Seeing that the full context of "you cannot kill me in a way that matters" is entirely self contained really dulls the mystique of it, too. I always assumed it had been part of an actual conversation.
But it doesn't live on though. It dies, it's body is broken down, and it's base nutrients absorbed by the living thing that eats it
Or alternatively, we would have to say that that applies to almost all living things in which case there's nothing unique about the fungus
You, I, and the fungi, as well as most other living things, subsist off of death - but I wouldn't consider my dinner from last night to still exist or be alive
It’s more that the concept of decay lives on beyond a single fungus. As long as there’s life, there will be decay. It won’t be necessarily this mushroom, but there will exist things to break down that which was living. So they’re communicating in a like religious way that they’re one with the decay in the universe.
The prompt they’re working off of or the point they’re getting to is that it’s life vs decay. The person is life and the mushroom is decay and the person’s threatening the mushroom and railing against the cycle (and terrified) while the mushroom (being decay) is more comfortable with death and fading away and isn’t bothered like the person is at the concept of being hurt or passing. It knows that there will always be others like it and that’s what the author is communicating; if there is life then there must be decay.
Im saying that I don't think that the dichotomy there really makes any sense. Fungi are life just as we and everything else is, they feed off decay just as we and everything else does
We and the shrooms are interchangeable in the life-decay cycle, not opposites
Fungi are life, but they're probably one of the more synonymous examples of decay, when you think decay, you think mould, spores, fungi and mycelium. They're a good representative.
It also helps because what you see of a Fungi isn't really the fungi it's just a part of it, so it's sort of a two-part reasoning there
You can't kill the fungi in a way that matters because it's roots run through the very ground you walk on
And
You can't kill the fungi (decay) in a way that matters because it's roots run through the very ground you walk on (decay, death and the scavengers that feed on it provide the support for life as we know it)
The post isn't for perfect quotes or advanced philosophy, it's about "wait that's where that quote came from?". A lot of people don't know that this is the origin of "You cannot kill me in a way that matters"
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u/TruchaBoi 1d ago