The Poetics of Ecology: A conversation with Andreas Weber

 "Today I would say we’re individuals because we’re colonies. My teacher, Francisco Varela, coined this beautiful phrase. He said, ‘as organisms, we are a meshwork of selfless selves’. We’re ecosystems. This microbial ecosystem inside of you is in constant dialogue with the ecosystem(s) outside of you. Your gut biota are continuously replenished by the stuff you eat because it’s full of bacteria. Your skin microbiome deposits itself on everything you touch. If you touch somebody, you exchange microbiomes. You don’t have a border. To think so is another bourgeois Western illusion. In actuality, you’re constantly blurring with the animate world around you. This is the ‘conversational nature of reality’ the poet David Whyte talks about. 

Do you know why you find this unnerving? Because it shows you that you’re really this world around you, and one day you will be again, only you’ll be an ecosystem without an individual. We go back to the soil from which we came – few living in modern cultures appreciate the extraordinary beauty of such a truth. It’s unnerving because it’s about losing control, and our civilisation is terrified of that. It’s also about paradox. You’re not allowed to  decide if you’re a colony or an individual; you’re both. Isn’t that very much about being open to difference and otherness?"