We are Systems, Not Categories

I recently learned a new word: holobiont. A holobiant is an animal or plant and all the symbiotic microorganisms living on or inside it, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses. I'm one, you're one. "We ourselves are not singular," writes Rebecca Solnit in her new book The Beginning Comes After the End, "each of us, but plural, a cooperative community. About half the cells in our body do not have human DNA, and your gut, skin, mouth, and many other parts of you are populated places. These are the strains of bacteria and other microbes crucial to your digestion, immune health, and other functions, and they make you a plural being, a lurching collective of mutual beneficial entities."In other words, we are no the individual, independent entities our culture tells us we are, but rather a system of cooperation and agreement, that is likewise a part of wider systems. Even our minds, this seemingly central thing that we often identify as our self, is created by this interconnected system of…