Practical immanence: on ways of connecting

As I recently returned from a month of traveling, I found one of my plants dying. I noticed how the leaves of the dying plant were covered in black little spots. In fact, on closer inspection, I found that the leaves of almost all of my plants, in different degrees, had these black spots. These spots are the feces of thrips, an order of insects that knows many different species. In household plants they often remain unnoticed because of their small size. However, in the long run they can cause serious damage.

Thus, I come home from a long trip and I find that new creatures are living there, leaving their literal shit everywhere on my beloved plants. Nevertheless I am struck by a sense of beauty. In La vie des plantes. Une métaphysique du mélange, Emanuele Coccia writes about leaves something that relates clearly to this event of invasion:

The little green limbs that populate the planet and capture the energy of the Sun are the cosmic connective tissue that has allowed, for millions of years, the most disparate lives to cross paths and mix without melting reciprocally, one into the other.

The life that I selectively put in my room, my house, my ‘personal space’, has attracted more life, life that I would not have selected if I would have had the choice. But this is the thing about the interconnection inherent to the totality of life: it leaves no choice, it always ignores the decision of the supposedly isolated subject, of the single being. The isolated sphere that I tried to establish as my home is pierced by the biosphere. Our true place of origin, our original home that finds its place in, on, and through the surface of leaves, always already shatters the image of isolation, of being by oneself. To be alone is relative. One is always already life, hence with other life, and therefore with more life.

Something that struck me on my travels has been the openness of the people I met. Specifically their offers to, if I would ever be around in their home countries, visit them and perhaps stay a couple of nights at their place. Of course, I offered them, not just out of decency but with actually honesty, the same. My surprise is a sign that this type of trust, this type of comfort is not usual with people we have only met so briefly. While the thrips that are currently eating my plants are not as welcomed as the people I have met, I do think that my encounter with these tiny insects reflects a similar dimension of what it means to exist socially and connected. Once you surround yourself with life, like filling your house with plants, more life will inevitably follow as a result of it. All life is a portal to other life. The other is always a gateway to more others. And I believe this passing-along inherent to life, its ‘being a gateway’, manifests itself in social life. You meet people, and through them you again meet other people that, if you had not met that first stranger, you would not have met either.

Perhaps one might think that this, the simple fact that every individual being connects and can connect previously unconnected beings, that one meets others through others, is a topic too obvious to point out. However, that which is most close is often the most difficult to spot and reflect upon. And I believe that this dimension, which basically comes down to the interconnectedness of life, is not a neutral given that is always the same. Rather, the condition of this ‘being a gateway’ can differ. I will try to sketch an example. Someone that eats many different types of plants, also, as a result of that, encounters other types of life. Because I eat fruit, I will come in contact with fruit flies. Peanut butter, due to its high levels of protein and fats, tends to attract cockroaches and rodents. And if you leave crumbs on the floor of your kitchen, ants will start crawling in soon enough. Molds are also great to mention in this context. Different types of fruit grow different types of mold. While the rhizopus stolonifer tends to grow on bread, the zygophiala jamaicensis is often found on apples or grapes, whereas the botrytis cinerea is mostly spotted on strawberries. And these molds are not always invasive, but can also be invited. For example, the aspergillus oryzae is used to make foods like sake, miso, soy sauce, and gochujang. The production of blue-cheese also involves actively allowing the growth of a certain type of mold, most often the penicillium roquefort. And if someone not only consumes food but also produces it, that is, stands in relation to the living being (for example, the apple tree) for a longer amount of time (and, in this case, also takes on a function of care towards it), the amount of new connections made to other life forms increases drastically. Just think about all the insects that are potentially trying to eat your crops, or the butterflies and bees that will come once the food-producing plants grow flowers. Someone that eats less diverse will also meet less beings as a result of it. And it is not only a qualitative difference: the way in which I relate to my food makes a difference. To simply buy your food or to produce it yourself changes how many and in what type of way you encounter new beings. Or think about fermentation: I tend to ferment my vegetables often, and as a result of that I encounter many different types of (healthy) bacteria. Thus, I believe it is fair to say that the condition of our interconnectedness, the way in which we stand in connection to new others through different others, can be different. There are different modes of being interconnected. I have now focussed on sketching an image of this idea in relation to one’s diet, but it concerns all aspects of life.

An encounter with a certain being is not necessarily something good or bad. The prospect of having to fight the thrips is not a nice one (if I don’t, my plants will die from it, but thrips are notoriously hard to get rid of). I also don’t particularly enjoy finding my fresh fruits rotting away, covered in mold. Yet, I do really like, for example, fermented foods, and in general I love to just eat many different types of foods. I also love to have plants in my room, despite the ‘risks’ that come with it. It is generally known that one of the most important parts of a healthy diet is variation. And, on a different scale, biodiversity is one of the most important indicators looked at by scientists in order to measure ecosystem health. Biodiversity is also important for soil fertility, which in turn determines the success of the life trying to prosper on that land. And obviously some nuance is needed here. Not all connections are, for example, healthy for an ecosystem. Humans have brought certain species into new ecosystems, which then ended up damaging their new environment. Or think about how the corona pandemic was most likely caused by humans eating a certain type of animal, by being connected to it in a certain way. Also I want to emphasize that I do not believe health to be valuable if it only implicates more life in a strictly quantitative sense (life understood as something that ought to be preserved and saved from death at all costs is, as is well known, the primary apparatus of contemporary biopolitics). The idea of health, understood as fertility, ought to include death (as I discuss in this text). What matters is not the quantitative increase of relations, of interconnectedness, what matters is its quality, its mode of being.

A healthy diet is diverse, it implies being in contact with many different types of plants. This also implies that one meets more other forms of life that might offer practical challenges. Yet, a healthy diet also leads to a stronger immune system, hence making the ‘danger’ of unwelcome visitors less intense. That which causes the ‘problem’ also already offers the solution. On the other hand, someone that eats less diverse food, and therefore will have a significantly weaker immune system (and worse overall health) will be more susceptible for the dangers that are brought in by newcomers. The problems are often (not always, of course) less urgent, less threatening because the solution is simultaneously provided. These problems become forms of care and maintenance instead. Similarly, someone might point out how having plants might increase the risk of attracting undesired insects. And, although this is true, the solution to, for example, the thrip-problem is also offered by insects, by establishing a relation with other beings. I have ordered beneficial nematodes (a certain type of insect) that I will be able to distribute in the soil of my plants. These little helpers will eat the thrips that are destroying my plants. Using nematodes is a more expensive and more time and energy consuming method than buying an insecticide spray, which is a chemical tool that is bad for the environment. Of course, using nematodes instead of an insecticide is quite a struggle – you could say, thus, still a 'problem' (I would, as I just mentioned, prefer to call it care or maintenance) – but the overall gain (of having plants, and the benefits that come with it, of not damaging the environment with chemical tools and the benefits that come from living in a healthy environment) is eventually greater than the actual ‘problem’. Being in a relationship, or having friends, also implies certain ‘tasks’ (care), certain things that you have to do in order to maintain the relationship, care that you would not give if it was not for the greater good of that relationship. In the end, I think one can say that the mode of interconnectedness that these examples have in common is characterized by a practical immanence: the approach includes the tools to fix its inherent practical difficulties, and using these tools instead of ‘external’ resources (like chemical insecticides, chemical fertilizers, or digital means of communication), contributes to the overall health, the overall fertility of the practice, in this case our being in relation with another. It is a mode that corresponds to fertility, to a life that lives with its own death and decay, with its own negativity, immanently.

Let me jump back to my trip. The first city I visited was Milan. On my first day staying there, I decided to just leave my hostel without a phone. Disconnected, one might say. At some point I desired to see the duomo, but somehow I was not able to find it by simply roaming the streets. I decided to ask someone. I approached a stranger that apparently was taking a walk himself, and offered to walk me to it. We ended up having a long talk and even had lunch together. He told me at some point that it is possible to join the mass in the duomo, which I ended up doing the next day. It was one of the most interesting experiences of my trip, being there with this group of people in one of the most famous churches in the world, attending this liturgical ceremony performed in a language that I do not yet fully speak and understand. If I had taken my phone with me that morning, I would not have had any of these experiences. Of course, the alternative, in which I would have taken my phone and, most likely, would have spent my day alone, not taking part in the mass but rather visiting the duomo by buying a ticket, could have been a great day as well. However, the most interesting and memorable moments of my trip have happened because of the people that I met. And, many people that I have spoken to seem to agree that, while traveling alone, it just becomes so easy to meet people. I have been wondering why this is so, why this context opens up a way of connecting that feels so pleasant, easy, and natural. There seems to be a certain similarity with eating healthy, or with taking care of plants, with their particular mode of being interconnected, with their practical immanence.

To go out, alone, is to be a bit more vulnerable. What if you cannot figure out how to get from one place to the other? What if you will be lonely, or bored? And the same goes for the examples I have developed earlier: to fill your room with a lot of plants puts you at risk of encountering unwelcomed creatures. Eating more diverse, or growing your own food, will most likely put you in contact with new dangerous strangers; the apples you pick yourself might have insects in them, the vegetables you are fermenting might grow molds. Yet, again and again, it seems that the needed tools are given by the approach – although requiring some extra effort and care – and thereby generate an overall preferable way of life. What this fertile mode of interconnectedness, that hence can also characterize a way of relating to other humans,  is all about daring to be dependent on others, on unknown others. It means to, up to a certain extent, let go of preventive measures that end up isolating oneself. It is about trusting the ecosystem of others (it is, also, within the light of this discussion that we can understand the theoretical success of game theory). A smartphone is quite literally a preventive measure, something we take just in case we need it. In case we need to call someone, in case we need to navigate through a city. But this 'independence', this isolation through self-sufficiency (or rather, the commercially offered ‘self’-sufficiency) ends up polluting a sort of naturalness of our connection to all other life forms. I am not romanticizing a previous form of life without certain technologies; I value the opportunities offered by smartphones, AI, etcetera. Nor do I think that being dependent on others is in itself desirable. Yet, it seems that not being dependent on others in the sense of a community, of the other that is right in front of me, has damaged our ability to trust the collective of which we are always already a part. Today, a set of apparatuses and technologies, like money, neoliberalism, the idea of ‘authenticity’, individualism, and the internet, have a strong isolating and separating effect. If I need food, I can just put on my headphones, go to the supermarket, get my stuff and pay at the self-checkout. There is no need to interact with anyone. We are transformed into isolated consumers. This has created a new normal when it comes to security and predictability. This new normal characterized by isolation and predictability has, perhaps, made us more distrustful towards others, especially the unknown ones. It has changed our mode of interconnectedness, our mode of connecting. And while traveling, especially if you are traveling with little money, you become automatically more dependent on others, you are forced, although only a little bit, to trust the others. I noticed myself being more comfortable sleeping in hostels at the end of my trip than I was at the beginning of it. Another normal was slowly setting in. To take in and care for plants or to make and invite new friends, the same light of possibility shines from them.

Byung-Chul Han writes that

Originally, being free meant being among friends. ‘Freedom’ and ‘friendship’ have the same root in Indo-European languages. Fundamentally, freedom signifies a relationship. A real feeling of freedom occurs only in a fruitful relationship – when being with others brings happiness.

The road to freedom, the road to happiness, lies with the others. Any attempt to disable the self-destructive forces that define our times must confront the way in which we connect to others. And in relation to that, it seems to me that one of the most important tasks of thought today is to rethink (and critique) the notion of isolation (and hence of alienation) without thereby establishing a final identity or vocation of the human being.