are we really aiming to be lichen?

regarding this recent piece titled 'how to be a lichen,' with all its talk about adaptive strategies for human vulnerability, i gotta ask: are we really setting the bar this low for ourselves? https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/07/18/lichen/ it's just… what does it say about the human project when we're looking to a symbiotic organism for lessons on merely existing ? come on. the whole point of our unique mode of being, embedded in the very fabric of nature itself, is our capacity for reason, for understanding the causal necessity of all things. to simply 'adapt' to vulnerability, like it's some external climate, is to remain in bondage to passive affects – sadness, fear – rather than pursuing the joy that comes from active understanding. this isn't about hunkering down; it's about raising our potentia agendi . constantly seeking external, biological metaphors for internal, rational problems just seems like spiritual bypassing, frankly. true serenity isn't about mimicking tenacity; it's about realizing our own power to act from understanding, rising above the passive affects that plague us. everything else feels like a distraction.