eSOM
The Road to D, or the Story of Singularity High School (SHS) and Cowa
eSOM: The Road to D (99) Ecoversities, Myanmar, the Armenian Genocide, and the Optimism withe Sorrow
“eSOM: The Road to D,” Part II (36)
11/17-19/2025
1．
“It is about giving an overcoat to a neighbor freezing in the darkness..”
He didn’t say that exactly.
“He” is my mentor, Harry Harootunian.
About Harry Harootunian:
Harry was my supervisor in the Ph.D. program (Department of History) at New York University (NYU).
Not only that, but it was his former students (William Haver, Naoki Sakai) who supported me—a person on ‘the path to D’ and something of an eccentric—even since my undergraduate days.
Considering all of this, I owe who I am today entirely to Harry.
On August 15, 2002, I left New York City (NYC), where I had lived for six years, and traveled to San Diego, California, the location of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), my first posting as a university professor.
It was just before I left when I visited his office.
As I was about to leave his office, Harry asked me, “By the way, do you not want this leather jacket that has been left here for so long?”
Since I had brought various things, from food to clothes, into his office, where our seminar was held, and left them there since I first became his student, I had completely forgotten about the leather jacket.
When I hesitated, having already finished packing for my move to one of the world’s leading resort destinations, Harry asked me, “If you don’t want it, I’d like to give it to a homeless person living on the streets around here. Is that okay?”
The memories of my time in NYC with Harry and Ken Chester Kawashima (currently a professor at the University of Toronto), another one of Harry’s students, are a symbol of “happiness” for me.
The climax of that memory is this farewell scene with Harry, where he tries to “give an overcoat to a neighbor freezing in the darkness.”
In this way, the event in the middle of NYC twenty-three years ago and the mysterious space-time in the forest outside Bangkok were connected through “the voice of the Buddha/Spinoza.”
2.
Immediately after I encountered (or thought I encountered) the Buddha, when I listened to the line “It is about giving an overcoat to a neighbor freezing in the darkness” from the final scene of Spinoza’s Clinic on Audible (see eSOM 98), I instantly remembered this farewell scene with Harry.
Then, what I had learned at this gathering (highlights) and what I had learned from Harry began to connect one after another (I think the “encounter” with the Buddha was in the early hours of the 10th).
Especially what I learned from Naw Lai from Myanmar, one of the participants in the gathering.
I believe the first time I spoke with Naw Lai was during breakfast on the second day (the 8th).
Naw Lai is from Myanmar but is currently based at the Panya Project, “an intentional community focusing on natural building, permaculture education and self empowerment,” located in Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second-largest city.
The community aims to learn about natural building and ways of life (permaculture) that coexist with nature, and to empower individuals by drawing out their inherent strengths.
About The Panya Project (English only):
For those who find it difficult to grasp the image from this description, you can provisionally recognize it as an organization that shares many commonalities with the “Mamena Project,” a partner of the Cowa Group, and the Ayni Institute, which aims to train the producers of the world which is based on Kojin Karatani’s (Mode of Exchange) D.
About the “Mamena Project” (Japanese only):
About the Ayni Institute (English only):
Based in this community, Naw Lai actively participates in workshops (WS) on leadership and self-empowerment.
These workshops are often held in Thailand, leading to exchanges with people from various countries, including Southeast Asian nations and China (the opportunity to talk with Naw Lai arose when he came over while I was talking to Gary from the Philippines, who met Naw Lai at another WS previously).
As I continued to talk with Naw Lai, the reason for his regular practice of permaculture (a system and philosophy for designing sustainable human living environments) at the Panya Project and his active participation in WS to learn about (self-)empowerment and leadership whenever possible became clear.
I understood that it was for the purpose of establishing jichi(自治)／autonomy—that is, (Kojin Karatani’s Mode of Exchange) D—in military-ruled Myanmar.
3.
The reason I deliberately used the word “jichi(自治)／autonomy” here is in reference to Sakae Osugi, a legendary anarcho-syndicalist that Japan is proud of, whom I revere along with the matchless genius economist Kozo Uno.
Q. Coro, please tell me in the greatest detail possible about Sakae Osugi’s concept of “jichi(自治)／autonomy,” including Osugi’s life, the meaning of anarcho-syndicalism, and the similarities between the concept of “jichi(自治)／autonomy” and Kojin Karatani’s “Mode of Exchange D.”
Osugi’s concept of “jichi(自治)／autonomy” became a great force for activities in Asia in the early 20th century to escape from colonial rule by imperialists.
Q. Coro, I hear that Sakae Osugi’s concept of “jichi(自治)／autonomy” was a major driving force for anti-colonial movements in Asia in the early 20th century. Please explain this point in the greatest detail possible, covering Korea, China, and of course, other Asian countries as well.
102 years after Osugi was assassinated by imperialists, I was reminded through this gathering that exactly the same things that happened then are happening again all over the world, including in Asia.
The symbol of this is Myanmar, and the people like Naw Lai there who aspire to “jichi(自治)／autonomy.”
The colonial rule referred to here is not limited only to colonial rule by other countries.
As Coro emphasized in the Q&A above, Osugi’s “jichi(自治)／autonomy” was originally a means of resistance against the colonization of the people by their own country (the Empire of Japan), and furthermore, it was directed at oneself—the act of colonizing oneself along with the imperialists.
Given this, an education in (self-)empowerment and leadership can be said to aim at one’s own de-colonization.
4.
Naw Lai, who made me realize these things, says that “protecting seed diversity” is central to his activities.
He says this is because seeds, the source of crops, are the source of human existence, and thus, the right to existence itself.
Q. Coro, please explain the concept of the “right to existence” in the greatest detail possible, paying particular attention to its historical development, philosophical background, global autonomy movements since the early 20th century, and its relationship with the philosophy of Michel Foucault and modern anarchist movements.
The background to the attempt to protect seed diversity as the right to existence itself is the current situation where the state (the subject of Mode of Exchange B) and capital (the subject of Mode of Exchange C) are seizing land in rural Myanmar (I will deliberately not be specific), forcing the cultivation of only specific crops that serve solely their own profit, and stripping the people of Myanmar of their sole means of sustenance, which is seed diversity.
I learned at this gathering that the practice of permaculture, which cultivates the indispensable abilities and qualities for establishing autonomy (self-empowerment, leadership) through the attempt to protect seed diversity, is the only option for overcoming the impending crisis to their existence and somehow living happily.
Q. Coro, it has been a long time since (self-)empowerment education and leadership education, integrated with ecological movements centered on permaculture, have been gaining global momentum. Please discuss this global trend in the greatest detail possible, paying attention to the chronology.
It must be argued that the situation Myanmar is facing is essentially the exact same as that for the majority of people in countries such as China, Japan, and Western nations.
Those countries are merely skilled at blinding the majority of people to that reality (where education and commercial entertainment play a large role).
I will reserve that discussion for the next time, and conclude this time, as in the beginning, with a story about Harry.
Harry sent the following message for the opening of our Singularity High School in April of this year (bold):
I have long believed that the singular and imperishable purpose of education has been–and continues to be–to teach children how to read and think critically. I am convinced that this educational practice is universally true for institutions in the West as it is for Asia and Japan. A close and cherished Japanese friend, no longer with us, once wrote that there is no criticism in Japan. What he meant was that there was no educational program that concentrated on emphasizing the teaching of critical thinking. Whether or not this was a prescient insight, it brought and keeps before us the vital importance of knowing how to think critically, which is, after all, the source of creativity. I would think that the project of teaching children how to think critically should be the principal mission of Singularity High School.
Harry Harootunian, Max Palevsky Professor History, Emeritus University of Chicago
I believe that Naw Lai’s thinking described above is exactly what Harry calls critical thinking.
Since it is always accompanied by action, following the analogy of computational thinking being called computational action, let us call it critical action.
We at Singularity High School (SHS) and the Cowa Group to which SHS belong must nurture people who can engage in critical action, like Naw Lai and many other participants of the gathering.
Harry, who let me do whatever I wanted, was strict only about whether I was engaging in critical action, including what I wrote.
Such a view of education held by Harry is integrated with a historical reality that most of us are not even aware of, yet is surprisingly drawing many people into its vortex.
In Harry’s case, that is the Armenian Genocide that occurred in the early 20th century.
His parents were survivors of this genocide.
Q. Coro, please tell me in the greatest detail possible about the Armenian Genocide that occurred in the early 20th century.
Harry recently published a memoir about his parents who lived through the Armenian Genocide, so please read it: The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and Its Unaccounted Lives (Duke University Press, 2019)
This gathering in Thailand reminded me that the ethics of “giving an overcoat to a neighbor freezing in the darkness” and education aimed at acquiring critical action are two sides of the same coin as this unspeakable historical reality.
Humans are creatures of forgetfulness.
In fact, I had forgotten about the Rohingya Genocide until I met Naw Lai this time, despite meeting a Rohingya student who survived the massacre and came to Canada via a refugee camp along the Thai border while I was teaching at a Canadian university, and having been greatly concerned about the incident.
Q. Coro, please tell me in the greatest detail possible about the Rohingya Genocide.
I believe that Ecoversities, as a place of true education, is a space for ensuring we do not forget the similar historical realities happening around the world, and for thinking and acting together based on them.
We at the Cowa Group sincerely wish to be such a place, too.
In connection with the Ecoversities founded by Manish, what Harry built, and Audrey’s DD.
Just one last thing.
This gathering reminded me of one more important thing related to Harry and Osugi.
The participants of the gathering, led by the organizer Manish, are each facing serious problems and aiming to overcome them, but they are incredibly cheerful and optimistic.
Harry and Osugi were also like that.
I believe this is the “optimism with sorrow” that Japanese thinker Yutaka Nagahara saw within Antonio Negri.
To be a human being who constantly carries the ethics of “giving an overcoat to a neighbor freezing in the darkness” and the “optimism with sorrow,” and practices critical action alongside people who are constantly in the midst of massacres and their precursors happening somewhere in the world.
To strive to be such a person oneself, to become a comrade of such people, and to increase the number of such comrades worldwide.
That is Ecoversities, and we at the Cowa Group wish to be a part of it.
(To be continued)
