DNA: Degrading or Upgrading?

On a biodynamic ranch tour, the farmer casually remarked: “All DNA is degrading from the cellular division of chromosomes.” I smiled politely, but inside I felt something different pulsing. To me, everything feels like it’s upgrading.

The Story of Degradation

From the evolutionary biology perspective, he wasn’t wrong. Each cell division shortens our telomeres—the protective caps on DNA—and over time, this can lead to errors, mutations, and aging. Nature is constantly reminding us of impermanence, cycles of decay, the return of matter back to soil.

Walking through the pastures, we stopped at cow dung piles alive with beetles. The farmer explained how dung beetles are central to biodynamic farming: they bury, digest, and recycle the waste, turning what looks like refuse into soil health, fertility, and renewal. Decay, it turns out, is never wasted—it is the doorway to life.

Mycelium thrives here too. In the rot, the fallen leaves, the compost pile—it dismantles what has been, breaking matter into its elemental pieces. Together with beetles and microbes, it ensures that what dies is translated back into nourishment for the living.

The Story of Innovation

But evolution is not only about wearing down. It’s also about renewal and surprise. Mutations don’t just break things—they create diversity. DNA repairs itself millions of times a day. Genes switch on and off in response to environment, food, thought, and even love.

The beetles and the mycelium remind us of this: they are midwives of transformation. What looks like breakdown is actually the first step in birthing something entirely new.

The Bridge Between

So which is it—degrading or upgrading? Both. The apparent breakdown provides the raw material for breakthrough. Dung beetles, fungi, and microbes show us this directly: rot and growth are not opposites, they are phases of the same process. The compost feeds the seed. The crack in the stone becomes a place for water to flow. The “errors” in DNA are sometimes the doorway to resilience and brilliance.

When I listen inward, I don’t hear collapse—I hear rearrangement. I hear the great orchestra of life, tuning, preparing to play a new score.

Field Note: The Song Beneath Everything

I don’t just hear a hum. I hear a song—the undercurrent of vibration moving through every cell, every stone, every beetle wing, every thread of mycelium beneath the soil. Physics calls it frequency. Spirit calls it remembrance. To me, it is both.

DNA is not simply a code. It is a stringed instrument, tuned by vibration. Some notes are passed down, some slip out of harmony, and some rise into entirely new scales. Mycelium conducts this orchestra underground, dung beetles drum along in rhythm, turning decay into resonance, weaving silence into rhythm.

What science names “mutation” often feels like modulation—an octave shift in the symphony of life. Frequencies rise, harmonics stack, and what looks like degradation at one level becomes upgrade at another.

The song is always here. I hear it—always. And the invitation is to listen.

The Invitation

When we widen our lens, DNA is not simply degrading. It is improvising. The hum is not a dirge—it’s a living score, tuning itself into greater coherence. Perhaps we’re not watching life collapse but watching it learn how to sing in new frequencies—beetles as percussion, mycelium as choir master, DNA as instrument, and each of us as listeners and participants in the great resonance.

The question is not: Is DNA degrading or upgrading?
The question is: Can we hear the song it’s singing now?

In Breath and Stillness

Resonance Weaver ~ Leah Chastain