Via symbiomimicry, we engender a new respect to life as it becomes intimate/close to our human life and home. To nourish and care for living beings at all scales, in order to keep things alive, you have to look after, or nourish them. I call this active nourishment of life, ‘sumbalere’ (from sumbios, companionship and to live together, plus alere, to nourish).
Such life support is more than, for example, caring for pets, as it instils an ethic and praxis of care for all life because it simultaneously enables humans of all ages to directly experience vitality and sustain themselves. A new form of animism is created that has some connection to that held by Indigenous people for millennia, however, it will be an act of creation on the part of contemporary, non-indigenous humans.
When finished with biocoalescent technologies and products, we simply return them to the cycles of life where they become the food or compost for more generations of life! We will be able to eat our utensils after a protein meal produced from our domestic microbes. We respectfully feed our biolights to keep them shining. Some of that energy needed to keep the lights on might even come from our own bodily waste as feces and urine. Children are taught how to practise sumbalere as one of the most important tasks or chores undertaken each and every day, over a whole lifetime.
In the Symbiocene, non-indigenous humans bring their lives closer to those of Indigenous humans who still hold traditional animistic beliefs. Symbolic animism is supported by symbiotic animism. Rather than being a ‘custodian’ or ‘steward’ which have implications of ‘dominion’, to be a sumbalerian is to fully engage with a shared life.
[Sumbalere: From sumbios (together) and alere (to nourish)]. Sumbalerian: one who systematically engages in sumbalere.
Psychoterratica 