We Must Risk New Shapes

Advances in evolutionary science have revealed that biological novelty is created by horizontal fusions between species and between bodies. One being’s lack is not so much a disability as it is an invitation to corporally collaborate with another species. Resilient ecosystems and species emerge from places of physical overlap. In a culture that prizes the individual, what health and resilience have we denied ourselves? Is it possible that there are better futures visible only from the vantage point of symbiotic collaboration? Symbiosis is always fraught. You leave behind a recognizable shape. But, in a moment of extinction and climate collapse, we need to escape the shipwreck of the singular. I want to offer that becoming new is never safe. Survival is never safe. It is always a breach. A break in the skin. It is a leap across the abyss. It is the moment you leap into another body.