would

mean not only a richer and more diverse habitat; but also would entail

an intimate relationship with it through regular interaction. In this

way, we truly inhabit our ecosystem, enriching ourselves as well as our

symbiotes from whom we are inseparable. Similarly, the abolition and

destruction of the homogenizing and toxifying institutions and

infrastructure characterizing civilization follow from such a

perspective, as they could only limit and stultify ourselves and our

connections.

Anti-Civilization Egoism

The gaze of the rapacious capitalist objectifies the biosphere, treating

it as an object to be plundered by whoever has the tenacity and guile to

best exploit it. The paleoconservative or libertarian gaze romanticizes

it, regarding it as the wide-open terrain of rugged individualism on

which one might live off the fat of the land. The liberal or

conservationist gaze spectacularizes it, transforms it into a thing that

should be cherished and preserved for its beauty. Again, all of these

perspectives are iterations of alienation predicated on reifying the

subject/object dichotomy; they merely dress it in different skins. As M.

Kat Anderson writes, “These seemingly contradictory attitudes—to

idealize nature or commodify it—are really two sides of the same coin,

what the restoration ecologist William Jordan terms the ‘coin of

alienation’ [...] Both positions treat nature as an abstraction—separate

from humans and not understood, not real.”[13]

But the egoist perspective dissolves this alienation. It refuses the

notion that our selves are limited to this little bag of skin; it

insists that we extend our bodies to encompass our perceptual horizons.

I am every person I have met, however fleetingly; every river I have

swum in lovingly or passed by, barely noticing; every mountain I have

climbed or merely glanced upon while driving; every intoxicant I have

consumed; every advertisement to which I have been subjected. The

habitat in which we choose to live thus becomes not merely a

logistical-economical choice, but instead one of whom we fundamentally

want to be.

The anti-civilization insurgency thus takes on an irredeemably personal

character. We do not resist civilization because it is “innately

wrong”[14] or because it is “the domination of nature”[15], we resist it

because it is an absolute assault on ourselves. There is no need to

mediate such a desire through an unfounded claim about transcendental

goods and evils or a conceptualization of the nonhuman; it is one

immediately felt.

The flattening of living ground into dead, uniform parking plots is the

flattening of our affect. The mediation of our lives through

representations is a stifling of creativity and dreams. The denuding and

toxification of the biosphere is the restriction of our lives and the

narrowing of possibilities. Our sorrow and rage is not directed at some

essential metaphysical Other that attacks Nature; it is directed at an

immediate mutilation of our experience, of ourselves.

[1] Stirner writes, for instance, when imagining a conversation with

people who feel they need absolute values to guide them lest they merely

follow their instincts and passions and thus “do the most senseless

thing possible. – Thus each deems himself the – devil; for, if, so far

as he is unconcerned about religion, he only deemed himself a beast, he

would easily find that the beast, which does follow only its impulse (as

it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the ‘most

senseless’ things, but takes very correct steps.” Stirner, Max. The Ego

and His Own, trans. Steven T. Byington, ed. Benjamin R. Tucker, pref.

James L. Walker. New York: Benjamin R. Tucker 1907.

[2] Merlau-Ponty, Maurice. “The Visible and the Invisible: The

Intertwining—The Chiasm”.

[3] “Interview with Jason McQuinn on Critical Self-Theory”, Free Radical

Radio, 02/27/2015.

[4] See my “In Defense of the Creative Nothing” at

bellamy.anarchyplanet.org

[5] The Ego and His Own

[6] Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Prejudices of Philosophers”, Beyond

Good and Evil.

[7] Note that by Gaia Perspective, I do not mean to refer to the Gaia

Hypothesis advanced by James Lovelock

[8] Hayes, Cliff. “Slaves to Our Own Creations”, Black And Green Review,

vol. 1.

[9] Consider the recent claims by archaeologist Klaus Schmidt – leader

of the excavation of Goebekli Tepe, the earliest known human monument –

that a human turn toward religion was the beginning of Civilization as

its construction precipitated, perhaps necessitated, the domestication

of plants and animals in order to furnish the sedentary lifestyle

dictated by the construction, maintenance, and worship of the monuments.

The monuments themselves display symbols that might be interpreted as

the human domination of the nonhuman (humans holding, perhaps

controlling, various animals that might be considered dangerous) and the

triumph of patriarchy (phallocentrism).

[10] Rosset, Clément. “The Cruelty Principle”. Joyful Cruelty.

[11] Real, Terrence. I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the

Secret Legacy of Male Depression.

[12] A number of biologists dating back to the early 1900s have

discussed variants of this theory. Margulis put forth the modern

version, still controversial but widely accepted, arguing that animal

and plant cells first formed through the unification of simpler cells.

She has since argued, more controversially, that symbiogenesis ought to

be considered a major factor of evolution, influential on a par with

selection by competition.

[13] Anderson, M. Kat. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and

the Management of California's Natural Resources.

[14] Tucker, Kevin, Black And Green Forum.

[15] Zerzan, John, “Patriarchy, Civilization, And The Origins Of

Gender”.