Journal Entry — Continuum Thinking

Lately I've been sitting with an idea that keeps gaining resolution the more I interrogate it: most things in biology (and in life) exist on continuums, but our intuition forces them into binaries.

Reading Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake describes the relationship between plants and mycorrhizal fungi as a trade network operating underneath the forest floor. The mechanics matter, especially for the point I’m building toward.

How the Trade Actually Works

Plants produce sugars through photosynthesis.
Fungi can’t do that — but they are expert miners of soil nutrients.

At the root–fungus interface, an exchange occurs:

Plants supply carbon (sugars).
Fungi supply minerals, nitrogen, phosphorus, and water.

This trade is context-dependent, not fixed:

A thriving plant provides more sugar.
A fungus in a nutrient-rich zone provides more minerals.
A stressed fungus or plant may offer less.
Sometimes the trade is delayed: the fungus supplies nutrients now, and the plant “pays” later when conditions improve.

Merlin calls this deferred reciprocity — essentially, get now, pay later.

And then we reach the extreme case.

The Far End of the Continuum: Ghost Pipes

Merlin highlights white, non-photosynthesizing forest plants like Monotropa uniflora (ghost pipe).
They have completely lost the ability to produce their own sugars.

They rely entirely on fungal networks for carbon.

They sit in the "get now, get never" category.

They never repay the fungal network, yet the system tolerates them.
These plants persist because the network absorbs their cost.

This is an important structural insight about biological systems.

This Maps Cleanly Onto Human Systems

Humans aren’t physically connected like fungi, but our extended phenotype — tools, communication systems, institutions, infrastructure — creates a functional network.

Inside that network we also observe:

Fair trade
Credit
Debt
Donation
Persistent freeloaders
Communities that tolerate freeloaders

The rules repeat across scales.

A wealthy human is more likely to donate.
A nutrient-rich fungal network is more more likely to support freeloaders.
A poor human can still donate; it’s just rarer.
A stressed fungus can still support a parasitic plant; it’s rarer.

The continuum holds.

A Deeper Question: Do Fungi Have Emotions?

The standard answer is no — emotion is too human a concept.

But this falls apart when you examine the underlying mechanism.

At the systems level, emotion is simply a state change that biases behavior.

In humans: hormones, neurotransmitters, neural circuits.
In fungi: ion flux, membrane potential shifts, chemical gradients.

Both systems follow the same logic:

Stimulus → internal shift → altered pattern of action

Humans call some of these shifts empathy.
But fungi exhibit a structurally equivalent pattern: they provide more support when conditions allow it.

This is functional empathy, not subjective empathy.

Consciousness Is a Separate Layer

Humans have two layers:

Emotional function (state transitions)
Emotional experience (awareness of those states)

Fungi clearly have at least the first.
Whether they have any form of subjective experience is an open question, but the absence of a brain doesn’t automatically imply the absence of internal states — only that their states use a different chemistry.

My Working Conclusion

We don’t need to strip emotion from fungi. In fact, for my research , for now, Im going to assume they have them. In my thinking I just need to seperate

emotional experience, from
emotional function.

Humans have both.
Fungi (I think) might at least one - and potentially some early analogue of the other that we simply lack the tools or conceptual framework to detect.

Emotion, in this general sense, is not a human invention.
It’s a biological strategy.

And regardless of species, the same rule keeps emerging:

Generosity increases with abundance.
Generosity decreases with scarcity.
There is always variability and exceptions.

Trade, debt, donation — these are not human constructs but part of the deep grammar of life.

Once I allow fungi their own internal world — not as inferior organisms but as differently organized — the analogy stops being metaphorical and becomes structural. It’s the same logic expressed through different bodies.

Maybe empathy is not uniquely human at all, but a universal algorithm expressed through different chemistries.