eSOM
The Road to D, or the Story of Singularity High School (SHS) and Cowa
eSOM: The Road to D (98) Ecoversities, AI, Buddha, Spinoza’s Ethics, Audrey Tang’s “6-Pack of Care”
eSOM: The Road to D Part 2 (35)
11/15~16/2025
1．
In the last part of the previous post (eSOM 97), I discussed the connection between Ecoversities and DD through the utilization of D/⿻ as technē (Heidegger), and the production of D resulting from this connection.
eSOM (97) is here:
(English)
(Japanese)
Just as I was about to post this to our WhatsApp group for the current gathering, Wendy May, one of the participants, posted the following YouTube video:
Staying Human and Sovereign in the Age of AI
Immediately after, I also posted my text with the comment, “This may or may not resonate with Wendy’s post above. It should since, although I haven’t watched her video yet, I already feel a good vibe.”
Soon after, I started listening to her video on my way to school and immediately realized my intuition was correct.
Her writing about this gathering, posted along with the video, was also wonderful, and I immediately subscribed to her series on Substack, “Maybe We.”
On the last day of the gathering, Manish asked me, “What were the highlights of this gathering?”
Encountering the contents Wendy produces was definitely one of them.
Especially Wendy’s video about AI mentioned above, as discussed last time, will surely become a force for producing DD based on the “light” of D/⿻ shining from the “great chasm (cliff, crack)” between Ecoversities and DD (regarding “light,” refer to around 9:00 in Good Enough Ancestor).
Good Enough Ancestor
Now, let me answer Manish’s question, “What were the highlights of this gathering?”
When he asked me on the last day, I replied, “There are so many, I’ll write about them and send it to you later.”
Now that the fatigue from the trip has subsided, I clearly understand what the most important “highlight of highlights” was.
I will write about that this time.
The venue for this gathering, the Mabu Ueang Agri-Nature Center (MUANC), is located in a forest.
MUANC’s HP is here:
The center is very large, and even going to the toilet is quite an effort.
There was a toilet in our room, but I used the communal toilet outside so as not to wake my four roommates.
That wasn’t the only reason I used the communal toilet, which was a few minutes’ walk away.
Our room was near a temple, and to get to the communal toilet, I had to pass through the temple grounds.
Ever since arriving on the night of the 6th (Thursday), I had felt a mysterious power throughout MUANC, centered on the temple, and I went outside around 3:00 AM with the expectation that something good might happen.
On my way back from the toilet, there was a lit-up golden statue of Buddha, and I stared at the Buddha for a while.
Afterward, as I was about to open the screen door to enter my room, a figure in robes, looking exactly like the Buddha statue I had just been gazing at, appeared from the darkness!
However, I wasn’t particularly surprised; I thought it was only natural (though I might have just been half-asleep), so I went straight to bed and started listening to a novel on Audible as usual to fall asleep.
(It was only after waking up in the morning and remembering this “figure in robes” that I thought, “That must have been the Buddha! This is a big deal!” When I told my roommate, he informed me, “That’s the monk who lives next door.” The adjacent room was usually locked, so I had assumed no one lived there. By the way, our room didn’t have a lock, as we were told, “There’s no need to worry about theft here at all.”)
While casually thinking, “I just passed by the Buddha,” I started listening to the continuation of Sosuke Natsukawa’s Spinoza’s Clinic on Audible.
What I started listening to right after encountering (what I thought was) the Buddha was the climax of the novel.
The following quote (bold) is what the protagonist, Dr. Tetsuro, who reveres Spinoza, says to his assistant Minami after one of his patients passes away.
I heard these words as the words of the Buddha who had (I thought) just appeared in front of me:
“I try not to think… was this for the best?”
Tetsuro, walking ahead, continued.
“I’d like to tell them with confidence that it was for the best, but medicine isn’t that easy, and my heart isn’t that strong. So, there’s always only one thing I can say.”
Tetsuro stopped and looked up at the high, clear sky.
“You truly endured so much.”
The short words rose into the sky and vanished.
Tetsuro remained still, narrowing his eyes against the sunlight.
A breeze from the threshold season, where summer and autumn merged, drifted softly between them. Somewhere, faintly, the ring of a bicycle bell echoed and faded away.
“You know, Dr. Minami,” Tetsuro suddenly said.
“I don’t have much expectation or hope for medicine.”
The abrupt words echoed in the alley.
Minami didn’t flinch. She just listened silently.
“It might be wrong for a doctor to say this, but I believe the power of medicine is truly minuscule. Humans are hopelessly fragile creatures, and the world is relentlessly merciless and cruel. I was made to realize that painfully when I cared for my sister at her deathbed.”
Pausing slightly,”However,” Tetsuro continued.
“But that doesn’t mean we should be overwhelmed by helplessness. My sister taught me that too. The world is full of things we can’t change, but there are still things we can do.”
Tetsuro’s dispassionate voice gradually gained strength.
“Because people are powerless beings, they must join hands, or they will be instantly swallowed by the merciless world. Joining hands doesn’t change the world, but it changes the scenery a little. A small light flickers for a moment in the pitch-black darkness. That light surely gives courage to someone else trembling in the dark. Perhaps people call the modest courage and peace of mind born in such a way ‘happiness’.”
He heard those words, the ones Minami had once heard in the car.
The senior doctor turned his quiet eyes to his small junior colleague.
“Don’t get it wrong, Doctor. No matter how much medicine advances, it doesn’t make humans stronger. Technology doesn’t have the power to overcome human sorrow. Courage and peace of mind won’t become available for prescription at the pharmacy. While we dream of such things, the happiness that should have been in our hands is quickly swallowed by the world and disappears. What we can do is something else. I can’t say it well, but surely it is…”
Tetsuro looked up at the sky again.
“It’s about putting an overcoat on a neighbor freezing in the dark.”
They were strange words.
Standing still, Minami couldn’t voice the feelings welling up in her chest. It wasn’t something that could be put into words anyway. She could only hear the sound of the wind and the beating of her heart.
Sosuke Natsukawa, the author of the novel titled Spinoza’s Clinic embeds Spinoza’s thought as developed in Ethics into these words of Tetsuro.
I heard those words as the voice of Buddha.
And on the final night, after being asked by Manish, “What were the highlights of this time?,” while holding hands with him and other friends tightly, surrounding Yang and singing a Hawaiian folk song (?), I certainly felt “modest courage and peace of mind” being born within me, and I felt “happiness.”
Thinking about it now, these things related to Buddha and Spinoza make perfect sense to me.
First, Kojin Karatani’s concept of “(Mode of Exchange) D,” which I understood to be a common wish among the people who participated in this gathering, is under the influence of such Spinozist thought.
Q. Coro, the quote above from Sosuke Natsukawa’s “Spinoza’s Consultation Room” apparently reflects Spinoza’s philosophy. Please explain in detail how this quote reflects Spinoza’s philosophy. Furthermore, please elaborate on the relationship between the Spinozist philosophy you discuss and Kojin Karatani’s theory of modes of exchange (especially mode of exchange D), which is influenced by Spinoza’s philosophy (the English translation follows the Japanese original).
Furthermore, I believe that if we replace “medicine” in the quote above with “AI,” it becomes Audrey Tang’s view of AI ethics and its implementation, which is influenced by both Karatani’s theory of modes of exchange and Eastern thought such as Buddhism and Taoism, and also which models itself on permaculture.
Audrey’s view of AI ethics and its implementation is shown in the text titled the “6-pack of care,” and from now on, I will remix this text from Audrey’s from the perspective I gained at this gathering.
The “6-pack of care” is here:
(English)
(Japanese)
Buddha, Manish, Spinoza, Karatani, Audrey…
I am convinced that what connects them is the “one important thing (truth)”: “to put a cloak on a neighbor freezing in the dark.”
Next time, I will talk about why that is the truth for me.
It has much to do with what I learned from my new friend, Naw Lai from Myanmar, whom I met at this gathering.
(To be continued)
