"Braiding Sweetgrass" is a wonderful book, the kind that's best digested a few pages at a time. (h/t Erik Assadourian). In it, the author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, happily moves back and forth from the uses of her Native American ancestors and her knowledge as biologist. She never uses the concept of "holobiont," but the book teems of holobionts on almost every page.
I am about halfway through it, and the book remains full of surprises. Here is what I read this morning, while drinking my coffee. It is about how the ancient Native Americans had found a way to optimize their plots of land by planting together three different seeds: corn, beans, and squash, poetically referred to as the "Three Sisters." Kimmerer goes on describing the details of exquisitely intricate ways in which these three species collaborate with each other, maximizing the supplying of nutrients to all three. She says.
"It’s tempting to imagine that these three are deliberate in working together, and perhaps they are. But the beauty of the partnership is that each plant does what it does in order to increase its own growth. But as it happens, when the individuals flourish, so does the whole. In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies."
This short movie, Vikaari, has recently appeared on the "Dust" site and I think has several interesting features, relevant to the concept of holobionts.
It is very well done as a movie, although it is deeply contradictory in many aspects. For one thing, it is a narrative disaster. First, the movie tells you that the Vikaari, children born without a visible iris in the eyes, are good people, and the target of Nazi-like bad guys. Then, we see the Vikaari killing their pursuers using their psychokinetic powers in bloody and cruel ways, apparently without any regret. Needless to say, this completely destroys the narrative tension of the movie and leaves you totally baffled about what the filmmakers wanted to say.
Indeed, I think the filmmakers were badly confused on several planes. First of all, in their decision of presenting this "new race" of children as something that will replace current human beings, engaged in destroying their own planet. Is this a hope or a fear? Difficult to say, but surely evolution doesn't work in that way.
And then, why the choice of iris-less eyes as a defining mark? Most people rarely consciously perceive the characteristics of the irises of their fellow human beings. But the shape of the iris tells us much of the genetic inheritance of a person -- on this point, the film-makers got it right, although in reverse. A human being without a visible iris is not a modern human.
The iris is an easily modified, highly visible human trait. There is a whole genetic story in the human iris. From what we can say, light-colored eyes have been rare, although DNA studies indicate that they did exist in the Mesolithic period. Curiously, Europe is the continent where, nowadays, light-colored eyes are most common. But it is only a few centuries ago that light-colored irises start to appear in paintings. If they had existed before, surely painters would have noted them and shown them in their paintings. Green eyes are a modern trait in Europe, they seem to come from Northern Asia. They do spread easily because they are a typical "epigamic" trait. They give a certain advantage in the sexual competition for mates.
And then, there are limbal rings. The dark ring that surrounds the iris. Also a typical epigamic signal, they are likely to be a feature of the modern main organism of the human holobionts. Here you see the eyes of Sarah Brightman, a modern human specimen, notable for their light green color and well detectable limbal rings. As epigamic signals go, Ms. Brightman is surely beaming them out loud and clear!
Note the difference from other mammalian eyes. Most animals, even our close relatives, the apes, have dark eyes, no limbal rings, and not even a large and well detectable sclera. You see it in the image: this (probably) female bonobo doesn't look at all like Sarah Brightman, although she also surely sends powerful epigamic signals to the males of her species.
So, why do the Vikaari of the movie have no irises and no pupil? They are, actually, the specular version of the "black eyed people," characters of a recent horror movie. In both cases, filmmakers understood that the lack of sclera or of the iris is a characteristic of a creature that is not fully human. A new species (as in Vikaari) or an otherworldly evil creature (as in "black eyed creatures"). No wonder that regular humans react with great perplexity and sometimes violently. And their violence is reciprocated in Vikaari.
The existence of these films shows our limited understanding, and also limited tolerance, of what makes humans human. A small difference in the extent of the sclera or in the color of the iris is sufficient to turn otherwise fully human creatures into enemies, at least in these fiction pieces. But we all know very well that it happens also in the real world for other, no more important genetic traits, such as skin color.
There is a thin line that separates the horrible from the attractive: nobody would be killed for having green eyes, but the white-eyed Vikaari could be if they existed for real. But that's the way evolution works. Sometimes gradually, sometimes in bumps. The human holobiont of the future will not be the same as it is now and it was in the past. It is the giant holobiont that we call the ecosphere that changes all the time. Onward, fellow holobionts!
Finally, for your curiosity, the "Statue of a Standing Nude Goddess," presently at the Louvre Museum and coming from excavations in the Middle East. Note the eyes without irises. It is not clear if that was a bug or a feature: once they had decided to use rubies for the eyes of this statuette, there was no way they could have shown irises or pupils. But maybe it was intentional: this figure may have been supposed to be somewhat otherworldly or even threatening. Note the horns on her head, a typical attribute of the Moon Goddess. Already at the time when it was made, probably the 2nd century CE, goddesses were rather unpopular and suspicious, not unlike our modern witches.
I don't think I'll engage in commenting the details of this story by Jenny Jinya, the young German lady who has been creating incredible stories (see here, here and here.). After all, we all know that the way to boredom lies in telling the details. But try to take a look at this story. It is not just a moving story, it has an unbelievable depth. It resonates of so many motives and ideas that are part of human history that it left me breathless: the Goddess, Death, the Otherworld, kindness, piety, benevolence, mercy, and much more.
But the bewildering element of this story is how all these things are linked together. Jenny Jinya has truly understood how the universe works: life and death need each other and neither could exist alone. The holobiont concept is not just about symbiosis, it is about communication. And the universe is a giant holobiont that moves, changes, grows, shrinks, expands, returns, and restarts, all because its elements communicate with each other and the result is the never-ending cycle of life and death. Sometimes, we use the term "love" for this kind of communication and it is truly the most powerful force in the universe.
What could be more holobiontic than this? Words of Suzanne Simard, as reported by the New York times.
“I think these trees are very perceptive,” she said. “Very perceptive of who’s growing around them. I’m really interested in whether they perceive us.” I asked her to clarify what she meant. Simard explained that trees sense nearby plants and animals and alter their behavior accordingly: The gnashing mandibles of an insect might prompt the production of chemical defenses, for example. Some studies have even suggested that plant roots grow toward the sound of running water and that certain flowering plants sweeten their nectar when they detect a bee’s wing beats. “Trees perceive lots of things,” Simard said. “So why not us, too?”
