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218 sats \ 1 reply \ @pillar 23 Mar \ on: Some thoughts on Mike Tyson as meta-organism mostly_harmless
If we are going for biological metaphors, rather than a meta-organism, I would describe your observation as Tyson engaging in a symbiotic relationship with the environment.
There are many cases in nature of beings that survive only due to peculiar relationship with other beings in their environments. Odd relationships, many times mutually beneficial. Other times, the benefit only goes one way, but the free-loaders will typically aid the environment at large by containing the development of their victims.
That metaphor works, but I like it less well bc Tyson + his local ecosystem are, collectively, a kind of thing that is fundamentally different than their constituent elements -- it's not just a fish that gets the benefit of less fungus and some hangers on that get a meal, this cluster of people, w/ Tyson at their core, have become emergent as the system-of-Tyson and are, collectively, doing and experiencing things that would be otherwise unattainable to their component elements.
Or so I'm hypothesizing, anyway. I'm mostly talking out of my ass, since I don't actually know anything about the Tyson ecosystem other than pieces of it that existed over the years, e.g., Don King. Still, the effects are familiar.
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