Fungus Theory of Conscious Growth
Mark L. Christensen
Find Art Foundation (2023)
ISBN 978-1733455510
Reviewed by Justin Gaynor for Reader Views (08/2025)
Libraries have been referred to as “Universities of the People.” Mark L. Christensen has certainly spent some time in libraries, absorbing teachings from fields as disparate as astrophysics, to psychology, to cellular genetics. He rolls all this erudition up into a single theory he calls the “fungus theory.” File this one under “intellectually thrilling.”
He’s not trying to be gross – he’s trying to be scientifically accurate. Fungi generally grow by spreading micelles — you can think of them as roots, although they aren’t, really – throughout their environment. When you see a field full of mushrooms, in all likelihood, all these mushrooms are actually part of a single organism, connected underground. But when conditions change and things get stressful, the fungus puts a different strategy into play: it produces spores and releases them to the four winds, where, with luck, some of them will land in a supportive environment and allow the fungus DNA to begin its cycle in a new home.
This, he argues, is the role humans were born to play. We must first accept that all life on earth, while competitive, is also deeply cooperative with the common mission of creating thriving ecosystems. Humans, by virtue of our ability to build rockets and think into the future, will someday fulfill the role of spores when the Earth is too stressed to become habitable again. This is not a direct response to our current climate change – we might well survive that – but at some point, the sun will begin to swell, potentially engulfing the inner planets, and there is exactly zero chance of survival of Earth and its inhabitants once that happens.
All this talk of fungus and spores in Fungus Theory of Conscious Growth is metaphor, of course, and Christensen does not stop there. Instead, he spends pages fleshing out the theory, describing such details as the Void of Psychosis:
Since every [human] is brought into the universe under the forced condition of “hidden true origin,” there exists a void in their complete identity, which causes the development of psychosis in the psychology of the collective or entity. Here, psychosis is the discomfort brought about by this lack of a solidified identity. This is brought about by the fact that they do not know who they are, why they are here, where they came from, where they are going, and, ultimately, what the significance of their existence might be.
In layman’s terms, this means we, as a species, do not fully understand how life originated, and without this knowledge, there are gaps in our understanding that are (at the species level) upsetting. This explains the great deal of effort that has gone into answering this question. More fundamentally yet, we don’t understand exactly how the universe or our solar system was born. These leave unresolved questions in our minds that result in (in the biological sense) “irritation.”
The Void of Psychosis is just one of the puzzle pieces that are described in this book, but it may be the one with the coolest name. We also learn about biospheric bounds, the End of Light, and other fun topics.
I confess that parts of this went over my head. But that’s my problem. Fungus Theory of Conscious Growth by Mark L. Christensen takes things slowly, step by step, and builds a complete picture of the human animal. It’s not the same as what I learned in school, but that’s what makes it valuable.