The Sukkhavipassaka

 

Attached to samādhi->


It is the aim here to ascertain the meaning of these three terms, and especially of the last with respect to the minimum of concentration (samādhi, samatha) implied by it as indispensable. The material for this inquiry is the Pali texts and their commentaries.

Samathayānika (‘one whose vehicle is quiet’): see, e.g., Visuddhimagga Ch XVIII. ‘Quiet’ (samatha) stands here for the four jhānas and four āruppas (‘Formless Attainments’).

Vipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is insight’): see, e.g., Vism Ch XVIII. ‘Insight’ here means investigation intended to lead to the attainment of the Noble Eightfold path in any one of its 4 stages.

The suddhavipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is pure insight’) in Vism Ch XVIII is probably equatable with the next.

Sukkhavipassaka (‘bare-insight worker’): see quotations in Appendix I; since the term is often used to explain the Piṭaka term paññāvimutta, an examination of the meaning of that term is required before attempting to fix a meaning for sukkhavipassaka.

As will be seen from the Sutta references summarized in Appendix I, the term paññāvimutta is given a number of widely varying descriptions. The word descriptions, rather than definitions is used purposely here; for numerous differing descriptions can, and should, be made of a single thing or person from various angles as, say, of a fig-tree from above, from the side, etc.), with different emphasis, in alternative terms, and so on; but a definition is properly only a single strict delimitation, usually of a quality or set of qualities. The Buddha makes great use of multiple descriptions as well as of definitions. (See. e.g., App. I § 8). So, taking these descriptions of the paññāvimutta as complementary and not contradictory, they can be used as the basis for ad hoc definitions, if required.

However, paññāvimutti (‘understanding-deliverance’) emerges as the particular distinctive quality (guṇa) or idea (dhamma), found in all arahantship, of being liberated by the permanent deliverance from ignorance (avijjā) given by understanding. This quality (or idea) has in itself no grades (only the four unrepeated stages of the Path—the ‘8 stages of insight’ in Vism Ch XX and XXI are not relevant here, see § 5). But in the formal statement of the 6th (supramundane) abhiññā, that is Arahantship as exhaustion of taints (see. e.g. M I 35–6 and App. I § 8), both paññāvimutti and cetovimutti (‘heart-deliverance’) appear always together.
Cetovimutti, however, alone, is the temporary liberation from need (taṇhā) provided in anyone, Arahant or ordinary man, by the eight attainments (4 jhānas and 4 āruppas ; see e.g., MN 29, and Paṭisambhidāmagga Vimokkhakathā), and at its lowers is the first jhāna. Cetovimutti thus has grades, is temporary, and is the particular field of quiet (samatha), while paññāvimutti has no grades, is permanent (in each of its four stages in its removal of ignorance) and is the particular field of knowledge of the Four Truths. In combination with cetovimutti of some grade, paññāvimutti gives the Arahant permanent unassailability to his deliverance from both ignorance and need.

Now while paññāvimutti is thus the quality (or idea), the word paññāvimutta is used of the ‘person’ (i.e., ‘type of person’) possessing that quality. Arahants, as ‘persons’ vary, not in paññāvimutti but in the grade of development of their cetovimutti, and on this general basis two kinds of Arahant are contrasted, that is, the ubhatobhāgavimutta (‘Both-Ways-Liberated’) and paññāvimutta (‘one liberated by understanding’); see MN 70, Puggalapaññatti etc.). The former, at maximum, has the highest grade of cetovimutti with the five mundane abhiññās, while the latter, at minimum, has only one or the four jhānas (this will be shown later): a possessor of the five mundane abhiññās is never, then, called a ‘paññāvimutta’ (though he of course has paññāvimutti), and one with only the jhānas for cetovimutti is never called ubhatobhāgavimutta (thought he of course has some cetovimutti). However, the two terms overlap in the intervening grades of cetovimutti (the 8 vimokkhas, 4 āruppas, etc.), and the line of demarcation varies according to the terms to the terms of description and contrast (see App. I). The lower the grade of cetovimutti the more emphasis comes to be laid on paññāvimutti, though the former is never and nowhere stated to be quite dispensable with. The paññāvimutta ‘person’ (puggala)—‘persons’ being a convention (vohāra)—is thus not strictly or uniquely definable in the way that the quality of paññāvimutti is. Hence the treatment of him by multiple descriptions.

At this point the question arises: Does the Tipiṭaka allow any interpretation of paññāvimutta to the effect that, at the very minimum, he can reach Arahantship quite without jhāna, even as a factor of the Eightfold Path? Does the Satipaṭṭhāna method suggest this?

A careful examination of the Suttas summarized in Appendix I and of other relevant Tipiṭaka passages shows quite clearly that not one of them furnishes ay information on the question: the four jhānas are not mentioned either collectively or singly in connection with paññāvimutta. In fact nowhere in the Tipiṭaka is it said that Arahantship (or any stage of the Path) can be reached without jhāna. In the particular case of the Susīma Sutta (App. I § 4) the specific omission of the jhānas from the list of attainments not necessary for the paññāvimutta is, however, particularly striking. If the Buddha intended that jhāna, too, was not necessary, why did he not say so outright, which he never did? But in other Suttas, too, such as those at SN 35:70 & 152, no mention is made of jhānas:

might that not show that the Buddha may have wanted perhaps to hint that Satipaṭṭhāna made jhāna unnecessary? Let us see. Those two Suttas do relate specifically to the fourth Satipaṭṭhāna, the contemplation of Ideas as Ideas of the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta (DN 22). And in that Sutta the Noble Eightfold Path is defined in full with sammā-samādhi (‘Right Concentration’), its eight factor, clearly and unequivocally as jhāna. That is the answer.

The Suttas’ answer to the question is thus perfectly definite:
there is no dispensing with jhāna. And this is also confirmed equally decisively by the Abhidhamma, where the Dhammasaṅgaṇī’s comprehensive list of 89 types of cognizance contains no type of Path-Cognizance without supramundane jhāna.

In view of this, then, if the Commentaries say the contrary if, for instance we think that they assert or suggest that a sukkha vipassaka can become an Arahant without any jhāna-concentration at all—, then, if we are not mistaken, they must be in irreconcilable conflict with both the Suttas and the Abhidhamma: there is really no escape. If that is right, they disregard the instructions of the Mahāpadesa Sutta (A II 167) and their own criterion, which is that of a statement in commentaries conflicts with the Tipiṭaka, it must be rejected. Let us see if, in act, they actually do so.

The commentaries often use their term sukkhavipassaka to explain the Piṭaka term paññāvimutta, though they are not at all synonymous. That being so, since the Tipiṭaka, as already shown, does not allow the omission of jhāna from the indispensable qualities of he paññāvimutta or from the factors of the Path (and consequently Arahantship), this meaning must ne conveyed also by the commentaries either explicitly or implicitly, of they are not to contradict the Piṭakas. Let us take five representative statements— the most awkward we can find from the commentaries, which at first glance most clearly seem to state the contrary.
Mayaṃ nijjhānikā sukkhavipassakā (App. I § 4a).
So (paññāvimutto) sukkhavipassako ca catūhi jhānehi vuṭṭhāya arahattaṃ pattā cattāro cā ti imesaṃ vasena pañcavidho hoti (App. I § 5a).
Paññābalen’eva … vimutto ti attho (App. I § 7a).
Jhānābhiññānaṃ abhāvena (App. I § 8a).
Anuppāditajjhāno āraddhavipassako (App. I § 8a).
What are we to make of these?

Do they, especially § 4, not show incontestably that the commentator held that jhāna was unnecessary altogether? That quotations out of context can be misleading is so obviously true that it is constantly forgotten and has always to be reiterated. The full immediate contexts will be found in Appendix I with English translations. But let us take each statement individually and examine it closely in the light of its proper context, of the text commented on, of possible alternative grammatical solutions, and of the teaching as a whole.

(1) The word nijjhānika here (as described in the note to App. I § 4a) does not mean “no jhāna,” but on the contrary unmistakably alludes to the term dhammanijjhānakhanti; for the appearance of this expression in the sutta (MN 70) where the paññāvimutta is described makes this allusion inescapable. The word thus means ‘ponderers’ indeed there appears to be no usage anywhere of nijjhāna in any form in a negative sense, the prefix being here augmentative, not privative. As to the words that follow in the same passage (§ 4a), namely vināsamādhiṃ evaṃ ñāṇuppattiṃ dassanatthaṃ, these simply state what is, in fact, the essence of the Buddha’s teaching: that concentration alone does not provide final liberation, which is only attainable by the intervention of insight leading to Path-attainment (see § 2 above). The words Vinā samādhiṃ belong properly to dassanatthaṃ not to ñāṇuppattiṃ. And this does not imply in any way jhāna—concentration (cetovimutti) has no part to play at all.

(2) The addition of the sukkhavipassaka to the four distinguished by the jhāna they have emerged from (vuṭṭhāya) might seem to suggest that he does without jhāna at all times. If that were actually intended, though, it would be odd, given that the Susīma Sutta here being commented on omits, specially and pointedly, any mention of jhāna (see § 2 above) from the dispensables, that the commentator should leave such an important point not cleared up (and it is not cleared up anywhere else). But this oddness here vanishes if we take proper account of the word vuṭṭhāya; for that means ‘having emerged’ and so applies only to the time before reaching the Path, but conveys nothing about the composition of the Path reached. The samathayānika first develops jhāna, on the basis of which, after emerging from it, he develops insight, till he reaches the Path whose eighth factor is supramundane jhāna. The vipassanāyānika (including the sukkhavipassaka) places jhāna second, or works without it at all, till the attainment of the path whose eight factor is likewise supramundane jhāna. This passage therefore gives us information about the practice of vipassanā, but none at all about the composition of the path or the indispensability of jhāna (see also § 5 below).

(3) This simply restates what is said in the later part of App. I § 4a, namely that the attainment of the path, as such and considered apart from the necessary accessory concentration, is the peculiar field of understanding (and of it were not, understanding would have no part to play.) (4) This might seem at first conclusive, explicit and incontrovertible evidence in favour of the view that the commentaries did reject jhāna as indispensable. However, let us take a close look at the wording of the sutta commented in (see App. I § 8, 1st para). The commentary (§ 8a) says jhānābhiññānāṃ abhāvena: but in the sutta passage being commented on we find the words sayaṃ abhiññā sacchikatvā (which are actually the basis for this formula being called the ‘sixth, supramundane, abhiññā’). So here in the sutta we have the sixth, supramundane, abhiññā alone without the other five, mundane, abhiññā. Now while the ‘five’ are the exclusive product of the fourth jhāna and so belong only to samatha (see e.g. Vism Ch XII and XIII), the ‘sixth’ is, considered alone, the exclusive product of understanding (as explained under (i) above). If we, then, uncritically take the commentary’s compound jhānābhiññānaṃ to be what the grammarians call a dvandva-compound, resolve it into jhānānañ-ca abhiññānañ-ca, and translate the whole phrase by ‘with the absence of jhānas and abhiññās we have made the commentator contradict flatly the very passage in the sutta he is commenting on—the sutta assets the presence of an abhiññā and the commentator has been made to deny sweepingly both jhānas and abhiññās—which is plainly absurd. The proper and only way here is to take the compound as a tappurisa-compound, resolve it into jhānena abhiññānaṃ, and translate the whole phrase by ‘with the absence of abhiññās du to jhāna’ (i.e., of the five mundane, which are due to the perfecting of the 4th jhāna). Further confirmation is provided by the presence, in this same sutta passage, of the word cetovimutti: and there is no cetovimutti without jhāna. It is also said in this same sutta passage that this Arahant ‘has not… the Eight Liberation’s. Now the first three of these are jhāna collectively in three aspects, the remaining five being the four āruppas and cessation. In this connection the commentaries (App. I § 5b and 6a) are at special pains to show that ‘having the Eight Vimokkhas’ is a collective statement allowed of one who has gained any one āruppa but not of one who has only jhāna: having jhāna is thus compatible with the eighth ‘having no Eight Vimokkhas’. Such an explanation would indeed be futile of the commentators held that jhāna was dispensable for Arahantship.

(5) The expression anuppāditajhāno āraddhavipassako means simply ‘one who begins his insight without first arousing jhāna’ and so is interpretable under (ii) above. So here too all the commentarial passages describing the paññāvimutta and exhibiting their use of sukkhavipassaka tell us nothing about jhāna not being necessary for the path.

There is, in fact, nothing here to tell; for that has already been told unequivocally in the suttas and Abhidhamma in the appropriate place (see § 2). It would also be quite absurd to suppose that Ācariya Buddhaghosa forgot the Dhammasangaṇī’s definition, since he uses its 89–fold classification of all cognizance as one of the main pillars of his exegetical system, and equally absurd to suggest that he forgot that the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta, commented upon by him in such detail, contains the sutta definition of Path-samādhi as jhāna (also repeated elsewhere). But it would be reasonable to suppose that he remembered them well—well enough for him not to suspect that these passages which he wrote could possibly be interpreted to mean that jhāna could be dispensed with, for him not to refer here to definitions that he must have regarded as too well known to need repetition in every instance. For in the Visuddhimagga (p. 666–7 / Ch xxi) he wrote the words—repeated in the Atthasālinī (p. 228–9)—Sukkavipassakassa uppannamaggo … paṭhamajjhāniko va hoti: ‘The bare-insight worker’s Path … always (only) has the first jhāna’.

Examples of omission for the sake of emphasis of other aspects will be found, for instance, in Majjhima sutta 121 (omission of the 4 jhānas), in majjhima sutta 125 (omission of only the first jhāna), etc., etc., and these too are not to be taken as ‘hints that what is omitted is unnecessary’.
This inquiry would not be complete without observing that several types of concentration (samādhi) are distinguished in the commentaries. The Visuddhimagga (p. 85) lists, among other sets, two kinds, namely upacāra and appanā. Elsewhere it is explained that by upacāra samādhi (‘access-concentration’) is intented the concentration of kāmāvacara (‘sensual sphere’) type that accompanies strong vipassanā (‘insight’), which arises when the five hindrances (nīvaraṇa) have been suppressed but before the jhāna-factors have arisen (based on the passage at M I 21, lines 31–3: ‘my energy was aroused, … my heart was concentrated and unified’, which theme is developed differently at Paṭisambhidā I 99). Appanā-samādhi (‘absorption-concentration’) is defined as jhāna (with the jhāna factors arisen), and as rūpāvacara (‘from sphere’) or arūpāvacara (‘formless-sphere’). However, in another context (Vism 289) a third type called there khaṇika-cittekaggatā (‘momentary unification of cognizance’) is introduced but not developed. Of this the Paramatthamañjūsā says khaṇikacittekaggatā ti khaṇamattaṭṭhitiko samādhi; so pi hi ārammaṇe nirantaraṃ ekākārena pavattamāno paṭipakkhena anabhibhūto appito viya cittaṃ niccalaṃ ṭhapeti:  .“Momentary unification of cognizance” is concentration that is steadied for only a moment; yet when that occur in one mode uninterruptedly on an object without its being overcome by opposition, it steadies cognizance (making it) motionless as through it were absorption’ (p.278 Hewavitarane ed.). This, in its context of a sub-comment on a comment on the sutta-phrase samādahaṃ cittaṃ assasissāmī ti pajānāti (‘he understand ” I shall breathe in concentrating cognizance”), might seem to half-open the door to some form of substitute for appanā (to use the commentarial terminology, which is not in the Piṭaka) Remembering, however, that both suttas and Abhidhamma define Path consciousness unequivocally as inseparable from jhāna (paraphrased in the commentaries by ‘appanā’) what is ‘as though it were absorption’ can never be the actual supramundane sammāsamādhi of the path (see e.g., Atthasālinī p. 214). Though it is doubtless a perfectly legitimate way of describing certain aspects of the necessary degree of concentration without which no insight can take place at all, this passage cannot be taken, and was never intended to be taken, to have any bearing on the composition of the Noble Eightfold Path.

In these contexts it needs also to be remembered that the term vipassanā, whether in the Piṭakas or the Commentaries, whether by itself or as a component of the commentarial term sukkhavipassaka, is used specifically for that kind of examination of experience which leads up to attainment of the Path, but not for the understanding (paññā) contained in the actual path under supramundane sammādiṭṭhi (‘Right View’). Vipassanā is thus only that kind of understanding that precedes the Path, its last states before the actual Path itself being called vuṭṭhānagāminī vipassanā (‘insight leading to emergence’ Vism 661), and the Path itself being called vuṭṭhānaṃ that is, ‘emergence’ of Right View from wrong view (and so with other seven factors: see Paṭisambhidāmagga I 69).

It would therefore seem that any use of the term Vipassaka (whether sukkha or not) as synonymous with maggalābhī (‘path-obtainer’) would be incorrect. It that is so, then whatever is said about a sukkhavipassaka, as vipassaka, tells us nothing about the composition of the path which he may attain, for which we must look to the proper definitions in the proper places.

It is perhaps allowable to infer that, at minimum, a sukkhavipassaka need not develop jhāna at any time before he actually reaches the supramundane jhāna of the Noble Eightfold Path, but unless his Path contains at least the supramundane first jhāna it is not, in fact, the Path but only dhammuddhacca (‘overestimation of ideas’) in the form of a vipassanūpakkilesa (‘imperfection of insight’) see App. II; also Vism Ch XX end).

With the reservations already made about the difficulties of defining ‘persons’ (§2 above), the following general definitions can perhaps be made.

(i) Samathayānika (‘one whose vehicle is quiet’); one who in his work to reach the path (in each of its four stages) habitually first arouses jhāna, then emerges from it, and practises insight on the jhāna emerged from. This leads him, if successful to the ‘emergence’ of the path with supramundane jhāna (at minimum the first as its eighth factor.)

(ii) Vipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is insight’): one who habitually practices insight before jhāna on his way to the Path. If he makes no use of, or does not attain jhāna before he reaches the path, he is called a suddhavipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is pure insight’), in which case he can be taken as equivalent to the next.

“(iii) Sukkhavipassaka (‘bare-insight worker’): one who never emerges from jhāna (or any attainment of samādhi) before the time he reaches the supramundane sammāsamādhi of the Path—in his case the supramundane first jhāna (Vism 666–7; Atthasālinī 228–9). Unlike the paññāvimutta, which term describes the Obtainer of the Fourth Stage of the Path and its fruit, the term sukkhavipassaka (like the other two commentarial terms (i) and (ii) above) is only applicable to one who is trying for, but has not yet reached, the path in any one of its four stages, and so it can be, and is, used for the ordinary man who has not yet reached even the Stream-Entry Path as well as for those trying for the other stages of the Path. The term sukkhavipassaka-khīṇāsava (App. I § 8a) then properly means ‘one whose taints are exhausted, who has arrives at the Path by the way of the Bare-insight worker’. Since his insight is called ‘bare (dry), impoverished’ (App. I § 7b), his way is probably not the easiest.

(iv) Paññāvimutta (‘liberated by understanding’): since all Arahants are, strictly speaking ‘liberated by understanding’, this term, when used to distinguish one kind from another has only a relative or comparative meaning: in this sense, a paññāvimutta is contrasted with a Buddha as not having discovered the path he follows (App. I § 1.), or he is contrasted with an ubhatobhāgavimutta (‘both ways liberated’) Arahant by his not having fully exploited to the full the field of samādhi (samatha: App. I § 2 etc.), while at minimum the ubhatobhāgavimutta must have one of the four āruppas (App. I § 5b, 6a), a paññāvimutta can at minimum have only the first jhāna. What is the latest point to which his attainment of it can be put off is not stated. If called (collectively) ‘without the Eight Vimokkhas’ (App. I § 6, cf. § 8) he can still have jhāna (App. I § 5b, 6a). Both paññāvimutta and cetovimutti (the last in some degree) are present in all Arahants (App. I § 8.).

(v) The Suttas (notably the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta) and the Abhidhamma (Dhammasaṅgaṇī) state unequivocally that there is no Noble Eightfold Path without supramundane jhāna. This is confirmed in the commentaries (specifically with the words ‘the bare-Insight Worker’s path … always (only) has the first jhāna (§ 3 end). Commentarial passages that at first glance seem to state the contrary can be found after proper investigation, not to do so.

(vi) The general spirit of the Buddha’s teaching in relation to samatha is expressed by the following sutta: “Bhikkhus, these two ideas partake of true knowledge. What two? Quiet and insight.
When quiet is maintained in being … a pure heart is maintained in being … (and) lust is abandoned. When insight is maintained in being, … understanding is maintained in being, …. (and) whatever ignorance there is abandoned. No heart defiled by lust is liberated, and no understanding defiled by ignorance is maintained in being.
This heart-deliverance is due to fading of ignorance’ (AN 3:10/I 61). Other suttas expressing this are far too may to refer to here.
Consequently, such suttas as the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta (MN 10), or those at, say, Saṃyutta 35:70 and 152, have to be taken as emphasizing the essential part played by insight in developing understanding, without, however, implying that the minimum jhāna of cetovimutti can ne dispensed with.

* * *
APPENDIX I 

(For discussion and justification of translations see § 3.)  § 1. Paññāvimutta (at maximum) distinguished from sammāsambuddha only by the fact that the paññāvimutta follows the way that a sammāsambuddha discovers (SN 22:58/S III 65–6).

§ 2. Paññāvimutta contrasted with ubhatobhāgavimutta in terms of the ‘9 attainments’ (4 jhānas, 4 āruppas, and cessation): the paññāvimutta can have all these, but what distinguished him then from the other is that he has not fully exploited them (in their aspect of samatha). No paññāvimutta is without one of these attainments. (AN 9:44/A IV 452–3).

§ 3. Paññāvimutta contrasted with tevijja, cha¿abhiññā, and ubhatobhāgavimutta: he is less than these, but no mention that he can dispense with jhāna. (SN 7:7/S I 191).

§ 4. Susīma sutta: the paññāvimutta need not have the five mundane abhiññās (supernormal powers) or the 4 āruppas (formless attainments): specific omission of jhāna from the attainments that can be dispensed with. Compare the wording of attainments here with that in, say, MN 6. (SN 12:70/A II 121–7).

§ 4a. Commentary to Susīma Sutta: mayaṃ nijjhānikā sukkhavipassakā paññāmatten’eva vimuttā ti … “Ājāneyyāsi vā” to ādi kasmā vuttaṃ? Vinā samādhiṃ evam-nāṇuppattim dassanattham.
Idañ hi vuttam hoti: Susīma maggo vā phalaṃ vā na samādhinissando na samādhi-ānisaṃso na samādhissa nipphatti, vipassanāya pana so nissando vipassanāya ānisaṃso vipassanāya nipphatti … Translation: (note: nijjhānikā fr. nijjhāna (‘pondering’), and alludes directly to dhamma nijjhānaṃ khamati … dhammanijjhānakhanti (MN 70/M I 480), cf. also nijjhatti & nijjhāpenti (M I 320); no instance of this term in any form as negative of jhāna, prefix nir- being augmentative, not privative, here). “We are liberated by understanding, friend”: we are ponderers, bare-insight workers, liberated simply by understanding … “Whether you understand or …” and the rest: why is this said? In order to show without (reference to) concentration the arising of knowledge thus. What is meant is this: ‘Susīma, neither the Path nor (its) fruit are the outcome of concentration, or the benefits of concentration, or the productions of concentration, rather they are the outcome of insight, the benefits of insight, the production of insight’. (Note: this simply states the fact that concentration alone does not, as susīma seems to have supposed, produce true liberation, which is the field of understanding; but nothing is said here to the effect that jhāna can be dispensed with).

§ 5. Paññāvimutta contrasted with ubhatobhāgavimutta in terms of the 4 āruppas only, the difference then being that the paññāvimutta need not have these. (MN 70/A I 477–8). No mention of jhāna.

§ 5a. Commentary to MN 70: Paññāya vimutto ti paññāvimutto. So sukkhavipassako ca jhānehi vuṭṭhāya arahattaṃ pattā cattāro cā ti imesaṃ vasena pañcavidho hoti. Pā¿i pan’ ettha aṭṭha-vimokkha-paṭikkhepavasen’eva āgatā … (cites Puggalapaññatti 14; see § 6 below, and particularly reservations in this respect in both § 5b and 6a).
Translation: (resolution of compound not rendered) ‘He (one liberated by understanding) is of five kinds namely the bare-insight worker and those (four) who have reached arahantship after emerging from the four respective jhānas. Now here (in this particular aspect of the āruppas) the text is also stated in terms of rejection of the Eight Liberations’ (as in the Puggalapaññatti) but see commentary to that, § 6a below).

§ 5b. Sub-commentary to MN 70 (cf. § 6a below):
“Paññāvimutto” ti visesato paññāya eva vimutto na tassa paṭṭhānabhūtena aṭṭhavimokkhasankhātena sātisayena samādhinā to paññāvimutto—yo ariyo anadhigata-aṭṭhavimokkhena24 sabbaso āsavehi vimutto/ tass’etam adhivacanam // adhigate pi hi rūpajjhānavimokkhena1 so sātisayasamādhinissito ti na tassa vasena ubhatobhāgavimutto hotī ti vutto vayaṃ attho/ arūpajjhānesu pana ekasmim pi sati ubhatobhāgavimutto yeva nāma hoti/ tena hi aṭṭhavimokkhekadesena tannāmadānasamatthena aṭṭhavimokkhalābhi tveva vuccati samudāye hi pavatto vohāro avayave pi dissati yatha sattisayo ti// … Aṭṭhavimokkhapaṭikkhepavasem’eva ti avadhāraṇena paṭikkhepavasen’eva āgatabhāvaṃ dasseti/ ten’āha “kāyena phusitvā viharatī” ti.

Translation: ‘Liberated distinctively by means of only understanding; not by means of any concentration with extra (development), entitled (collectively) the “Eight Liberations” and made the basis for that (understanding), thus ‘liberated by understanding” ; this is a synonym for the (type of) Noble One (i.e., Path-attainer) liberated altogether from taints with respect to a Liberation (i.e., form-jhāna—see note at the end for the ‘Liberations’) that has not arrived at (the collective title of) “the Eight”. For even when (that title is) arrived at (by his developing a formless jhāna (as in § 2 above) yet since (the paññāvimutta is here regarded specifically) with respect to (some) form-jhāna Liberation (of his), he (thus) has for support (the form-jhāna) concentration “with extra” (i.e., with extra formless-jhāna), and so the meaning is that he is not then called ubhatobhāgavimutta in virtue of that (extra formless-jhāna), though when there is even one of the formless jhānas he is called an ubhatobhāgavimutta too (as in MN 70, see § 5 above). For he is called an “Obtainer of the Eight Liberations” in virtue of the ability of a part (i.e., one of the last five) of the Eight Liberations to confer that name since the usage is found to occur with respect to the whole and to a member, as in the case of (the term) sattisayo… “Also stated in terms of rejection of the Eight Liberations” points out how it is stated in terms of rejection on account of emphasis’.

§6. Paññāvimutta contrasted with ubhatobhāgavimutta in terms of possession of the Eight Liberations (collectively: § 5 above and § 6a below). The Paññāvimutta need not have the Eight Libera-tions collectively. (N.B. the insistence of the commentary here and the Sub-commentary in § 5b above on the collectiveness of the term ‘Obtainer of the Eight Liberations’ and that it can only be gained by attaining one of the āruppas, but not by attaining form-jhāna clearly shows that the commentators were fully aware of the indis-pensability of jhāna for the attainment of the Noble Path). (Puggal-apaññatti 14 & 73).

§6a. Commentary to Pug: Reproduces § 5a up to ‘Pañcavidho hoti’, and adds etesu hi eko pi aṭṭhavimokkhalābhī na hoti// ten’eva “na h’eva kho aṭṭhavimokkhe” ti (Pug. text) ādim āha// arūpāvacara-jjhānesu pana ekasmiṃ sati ubhatobhāgavimutto yeva nāma hotī ti.

“Translation: For not even one among these [five (see 5a)] is (called) an “attainer of the Eight Liberations” (collectively), hence “without (having touched with the body) the Eight Liberations” and so on is said. But when there is any one of the formless-sphere jhānas (i.e., the four āruppas) he (i.e., this `obtainer of the Eight Lib-erations’) is also called “ubhatobhāgavimutta” (Note: this means that an “obtainer of the Eight” can be called an ubhatobhāgavimutta in contrast to a paññāvimutta who has no āruppas and he can also be called a paññāvimutta in contrast to an ubhatobhāgavimutta who has, say the five mundane abhiññās (see § 2 above). The Mūlaṭīkā adds nothing extra).

§7. Paññāvimutta described in contrast with the ubhatobhā-gavimutta in terms of ‘seeing with understanding the 7 standing-points for consciousness (viññāṇaṭṭhiti) and two bases (āyatana), namely those of the non-percipient and neither-percipient-nor-non-percipient. He lacks the 8 Vimokkhas (see Nos. 5b and 6a), this tells us nothing about jhāna (DN 15/D II 70).

§7a. Commentary: ‘Paññāvimutto’ ti paññāya vimutto;
aṭṭhavimokkhe asacchikatvā paññābalen’eva nāmakāyassa ca rūpakā-yassa ca appavattim katvā vimutto ti attho. So sukkhavipassako ca paṭhamajjānādīsu aññatarasmiṃ ṭhatvā arahattaṃ patto cā ti pañcav-idho (see § 5a) hoti.

(There follows quotation from Pug. As in § 5a) Translation: ‘… without having reached the Eight Libera-tions (collectively, see nos. 5b and 6a), he is liberated by causing, through the power of understanding alone (see § 4a), the non-occurrence of the name-body and the form-body. He (the paññāvimutta) is five fold as the bare-insight worker and the four who reach arahantship by having already steadied themselves in one of the jhānas beginning with the first (before they reach their Path)’. (Note: no more is said here than in § 4a and 5a).” §7b. Sub-commentary: Paṭhamajjhānaphassena vinā pari jānanādippakārehi cattāri saccāni jānato paṭivijjhanto. Tesaṃ kic-cānaṃ matthakappattiyā ṇiṭṭhitakiccatāya visesana mutto ti vimutto.

So paññāvimutto … samathabhāvanāsinehābhāvena sukkhā lūkhā asiniddhā vā vipassanā etassā ti sukkhavipassako.

Translation: ‘One knowing, penetrating, the four Truths in the (four) modes of diagnosing (suffering), etc., without (having already had) the experience of (even) the first jhāna. He is freed dis-tinctively by these four functions being brought to their culmina-tion and to their function-completion, thus he is liberated. It is he that is “liberated by understanding” … He has insight that is bare (dry), impoverished, owing to the absence of the moisture of main-tenance of quiet in being, or is unmoistened, thus he is a “bare-(dry)insight worker” (Note: Since this passage deals explicitly with insight (vipassanā) alone, nothing can be deduced from it about the composition of the Path: see § 5).

§8. The Arahant without the Eight Vimokkhas has both paññāvimutti and cetovimutti: Kathañ ca bhikkave puggalo samaṇapuṇḍarīko hoti? Idha bhikkhave bhikkhu āsavānaṃ khayā anāsavaṃ cetovimuttiṃ paññāvimuttiṃ diṭṭhe ‘va dhamme sayaṃ abhiññā sacchikatvā upasampajja viharati, no ca kho aṭṭha vimokkhe kāyena phusitvā viharati. (AN 4:87/A II 87)

Kathañ ca bhikkhave puggalo samaṇapuṇḍarīko hoti? Idha bhikkhave bhikkhu sammādiṭṭhiko hoti … sammāsamādhī hoti sam-māñāṇī hoti sammāvimuttī hoti, no ca kho aṭṭhavimokkhe kāyena phusitvā viharati. (AN 4:89/A II 89) Kathañ ca bhikkhave puggalo samaṇapuṇḍarīko hoti? Idha bhikkhave bhikkhu pañcas’ upādānakkhandhesu udayabbayānupassī viharati: Iti rūpaṃ iti rūpassa samudayo, iti rūpassa atthaṅgamo; … iti viññāṇassa atthaṅgamo ti, no ca kho aṭṭha vimokkhe kāyena phusitvā viharati. (AN 4:90/II 90) Translation: ‘And what, bhikkhus, is a samaṇapuṇḍarīka? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu by realization through his own direct-acquaintance (abhiññā) here and now enters upon and abides in the heart-deliverance (cetovimutti) and understanding-deliverance (paññāvimutti) that are taintless owing to (complete) exhaustion of taints; and yet he has not touched with the body the Eight Liberations (aṭṭha vimokkha) and abode in them’. (AN 4:87).

‘And how, bhikkhus, is a person a samaṇapuṇḍarīka? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu has Right View, … has Right Concentration (sammāsamādhi), has Right knowledge, and has Right Deliverance; and yet he has not touched with the body the Eight Liberations and abode in them’. (AN 4:89) ‘And how, bhikkhus, is a person samaṇapuṇḍarīka? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu abides contemplating rise and fall in the five categories of consumption thus: Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is (feeling… perception… determinations…) consciousness, … such its disappearance; and yet he has not touched the Eight Liberations and abode in them’. (AN 4:90) §8a. Commentary: Samaṇapuṇḍarīko ti puṇḍarīkasadiso samaṇo; puṇḍarīkam nāma ūnasatapattam saroruham, iminā suk-khavipassaka-khīṇāsavaṃ dasseti. So jhānābhiññānaṃ abhāvena aparipuṇṇaguṇato samaṇapuṇḍarīko nāma hoti. Samaṇapadumo ti … jhānābhiññānam bhāvena paripuṇṇaguṇattā samaṇa-padumo nāma hoti. (ad. 87).

Dasaṅgikamaggavasena vā arahattaphalañāṇa-arahattaphala-vimuttīhi saddhim aṭṭhaṅgikamaggavasena vā sukkhavipassa-kanīṇāsavo kathito. (89).

Anuppāditajjhāno āraddhavipassako appamādavihārī sekhapug-galo kathito. (90).

Translation: “Samaṇapuṇḍarīka” is a samaṇa like a puṇḍarīka; a puṇḍarīka is a waterlily with less than a hundred pet-als. By this he shows a bare-insight worker; and he is called a samaṇapuṇḍarīka because his qualities are incomplete with the absence of (those kinds of) direct acquaintance (abhiññā) due to jhāna &. “Samaṇapaduma” … is so called because his qualities are complete with the presence of (those kinds of) direct acquaintance due to jhāna25.’ (87).

(Here) the bare-insight worker is expounded by means of the ten-factored path or by means of the eight-factored path together with arahant-fruition knowledge and arahant-fruition deliverance.’ (98).

(Here) an initiate person (i.e., not an arahant, but who has at least reached stream-entry) who abides in diligence as one who ini-tiate (his) insight without having aroused jhāna (already)’.

* * *
APPENDIX II

A sutta in the Aṅguttara Nikāya Fours (AN 4:170/A II 156–7) gives four ways of arriving at Arahantship, apart from which, no Arahantship—final knowledge’ (aññā)—can be arrived at. They are:

Samathapubbaṅgamaṃ vipassanaṃ bhāveti—he maintains in being insight preceded by quiet.

Vipassanāpubbaṅgamaṃ samathaṃ bhāveti—he maintains in being quiet preceded by insight.

Samathavipassanaṃ yuganaddhaṃ bhāveti—he maintains in being quiet and insight yoked together.

Bhikkhuno dhammuddhaccaviggahitaṃ mānasaṃ hoti. So … samayo yaṃ taṃ cittaṃ ajjhattaṃ yeva santiṭṭhati sannisīdati ekodi hoti samādhiyati; tassa maggo sañjāyati—a bhikkhu’s mind is misled by overestimation of ideas. On that occasion cognizance (then) become steadied in himself again, clarified, becomes single, and is concentrated. (Then) the path is born in him. (AN 4:170/A I 157; Paṭisambhidā Yuganaddhakathā).

As to the fourth instance, the commentaries explain uddhacca here by ‘vikkhepa’ (‘distraction’) and viggahita by virūpagahita and virodhagahita (respectively ‘seized by deformation’ and ‘seized by opposition’) and paraphrased by taṇhāmānadiṭṭhi (‘need, conceits, and wrong views’). Uddhacca as one of the ‘ 5 Hindrances to concentration’ is properly ‘agitation’, but here the meaning is more literal in the sense of being ‘distracted’ from fact, and is ‘thrown up’ (ud+hata+ya), i.e., ‘overestimates’ ideas. He thus overestimates what he has achieved and mistakes it for the Noble Eightfold Path when it is not.

Now these four ‘ways’ are not four alternatives: the first three are alternatives, and need no comment, since they are three alternative ways of arriving at the Noble Eightfold Path without mistake in the way. The fourth, however, makes a mistake on the way, whichever of the three ways he is following, and afterwards sets himself right and eventually reaches the Noble Eightfold Path.

The mistake he makes is to fancy some mere advance in Vipassanā (‘insight’ in the sense of §5, 9.v.) is the Noble Path. That mistake is called in the Paṭisambhidāmagga Yuganaddhakathā, a vipassanūpakkilesa (‘imperfections of insight’) and is divided into ten different kinds, which are also treated in detail in the Visuddhimagga, Ch XX.

The conclusion to be drawn from this sutta, in the light of the definitions of the supramundane sammāsamādhi of the Path given in the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta and the

Dhammasaṅgaṇī, is that if someone fancies he has obtained the Noble Eightfold Path but not even the first jhāna as a component of it, he has in fact, simply exhibited dhammuddhacca (‘overestimation of ideas’), the remedy for which is further practice in elimination of need, conceits, and wrong views.

Nananamoli Thera

There is nothing abnormal about a chess player being abnormal, this is normal...

(...)

And still in Vitolins' appearance one sensed something strange and languid. He was as though not of this world, with his inadequate, often unpredictable reac­ tions and his strange laugh. In his youth this was not so marked, but with the years these features became ever more obvious. By nature he was hon­ est, nai:ve and kind. The smile that sometimes stole over his face made him look child-like and defenceless - all his life Alvis essentially remained a big child. As often happens with this type of people, he was physically very strong. When the doctor advised him to take up some sport, he, an indi­ vidualist by nature, acquired a seven-kilogram shot and every day threw it on his farmstead. He did this with passion, rejoicing over improvements in his results, and taking his personal record, so it is said, up to thirteen metres.

He did not have any close friends. He avoided people, especially strang­ ers, and especially those who were not chess players. At tournaments he was often seen in the company of Karen Grigorian ( 1947- 1989) . Karen Grigorian's father was the outstanding Armenian poet Ashot Grashi and his mother was a professor of philology. Very intelligent and well-read, from childhood Karen could cite many poets from memory. His favourite image in literature was Lermontov's Demon, and, in painting, Vrubel's Demon.

Karen grew up as a highly sensitive and vulnerable boy, with a subtle feel­ ing for art. It is hard to say how his fate would have turned out, had he fol­ lowed in the footsteps of his parents, but at the age of seven the boy became devoted to chess. He possessed a striking, versatile talent and was considered the chess hope of Armenia.

In the 70s Karen Grigorian regularly took part in the finals of the USSR Championship. Like Vitolins, he did not seem to belong to this world, per­ haps not so morose as Alvis, but also strange, unusual, not like others.

It is curious that Karen studied for a time with Lev Aronin, an outstand­ ing player and theoretician, who was also burdened with serious mental problems. One of the critical games in Aronin's chess career was his meeting with Smyslov in the  19th USSR Championship in 1951. It was ad­ journed in a position where practically any move would have led to a win for White. However, Aronin, who had a whole day for analysis, went into a pawn ending, which allowed his opponent a study-like way to save the game. Karen later remembered that whenever he called in him, Aronin would be sitting at that position, pensively moving the pieces about.

One of Karen's favourite questions was: 'What do you think, which tournament was stronger, Nottingham 1936 or the  1973 USSR Champion­ship?' Karen asked it regularly, grasping the other person by the elbow and looking him in the eye. In that tournament in 1 9 7 3 , one of the strongest in the entire history of USSR championships, he played splendidly. By pres­ent-day standards Karen was a strong grandmaster. After winning two suc­cessive games in a USSR Championship or an international tournament, he would consider himself a genius and would readily set up a link: 'Yester­ day I won against Tal. Of course, Tal is no longer World Champion, but he has a positive score against Fischer. What do you think about my chances in a match with Fischer?' The following day, after losing a game, he could become dejected and depressed, repeating that his own play was repulsive to him, that his life was of no use to anyone. He would begin talking about suicide, long before he became a patient at a psychiatric hospital and long before that final free-fall jump from the highest bridge in Yerevan on 30th October 1989.

The friendship between Grigorian and Vitolins was not a friendship in the generally accepted sense of the word. Shut off from the other world, they simply understood each other, or, more correctly, trusted each other. They intuitively felt that the other was a kindred soul, who after a conversation with you does not go off and begins retelling its content with an ironic smile. And of course, in their world, chess, which they both loved self­ lessly, played the most important role.
Both Alvis Vitolins and Karen Grigorian were outstanding masters of blitz. While in tournament chess they were strong and dangerous, al­ though uneven players, in lightning play they had few equals. This also ap­ plies to Lembit Oil (  1966- 1999) , the Estonian grandmaster who possessed a rare memory and was a brilliant theoretician, a man of similar fate, who also suffered from a psychic disorder and in the same way voluntarily de­parted from this life. The explanation suggests itself. The time allotted for play in a classical game allows one to sink into thought, generating doubts and uncertainty. For them, with their sharp falls in mood and excitable nervous system, this served only as a stimulus for mistakes and oversights.

Blitz, however, demands instant reactions, while psychology and self-re­proach retreat into the background. Here, they obviously thrive on their great natural talent. Any game of chess contains a wide range of emotions, with joys and vex­ ations, great and small. These emotions accompany any type of creativity.

But whereas in painting or literature it is possible to cross out, rewrite or change, in chess one movement of the fingers, communicated by the mind, is final. Often it can be repaired only by sweeping the wooden pieces off the board. Or you can castigate yourself, by hitting your head against a wall, or by rolling around on the floor, as one modern grand­ master does after losing a game.

It is a rare game that develops with the smooth accumulation of an ad­vantage and its conversion into a point. But even in this case a player who is honest with himself knows what he was afraid of at a certain moment, what he was hoping for, and how he flinched after miscalculating a varia­tion. Time and again, however, a game proceeds according to the follow­ing approximate pattern: slightly worse, clearly worse, a mistake by the opponent, joy, winning chances, time trouble, missed opportunities, draw.
Such changes in mood and emotion occur both in professional and in ama­teur play, with the only difference that in the latter case these sharp peaks of ascents and descents can be seen several times.

A change of mood during the course of a tournament, although not in such an abrupt form as with Karen Grigorian, is also familiar to every player. 'Even the way you walk has changed' , said the observant David Bronstein in January 1976 in Hastings after I had managed to win a cou­ple of games in a row. This sort of emotional stress and sudden decline during a game or during a tournament, does not serve to strengthen the inner mental core. Chess at top level constantly shakes it, which can have far-reaching consequences, especially if this core is shaky or diseased. In no other type of sport does one encounter such a large number of peculiar people, engrossed in themselves and living in their own world. What at­ tracts them, with their shaky, unstable psyche into this, by Nabokov's def­inition 'complex, delightful and useless art'? Or is it the other way round and is it chess that affects the psyche?

One does not have to turn to Vladimir Nabokov or Stephan Zweig. In the living gallery of chess of yesterday and today it is not difficult to find ge­ niuses or unfulfilled geniuses among this type of people. 'Torre's first steps were those of a future world champion' , wrote Emanuel Lasker at the start of the career of Carlos Torre ( 1905-1978) , the highly talented Mexican player, who at a young age was forced to give up chess and to spend part of his life in a psychiatric clinic. Albin Planinc, who in his manner of play so resembled Tal, flashed across the chess firmament in the late 60s and early 70s, and played brilliantly in tournaments. His career also did not last long: as a result of a severe psychic disorder he too had to give up chess and became a regular patient at a special clinic.

But what are the boundaries of common sense, reason, normality? Clear reference markers are lacking. Often it is a question of frontier regions, in the thickets of which even psychiatrists lose their way. Vladimir Nabokov, who by his own admission took particular pleasure in composing 'suicide studies' - where White forces Black to win - said in an interview on French television: 'Yes, Fischer is a strange person, but there is nothing abnormal about a chess player being abnormal, this is normaL Take the case of Rubinstein, a well-known player of the early part of the century, who each day was taken by ambulance from the lunatic asylum, where he stayed constantly, to a cafe where he played, and then was taken back to his gloomy little room. He did not like to look at his opponent, but an empty chair at the chess board irritated him even more. Therefore in front of him they placed a mirror, where he saw his reflection, and, perhaps, also the real Rubinstein. ' Even in the years of his triumphs the great Akiba liked to sit half turned at the chess board, as though keeping aloof from his opponent and playing only his own game. And is not the same aloofness from others and defence of his brittle ego to be heard in Rubinstein's words: 'Tomorrow I am play­ ing against the black pieces' , in reply to a question about the name of his opponent in the next round. His nurse, madame Rubin-Zimmer, remem­ bered: 'He was an unusually calm and self-controlled person. He was easy to look after. Physically he was exceptionally strong and very healthy for his age. But from time to time he would behave strangely. For days on end he would not come out of the room for even a short walk. Or sometimes in the evening he would not want to go to bed. Then he would sit in the armchair next to the bed and meditate deeply about something or move the pieces on a pocket chess set.' We do not know how the lessons went, when the young O'Kelly went to the clinic to visit the famous Maestro. What was Rubinstein thinking of when, in the very last period of his confinement, he would sit for a long time in front of a chess board, with the pieces set up in the initial position, sometimes making the move l .c2-c4 and, taking the pawn back after half an hour's thought, again looking at the chess board? What solution to the secret of the initial position did he imagine that he saw?

It is hard to say how the life of a nervous and impressionable American youth would have turned out, had he, after shining at university, based it in accordance with the inscription on his diploma : 'Paul Charles Morphy Esquire, has the right to practise as a lawyer over the entire territory of the United States. ' The chess world would have lost one of its greatest ge­niuses, but, perhaps, he would not have spent the last twenty years of his life in a state of severe psychic disorder. The first world champion Wilhelm Steinitz, who also ended his life in a psychiatric clinic, wrote : 'Chess is not for the weak of spirit, it devours a person entirely. To get to the bottom of this game, he gives himself up into slavery. ' This voluntary, pleasant slavery went without saying for one of the most outstanding players of the last century. Robert Fischer expressed genuine surprise: 'What else is there?' in reply to a question by an interviewer, as to what he did apart f rom chess. A champion gave the following explanation for his victories at the chess board: 'I devote 98 per cent of my mental en­ ergy to chess. The others devote only 2 per cent. ' To what use did he put the two per cent of mental energy, remaining after chess? From childhood Fischer knew that money is good, that it is even better when there is a lot, and if possible if this is expressed in figures with six noughts. But what to do with this money ? With money in general? In the end, does it matter along the streets of which town - New York, Pasadena or Budapest - you wander, fearing the omnipresent journalists and photographers? After all , that other chess world, the only one, is always inside you, at any time of day and night and at any point on the earth.

Aristotle wrote: 'Of the winners at the Olympic Games, only two or three gained victories both as boys and as mature men. The premature strain of preparatory exercises so exhausts one's strength, that later, at a mature age, it is nearly always lacking . ' In our day top chess demands even more all-devouring preparation, complete concentration, and aloofness from everything else. In the future this tendency will only be intensified. Players will reach the summit and pass their peak well before thirty. Too much nervous energy will have been spent on preparation and struggle in the younger years.

Giving the joy of creativity, and sometimes prizes and money, chess at the very highest level demands a trifle in return - the soul.

In the very last period of his life Alvis Vitolins would still be in the club nearly every day, giving advice to anyone who asked him , playing blitz, and analysing often until deep into the night. Sometimes he would even spend the night there. He was still gripped by a frenzied passion for anal­ ysis that could last for long hours or days, not distinguishing yesterday from the day before. For him chess was never amusing ; his life in chess, outside of everyday concerns, was his real life. He lived in chess, in soli­tude, as in a voluntary ghetto, and he felt uncomfortable outside the gates of this ghetto in the other big world, which was unreal and often hostile for him.

In addition he had reached the age of fifty and at this stage of his life he must have felt that he was no longer needed by anyone. Material things became determining and this material world, which he had always re­ garded with fear, menacingly impended over him. Vitolins was discarded by the federation, where he had been working as a trainer, for the simple reason that his job ceased to exist. It was not a question, of course, of the pennies that Alvis received there - his connections with the world col­lapsed. He had always been indifferent to what he ate and what he was dressed in. While his parents were alive this was their concern. They died within the space of one week, and on New Year's Eve 1996 the psychia­trist Eglitis, also a chess player, who had been treating Vitolins for free, also died.

Ragged, unkempt and toothless, Alvis came to say goodbye, the day be­ fore carrying out his conscious decision, to those who still remembered him. Only the following day did they realise what kind of a goodbye it had been.

What did he think about on his last day? What is life for? What is the reason for this world? What is fate? What is chess? Did he say farewell to it, or, like Nabokov's hero did he feel that : ' . . . the chess men were pitiless, they held and absorbed him. There was horror in this, but in this also was the sole harmony, for what else exists in the world but chess? Fog , the un­known, non-being . . . ' Did he remember the fatal jump of Karen Grigorian, who also rebelled against the conventional : mors certa, hora certa sed ignota (death is certain, its hour is inevitable, but unknown) ? Ignota? Or did he subconsciously fol­ low the advice of the ancients: 'The main thing is, remember that the door is open. Do not be cowardly, but, like children, when they do not like a game, they say: I won't play any more. So, you too, when to you some­ thing f eels the same, say : I won't play any more - and go way, go away, and if you remain, don't complain. ' He had never complained about this life, but also he did not want to re­main in it any longer.

Sigulda is one of the most beautiful places in Latvia. Mysterious sandy caves, the ruins of medieval f ortresses and castles, an enormous park with ancient oaks divided by the swift-flowing Gauja with its precipitous banks.

It is also good here in winter, when all is snowy and the trees are covered in hoar-frost. When the only thing sparkling in the sun is the white-blue ice of the hardened river, and it beckons, beckons to you, and there only remains the last jump. Like Luzhin, who 'at the instant when icy air gushed into his mouth, . . . saw exactly what kind of eternity was obligingly and in­ exorably spread out before him'.

On a frosty day, the 1 6th February 1997 , Alvis Vitolins threw himself down onto this ice from the railway bridge spanning the Gauja river.

Genna Sosonko
Russian Silhouettes

The aim? To defend and even enhance the positive self-image

 People can hold good or bad opinions about themselves. These opinions relate to particular characteristics, competences and skills, or they can be of a more general nature. Psychologists are generally in agreement that such convictions are of importance, but controversy arises around the reasons why this is so. High levels of  self-esteem obviously result in an individual experiencing positive  emotions: it is pleasing to think of oneself as competent, humorous or physically attractive. This is why people try to find the good in themselves, applying an incredibly broad range of strategies and techniques that enable them to defend and even enhance their positive self-image. For example, they attribute success to themselves rather than others, while chalking failure up to others instead of themselves (e.g. Gilbert, 1995), they are eager to disclose any link they may have to famous people, which gives them pride and satisfaction (Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman & Sloan 1976), and they also exhibit tendencies towards bias in comparing themselves to others, maintaining their belief that they are better (Wills, 1981). It would, however, be an oversimplification to make the assumption that all of these efforts are based solely on the desire to experience pleasing emotions. Researchers emphasize that an affirmative view of oneself is a condition of effective task performance, as well as of making both short- and long-term plans (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Thus, striving to view oneself in even a slightly exaggerated positive light is adaptive. Yet another aspect is highlighted by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski (1991), authors of terror management theory. According to this notion, humans are the only entities on earth aware of their own mortality, this awareness being the source of fear and of threats. However, an individual can maintain the pretence of being immortal in both the literal and symbolic sense. Literal immortality is offered by the vast majority of religions, promising everlasting continuation of the soul and a second life after the one on earth. Symbolic immortality, on the other hand, is ensured by participation in broadly-taken culture, whose lifespan is far longer than that of an individual. High self-esteem allows individuals to feel they are valuable elements of culture (or a part of it, such as a nation or a group of a football club’s fans). Thus, maintaining positive beliefs about oneself is a means of reducing the terror that results from being aware that our life must, eventually, end. Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice (1990) do not concur with these assumptions. They do not directly dispute the theory itself that awareness of mortality gives rise to fear, but they rather feel that the bulk of people’s daily anxieties are grounded in the threat of exclusion from the community in which we function. A strong majority of communities accepts competent, honest and valuable individuals. The conviction that one fulfils these requirements leads to a weakening of the aforementioned fear. So, while Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski on the one hand, and Baumeister and Tice on the other, posit completely different sources for the majority of human beings’ fears, they are in agreement that the antidote to them is positive self-assessment.

 Most people are concerned, not only with what they think of themselves, but also with how they are viewed by others. We try to manipulate the impression we make on others so that they think of us in a manner consistent with our own interests. Sometimes we desire for people to like us, other times we want them to fear us, or even to treat us as helpless and in need of immediate assistance (e.g. Leary & Allen, 2011). When others react in the way we desire, this also contributes to improving and maintaining our  self-esteem.

In recent decades, an increasing amount of empirical data has begun to indicate that processes associated with one’s feeling of self-worth are not necessarily conscious ones. Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji (1995) propose applying the term ‘implicit self-esteem’. People are not aware of their special relationship to things associated closely with the “I”, even while those things are totally unrelated to their attitudes, skills and level of competence.

While the effects associated with people’s tendency to care for their positive self-image and to make the desired impression on others are strong and undisputed, the question is rarely addressed in research of how mechanisms associated with this can be used in successfully exerting influence over others. It appears that such studies are focused primarily on four social influence techniques: using the  name of one’s interlocutor; emphasizing one’s incidental similarity to that person; drawing attention to discrepancies between publicly declared and actual behaviour; and exploiting the presence of a witness to the interaction. In this chapter I will discuss each of these techniques in turn.

  Using the name of one’s interlocutor  

When Napoleon’s army occupied the Netherlands in 1811, the emperor issued a decree ordering all residents of the country to officially register their surnames. Family names were not widespread at the time in the Netherlands but were the exclusive domain of people at the top of the social ladder. For many of those at the bottom of it, Napoleon’s decree must have seemed a needless extravagance. The Dutch thus began thinking up quite exotic surnames for themselves, such as: Naaktgeboren (Born Naked), Den Boef (Swindler) or Poepjes (Little Halfwit). While surnames may have seemed unnecessary in some countries and during some periods of history, since the dawn of human civilization no one has questioned the need to use first names. The status of an individual without a name can be compared to one stripped of honour, or even of humanity (Koole & Pelham, 2003). As a result, for many years a person’s name has borne exceptional significance.

 Jozef Nuttin (1984) described his impressions from a holiday he took with his wife. At one moment he observed that some of the licence plates on cars passing him were evoking warm feelings. After thinking about it, he concluded that this was probably from the plates that contained the letters of his name or digits corresponding to his date of birth. This constatation served as a starting point for a sterling series of empirical studies in which Nuttin demonstrated that people do, in fact, exhibit an unusual preference for the letters that compose their name.

Further studies conducted around the world demonstrated that the first letters of a name in particular seem to have impressive power. It turns out that individual letters are liked more by people whose names begin with just those letters (Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997; Koole, Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 2001). In our experiments (Dolinski, 2005), the first letters of names were described by participants as having a more pleasing shape (perhaps a surprising conclusion) than letters that did not form a part of their own names. This effect was also observed in respect of letters printed from the commonplace computer programme Word for Windows (the fonts Courier and Times New Roman were used), as well as decorative letters, such as can be found at the beginnings of chapters in older volumes.

Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg and John Jones (2002) demonstrated that the initial letters of first names have an influence on professional careers and on the places that people inhabit. For example, among American den 

tists there is a large number of people named Den nis (and vice versa, many people named Den nis are den tists), while a far greater number than chance would indicate of women named V irginia live in V irginia Beach. People with the first name or surname of S aint, more often than coincidence could explain, decide to take up residence in S aint Louis, S aint Paul or S aint Joseph. The special role of one’s first name is also attested to by the cocktail party effect.

During a cocktail party, people generally stand around in small groups, and in this intimate company discuss various things. The selectivity of top-down attention means that they can block out voices coming from other small groups, focusing on what someone in their immediate vicinity is saying. The din, often loud, bothers them a bit, but they are able to tune it out to such a degree that, in a sense, they don’t hear it. However, if their own name pops up in this ignored murmur, not only do they register it immediately, but they also begin listening to what the person who has just used their name is saying. People are thus both ignoring and not (completely) ignoring this din at the same time: one’s own name is a stimulus so strong that it has the fascinating power to divert others’ attention. In the context of this chapter, the cocktail party effect constitutes an outstanding example of the importance of one’s own name. From a purely practical perspective, it advises us to avoid speaking the name of the person we would like to gossip about. We mustn’t be deceived by the fact that Christine is standing some distance from us and seems to be completely absorbed in her own, private conversation.

TECHNIQUES OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE

The psychology of gaining compliance

Dariusz Dolinski

Money for Nothing

Everybody knows you need to work for your money. And if somebody just gives you money, that can only be by the expropriation of somebody else’s labor. Money just doesn’t grow on trees, after all.

But is this really true? Just because you work for your money, did the guy who paid you also work for it? What about the guy who paid him? If you follow the money trail long enough, you are going to find someone who did not work for his money. He simply got it for nothing. He did not even have to go to the trouble of picking it off trees. He just created it out of thin air by bookkeeping. We call this man a banker.

Unlike people who have to produce things of real value before they count them up and enter the number in a book, the banker creates his product simply by bookkeeping operations. The whole panoply of bank services—checking accounts, savings accounts, free toasters, checks with baby ducklings or golden retrievers printed on them—are, arguably, props to disguise the fact that the core of banking is the sheer creation of money out of nothing.

When I was a boy, one of the banks in my hometown gave out free piggy banks to children. Today, that seems a master-stroke of propaganda, fostering the impression that real banks, just like piggy banks, can only give out money that they take in. But banks are not required to keep your deposits on hand. They loan them out. Every dollar in your checking or savings account is loaned out ten times over. This is how bankers simply create money through bookkeeping. And that is just the beginning of how bankers create money. And bankers can do it even if they do not operate in buildings with Grecian columns out front and teller windows inside, even if they do not have checking and savings accounts and all the other props we associate with banking.

But even though the money you borrow was created for nothing, you still have to pay it back, with interest. And when you pay it back, you can’t just create the money. You have to work for it. You have to provide real goods and services. Thus bankers, by loaning out the money they create for nothing, gain a mortgage on future production of real world goods and services.

What is money anyway? Money is a medium of exchange that allows one to covert the fruits of one’s labor into easily portable tokens that one can exchange for the fruits of other people’s labor. What one chooses for tokens does not really matter. Money can be bits of shiny metal, colorful slips of paper, electronic data in computers, or cowrie shells, just as long as they are accepted by the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.

Money does not need to have any intrinsic value. In fact, it helps if its intrinsic value is next to nothing, otherwise people will hoard it rather than circulate it freely, which would cause an economic hardship known as deflation, in which money is a commodity whose value rises because its supply diminishes. (When money is a commodity whose supply rises and its value decreases, that is called inflation. It is worth asking: Can one avoid both evils if money has no value in itself, i.e., if it is not a commodity that can be bought and sold alongside bricks and butter?)

If the best money has no intrinsic value, then the worst sort of money would be precious metals. The best sort of money would be entirely intangible, just data in a computer. Even paper money can be hoarded, for instance, when the price of toilet paper gets too high. (Perhaps the best way to ensure that money is not hoarded is simply to print an expiration date on it.)

Ideally money should be a self-effacing servant of the real economy, which produces actual goods and services. But money has grown into a jealous tyrant that interferes with the real economy. The simplest example is your average economic crisis. In an economic depression, the land does not suddenly go sterile. The udders of cows do not go dry. Men do not suddenly become stupid and lazy. The sun keeps shining; the crops keep growing; the chickens keep laying; people keep working. Goods pile up in warehouses and stores. And on the demand side, people still need to eat. But silos are bursting and people are starving because, for some mysterious reason, there is suddenly “not enough money.”

People have no money to spend, or they are afraid to part with the money they do have, because of a climate of uncertainty. After all, half way around the world, a massive swindle has been discovered; a bank has collapsed; a speculative bubble has burst. So, naturally, back in Hooterville, stores are filled with sour milk and rotting vegetables and children are going to bed hungry.

If an able-bodied man were shipwrecked on a fertile island, he would not starve for lack of money. But on this vast and fertile island we call Earth, people starve amidst plenty because we have accepted the dominion of a monetary economy that disrupts the real economy. That is no way to run a planet.

The obvious solution is simply to increase the money supply. One must make consumer demand effective so the market clears and life can go on. And the simplest way to do that is for the government to print money and give it to people. Remember George W. Bush’s 2008 “stimulus checks”? That was money for nothing, handed to people to stimulate economic activity. The effect, of course, was negligible. But it was morally and economically far preferable to the massive “bailouts” and the Obama stimulus plan that followed.

Whereas the Bush stimulus checks went directly to millions of consumers, who injected the money directly into the economy when they purchased goods and services, the bailouts and stimulus spending went to a relative handful of politically connected insiders. It turns out, furthermore, that very little of the money went to stimulate the US economy. Instead, a lot of it was invested overseas. Other recipients of bailouts held onto their cash, hoping that they could buy up real assets for cheap if the economy continued to slide deeper into depression. Moreover, whatever money did go into the US economy came with strings attached: the necessity to repay principal and interest. At least with the Bush stimulus checks, the money went directly into the economy with no strings attached in straight up purchases of goods and services.

But, as we have seen, money for nothing is not merely part of an occasional emergency stimulus measure. It is business as usual for banks.

But if money is being created out of nothing all the time, then we have to ask: Should this be left to the banks, or is there a better way of doing it?

Why not simply have the government create money and send each individual a monthly check, to be spent as he sees fit? This money would stimulate the economy directly, through the purchases of goods and services, whereas money created by banks in the form of loans must be paid back, with interest, creating a parasitic class of people who get a share of real production by loaning at interest a commodity they get for nothing.

Again, every industry that produces real goods and services has accounting and inventory costs, but actual production has to come first. You have to make toys before you can count them. With banks, money is by created simply by bookkeeping operations, e.g., making loans. Bankers “produce” merely by juggling numbers.

But if money for nothing is simply a feature of the modern economy, why not cut out the parasitic “private sector” middlemen and simply have the government create money and distribute it directly to consumers?

Why is the government preferable to the private sector as the creator of money? Because, unlike private businesses, the government is accountable to the public. Its purpose is to secure the common good. Moreover, when the private financial sector is in crisis, the bankers look to the government to bail them out—at the expense of the taxpayers. Time for the government to bail the people out—at the expense of the banks. Let’s repudiate all our debts and start fresh with a new financial system.

“But simply creating money and mailing out checks would be inflationary!” some would object. True. But it would be no more inflationary than allowing banks to create money.

Furthermore, there is a deeper issue here: Is inflation or deflation simply a product of the commodification of money? The commodification of money means that money is not merely a tool of exchange, but a commodity that is exchanged, a commodity with a cost of its own (interest). Would it be possible to decommodify money, i.e., to eliminate interest and a secondary market in money, either partially or altogether? Would the creation of money that expires after a while cut down on the commodification of money?

“But money for nothing would be socialism!” others would object. Yes, I am proposing socializing the creation and initial distribution of money. But what people do with the money at that point is their own business. The system I propose is completely consistent with private property and private enterprise. Indeed, it would strengthen and secure them, because it would eliminate a parasitic class of people who steadily mulct the real economy, and occasionally send it into crises, by creating and loaning out money that is free to them and should be free to all.

“But how would businesses capitalize themselves without bank loans?” That is a fair question. Perhaps the best answer is to say that that just as individual consumers could get money for nothing from the state, creditable producers could do so as well. But nothing about my proposal would prevent banks and credit unions from forming to capitalize businesses. But they would not be allowed to create money out of thin air. They would have to attract savings by paying interest, then loan out their deposits—and no more than their deposits—at interest to creditworthy businessmen. To do this, banks would have to offer serious interest for savings and charge serious interest on loans, but it could be done. It would definitely be “tight” money, though, which might be a good thing in the long run, since it would discourage speculative investments. Of course if money went bad after a while, it would make no sense to save it. But none of this might be necessary if interest-free state financing is a viable option. It is certainly a question worth exploring.

Nothing, moreover, would prevent businesses from capitalizing themselves by selling shares and paying dividends, either.

“But shouldn’t people work for their money?” Yes and no. Money needs to get into circulation. And the modern welfare state gives people money for nothing all the time in the form of unemployment insurance, old age pensions, welfare payments, food aid, healthcare, etc. Why not bundle all these benefits together into a single, flat monthly payment? These payments would be enough to ensure the basic social safety net we all have anyway. It would also be fairer than the present system, which expropriates the fruits of some people’s labor to redistribute them to others. It would, in effect, be welfare without redistribution.

But the basic payments I envision would not allow people to live opulently. Thus most people would choose to work. Some might choose to invest their monthly checks. Others might wish to defer them so they can enjoy better old age pensions. But the whole character of work would be changed, because people would not work because they have to. They would work because they want to. The socialist dream of the “de-commodification” of labor would be realized.

Sure, some people might choose to spend their time smoking dope and strumming guitars. But one of them might be the next Goethe or Wagner. And surely we would be better off extending the adolescences of a million bohemians than supporting a thousand scheming Wolfowitzes, Madoffs, and Shylocks along with all their warmonger and pornmonger cousins.

“But this system would create public debt!” some might object. But I am talking about creating money, not borrowing it. Why should the government allow banks to create money and then loan it, at interest, to the government, when the government can create money itself? The very existence of public debt goes back to the time when money was something of intrinsic value (like gold) that banks might possess and that the government could not just make up. A government that can simply create money has no need of public debt.

“But this system will create idleness!” is another objection. Yes, but there is nothing wrong with idleness. In fact, as I see it, the whole point of social and technological progress is to create a world in which machines put us all out of work. The goal of social policy should be to create conditions of ever-increasing productivity through scientific and technological progress.

But it would be ecologically irresponsible, indeed catastrophic, if people were to take the gains of increased productivity in the form of more consumer goods or burgeoning population growth. Thus the goal of social policy should be to keep consumption roughly stable and cash out productivity gains in terms of ever-shorter work weeks. As productivity increases, it might be possible to maintain a comfortable standard of living with 20 hours of work per week, then 10, then 5, then 1.

When the work week approaches zero hours, we would be living in a “Star Trek” economy in which scarcity of physical goods is abolished through the invention of unlimited cheap and clean energy sources and the “replicator” which can turn energy into any desired good, simply poofing it into existence. In such a world, the only scarcity would be ecological carrying capacity, which would have to be zealously guarded by keeping populations in check—or sending them out to colonize the stars, terraform dead planets, create galactic empires, etc.

But what to would people do with their leisure? Such a society would be the culmination (and, I would argue, following Hegel, the hidden inner purpose) of all human striving, from the moment man first differentiated himself from the animal and stepped into history. It would obviously be a farce if mankind struggled for millennia only to give birth to a world of indolent, empowered morons. Imagine Homer Simpson poofing donuts and Duff into existence while watching holoporn until he becomes one of the boneless blobs in hoverchairs depicted in Wall-E. Utopia would be wasted on such people. Thus along with scientific, technological, and social progress, we would also need to pursue cultural, spiritual, and genetic progress to create a race worthy of utopia.

A job is just something you do to make money so you can do the things you really enjoy. A job is just a means to doing things that are ends in themselves. Once machines put us out of work and the lollygaggers and lotus-eaters are bred out of the gene pool, people can busy themselves doing the things they find intrinsically rewarding: raising children, writing books, playing and composing music, writing software, inventing machines, playing sports, tending gardens, perfecting recipes, advancing science, fighting for justice, exploring the cosmos, etc.

It will be a realm of freedom in which the human potential to create beauty, do good, and experience joy will be unhampered by economic necessity.

This is the stuff of science fiction and other utopias, staples of the American imagination. Yet the dominant political paradigm in America and the rest of the white world is profoundly regressive and dysgenic. While whites dream of the Space Age, our system is headed toward to the Stone Age, worshiping Negroes as heroes and gods (Morgan Freeman has been typecast as God) and placing a product of dysgenic miscegenation in the highest office of the land.

If we are to resume the path to the stars, we will have to begin by addressing four principal evils: dysgenics, economic globalization, racial diversity (including non-white immigration), and finance capitalism.

What do we call this alternative economic paradigm? Ultimately, I would call it National Socialism. But the little florilegium of economic heresies I have assembled above is drawn primarily from the Social Credit ideas of Clifford Hugh Douglas (1859–1952) and Alfred Richard Orage (1873–1934), partly by way of Alan Watts, who was my first introduction to these ideas, and Ezra Pound, who is the most famous exponent of Social Credit.

It is my conviction that the North American New Right, if it is to provide a genuine alternative to the existing system, must break with all forms of “free market” economic orthodoxy and work to recover and develop the rich array of Third Way economic theories, including Social Credit, Distributism, Guild Socialism, Corporatism, and Populism. This essay and others, including ones to come, are my naïve attempts to start a conversation in the hope that it might draw in other writers who are more qualified to construct a critique of capitalist orthodoxy.

Creating an ideal world will cost us, and our enemies, a great deal in real terms. But the first step toward freedom, namely the act of imagining it, is free.

 Greg Johnson

 https://counter-currents.com/


21 comments
ErnstDecember 24, 2015 at 3:27 am
This has to be one of your greatest articles, i think it also ties in to the “masters of the universe” speech by Alex Kurtagic. A nuanced critique of the current system followed by a coherent vision for our people that includes a take on economy that goes beyond naive leftism and messianic libertarianism a la Ron Paul. Masterful piece, thank you Greg for your work and happy Yule!

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TheodoreDecember 24, 2015 at 5:01 am
Greg,
In general, I strongly agree with your economic views (and possibly may be further to your left economically), and I basically agree with your premises here. But, while I’m no economics expert, doesn’t money ultimately have to be backed up by some sort of productivity? My understanding of inflation (in crude terms) is when there is too money circulating compared to the available goods and services that can be purchased with that money; deflation being the opposite. If you are just going to print money to hand out to people without an accompanying increase in “economic growth” you will degrade the worth of that money via inflation. I don’t think that the “decommidification” of money can solve this problem, which is based on supply/demand fundamentals.

Maybe in part the money for distribution should come from the confiscated wealth of the plutocrats, who’ll be spending their time breaking rocks in a labor camp? And via a properly progressive income tax, and corporate tax (and no whatever remaining private corporations would not be allowed to flee overseas).

It’s possible by economic understanding of inflation/deflation is flawed and in that case I await edification.

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lpcDecember 24, 2015 at 1:53 pm
You are right about the evil nature of fractional reserve banking. However, this statement is the direct opposite of the truth: “Because, unlike private businesses, the government is accountable to the public.”

Your article ignores the actual history of how true money evolves in a society of free men, as a cultural phenomenon, not a bureaucratic one. Money is any “thing” (often a commodity, but not necessarily) which happens to be most widely in demand in any given circle of people freely trading value for value. I emphasize: “happens to be”. By that I mean that money arises from a culture of shared values. It is not defined or created by ghastly bureaucrats.

In point of historical fact, it was precisely the intervention of governments that led to the ruination of money. The fiat banking system you rightfully denounce would arise naturally or be sustainable in a free society — and even if it were, alternatives would abound so we could escape its nonsense. It is entirely the creature of government force.

Please look once again at the history. Money is the creation of free men exchanging their values in shared culture of production and integrity. It is not the creation of pathetic government functionaries.

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Greg JohnsonDecember 24, 2015 at 2:25 pm
There’s no argument here, just libertarian emotionalist disdain for government.

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lpcDecember 24, 2015 at 3:25 pm
The argument is historical, with two major points.

(1) Money in fact arose as the creation of free men exchanging their values in a shared culture of production and integrity. (This by the way is how all good things arise.)

(2) Money in fact was ruined by vicious parasites who forcibly eliminated the honest money and substituted their own dishonest banking money for the purpose of enslaving those free men forever.

I am astounded by how many people rightfully decry the current miserable state of affairs, while demonstrating no historical knowledge of how we arrived here.

I am also astounded by how often when I laud the freedoms we enjoyed before 1965, and still more freedoms we enjoyed before 1913, and still others before 1865, I am derided as a “individualist” and a “libertarian”. For all of you wondering why the current ecconomy, government, and culture are corrupt cesspools, please keep in mind that it might have something to do with scuttling those freedoms like so much garbage. In other words, ask yourself precisely what is different between now and any halcyon date in the past that you care to choose.

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Greg JohnsonDecember 24, 2015 at 3:48 pm
I completely disagree with “sound” money policies and broad-brush anti-government sentiments. Only a state can create a pure fiat currency, which would rid the world of the curses of inflation and deflation and fully unlock the utopia potential of technological progress.

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lpcDecember 24, 2015 at 4:17 pm
I agree that only a state can create a pure fiat currency, I simply regard the product as one of the principal causes of the economic and cultural decay we see today.

To fully unlock the utopia potential of technological progress, I suggest a regressive policy instead of the progressive one of fiat money. I say regress straight back to the models of America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and England in the late 17th through early 20th centuries. Those fine souls demonstrated how a real civilization can and should function: not perfectly, but with a vibrant and growing productive class and a notable lack of cultural degeneracy. For example, a man working at Ford Motor Company could pay for a year at Yale for his son with just one month’s wages.

You should note well that my statement is not anti-government, since America and England in those times did have governments. They were just far better than the ghastly examples we see today.


YohanDecember 24, 2015 at 2:13 pm
Very inspirational stuff about the Utopian goal of an ever shortening work week, and as you say once achieved with be a culmination of all human striving, and allow us to move onto purely intellectual pursuits.

But I want to point out a misunderstanding regarding interest and money that permeates your work, and no doubt its because you are a specialist in philosophy. Money is not the cause of interest. Interest has nothing to do with money. Interest is the difference between man’s propensity to satisfy his wants now or in the future.

We are not immortal gods, we live a finite lifetime, and because time is short, man prefers a want satisfied sooner rather than later. The time difference between present and future is the phenomenon of time preference, which leads to a personal interest rate for that individual. It could be high or low. But it’s got nothing to do with money. It’s a category of human action and human cognitive function.

The reason why I painstakingly explain this, is once understood you will see how all the ideas for ‘social credit’ and abolishing interest are built on unsound foundations. They are built on denying a basic category of human behavior, which is that man prefers a present good to a future good.

This is not to say the current banking system should not be abolished, of course the monetary system is ripping us off and impoverishing the poorest of us, but don’t conflate the issue by thinking the solution it to abolish interest and lending.

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Greg JohnsonDecember 24, 2015 at 2:44 pm
Time preference is a real phenomenon. And of course it is a foundation of interest. Abolishing interest does not, however, require abolishing time preference. An analogy: sexual desire is the foundation of prostitution. One can abolish prostitution without abolishing sexual desire.

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cryptocurrencyDecember 24, 2015 at 10:05 pm
Centralization will always attract the corrupt and the corruptible. Only decentralized currencies (such as Bitcoin and its anonymous cousin Monero) that are mathematically guaranteed to be secure and uncensorable and that require no trusted third parties can usher in the utopian age Greg invokes.

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LewDecember 25, 2015 at 12:01 pm
fwiw, I have a computer scientist acquaintance who has worked on projects of interest to the powerful from a software standpoint. Without sharing any details (because he can’t), he assures me their top priorities in the field of computer science have nothing to do with the NSA; he says they are working overtime to remove all anonymity and pseudo-anonymity from the internet and to abolish cash and make all currency transactions electronic.

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witty tongueDecember 27, 2015 at 12:59 am
This excerpt came from a little book, A Matter of LIFE or DEBT , page 97:

Between 1817 and 1820 in the island of Guernsey, they had been suffering the general depression and unemployment that followed the Napoleonic wars. Guernsey’s State debt stood at 19,137 pounds and bore an annual interest charge of 2,390 pounds when its annual revenue was only 3,000 pounds. The island badly needed a new market hall, and its harbor, dikes and roads were in urgent need of repair. An appeal to London was made for a loan but the Government said it had no money to spare. The island’s governor then called a meeting. Was the work urgently needed? he asked. Yes, was the unanimous reply. Had they enough materials on the island, had they plenty of unused labor? Again, the reply was an emphatic yes. All we need, then, is the money, declared the Governor, so we will print it. This was done in the form of special 1-pound State note secured by the revenue-raising capabilities of the new works in the future; the real credit behind the notes lay in the proposed new works, in particular the market hall. The contractors were paid with these notes, which in turn were paid to the workmen and others who supplied the materials, and they were accepted throughout the island by the shops and local banks as being sound money. As new building and repairs were completed, incoming rates, rents, and dock dues went to pay back the currency, which in time, was destroyed. No debts, arose and no long-term interest payments. The hungry unemployed found work and incomes, trade improved, and the entire island began to enjoy a new found prosperity. [end excerpt]

Note the part about currency being destroyed. That’s how inflation is controlled.

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Kerry BoltonDecember 27, 2015 at 2:59 am
Excellent article in every respect.

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ArindamDecember 27, 2015 at 11:52 am
This article brought back memories of what William Joyce wrote, in his classic ‘Twilight Over England.’

‘The notion that the level of production should be controlled by monetary considerations belongs to a very primitive and superstitious stage of social evolution. Indeed, there are few savage tribes that would accept it as it is accepted in Britain today. Suppose that in some very backward island, a shell standard of money prevailed. Assume also that some malicious or half-witted creature managed to acquire half the shells in the island and to drop them into the water beyond recovery. The chiefs and witch-doctors would have to hold a council of emergency. But if the rulers of that island decreed that because half the money of the community had been lost, hunting and fishing and tilling must now be reduced by fifty per cent, there’d be a hot time in the old town that night. In such a simple state of society, the criminal absurdity of the proposal would be obvious to the meanest and most untutored intellect. Yet a policy which the most undeveloped savage tribe would reject as nonsense has been accepted by the British people as a sacred ritual for many years. Thus, of course, international finance, by restricting supplies and causing shortage, can produce whatever conditions of marketing that may be most profitable to itself. If there is one truth against which the Old School of Finance is fighting today, it is the supreme verity that production of goods should be based on the needs of the people, the only limit being the limit of natural resources and raw materials. Since the dawn of human history, the great struggle of man has been to wrest from Nature by force and cunning the means of life and enjoyment. It was only when the blessings of modern democracy made their appearance one hundred and fifty years ago, that he was told, in an arbitrary manner, that his efforts must be slackened and regulated henceforth by the private interests of an infinitesimal proportion of the world’s population.’ (William Joyce, Twilight Over England, pages 53-54; emphasis mine).

Julius Evola, went further, noting that we have now reached the stage where instead of production serving to fulfil needs, needs are generated in order to facilitate production. As if that were not bad enough, much – perhaps the vast majority – of what is produced in the economy, constitutes waste in one form or another, (ex: resources used up for marketing, wasteful duplication, etc…) – as Thorstein Veblen outlined in his ‘The Engineers and the Price Mechanism, chapter V’.

Indeed, as a general rule, the more intelligent the individual, the more absurd he finds the current economic system.

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witty tongueDecember 27, 2015 at 4:59 pm
Robert Poteat did an excellent job in describing “What is Inflation”: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/the-american-monetary-institute/FB5ng-6yDN0


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VerlisDecember 28, 2015 at 9:32 am
Although I disagree entirely, both morally and factually, with almost every point the author makes in this essay (and two other recent related essays), his clearly and reasonably expressed views make for a very promising discussion. I’m hesitant, however, to put my thoughts into words in a post which, precisely because it disagrees so strongly, may never see the light of day.

Just this observation for now: this series of essays makes for a significant departure from the metapolitical project the site, it was my understanding, had committed itself to. Greg, it seems, has settled on precisely the kind of ‘package deal’ WNism he once opposed (when enunciated by conservatives). (‘Package deal’ here refers to WN arising out of more fundamental moral or philosophical commitments — WN comes ‘packaged’ as part of the deal, although contemporary society, it is held, unnaturally overlooks this.)

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Luke AragonDecember 28, 2015 at 7:53 pm
I agree with most everything in this article. Of course, I’m assuming a homogenous high-trust society. There is, however, one important tweak that I would make:

The freshly printed money should only be given to households and not individuals. This would encourage marriage, and prevent women from using the state to finance the dysgenic promiscuous lifestyle that is currently filling our societies with sociopathic bastards (there’s a reason “bastard” was an insult). Perhaps it should also be a flat-amount per household to manage population size.

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anonJanuary 2, 2016 at 3:20 pm
good stuff. I think I agree, some thoughts (wider than the precise topic)

1. Metapolitics: I think this area is or at least potentially could be ultra metapolitics because there’s very few things that could reshape the ground more totally. The problem is it is hard to break down into meme sized chunks.

2. Stated Aim: What’s the aim of the economic platform? I’d say something like maximizing the middle class to create stability and freedom i.e. not an economic aim. This gives a clear demarcation: socialism focuses on the poor, capitalism focuses on the rich, third way focuses on the middle.

3. Capitalism: Capitalism has a tendency to create plantation economies with excessively concentrated wealth. The problem with this is not a moral egalitarian one but a practical one. If you have excessive concentration of wealth then the lack of disposable income among the majority poor leads the economy to stagnate through low demand. No demand, no innovation.

4. Socialism: In theory if wealth is shared equally then the economy ought to thrive from the maximized disposable income and maybe it does for a while but the lack of incentives leads to stagnation also and thus relative poverty over time. No incentive, no innovation.

5. Third Way: By maximizing the middle class there is a large amount of disposable income to drive the economy and by allowing the incentive of joining the rich there is also a drive to innovate and increase productivity. Demand plus personal incentives -> innovation.

6. Time Preference & Usury: It’s true that people have a time preference and thus are prepared to pay more to have a shiny object sooner and interest is a fair price for that preference however there are negative public consequences to consider. By choosing to pay the price of an object plus interest the person is reducing their future demand for real goods and services by the amount of interest paid. In terms of the effect on their demand it’s equivalent to someone getting their wages and burning a percentage of it.

And it’s not just a simple transfer of one person’s demand to the money lender’s demand because of the relative numbers. With debt-based consumption you end up with very large numbers of people seduced by time preference into surrendering some of their disposable income to a few who then hoard it. The effect is to siphon demand out of the economy. It’s probably the worst way capitalism can concentrate excessive wealth as it’s completely non-productive.

So as usury for consumption is harmful then no fractional reserve banking and either no borrowing for consumption at all or at least always require a deposit – saving up is good and provides the fuel for borrowing for investment.

7. Central Bank: Replace with a state bank that creates as much money as is needed for the economy to run at full capacity and inject it through public works or social credit removing any excess via taxation. Getting rid of the private central banks immediately removes their 2% yearly inflation target which is simply legalized counterfeiting.

8. Banks: There is still a role for private banks as regulators of investment borrowing. Successful investment loans are defined as those where increased productivity as a result of the investment puts into the economy more than is taken out by the interest payments. People specializing in judging those loans maximize the effectiveness of savings used as capital.

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AlexandraMay 31, 2020 at 12:52 pm
Any individual with any financial education can borrow money from a bank for a certain amount of interest, and then invest in a stock or a bond that pays more interest than the bank is asking. Yes, these deals may be hard to find, but when you do, you make a ‘profit’ on your money. Is that so ‘wrong’? I attempt to do it right along and I do not see myself as immoral or criminal. It’s the basis of capitalism, to which I subscribe. I ‘produce’ money to pay my other bills and buy food for myself (I am retired, and too old not to be retired), by cleverly using the capitalist system. I do make mistakes occasionally and lose money instead, so that balances the system, I suppose. Money always circulates, no matter how it is originated.

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Michael BroutinSeptember 28, 2020 at 2:46 am
The idea that the people in times of economic collapse should receive the bailout over Wall St. reminds me of a quote by the “founder of the modern welfare state”, Lester Frank Ward:

“The charge of paternalism is chiefly made by the class that enjoys the largest share of government protection. Those who denounce it are those who most frequently and successfully invoke it. Nothing is more obvious today than the single inability of capital and private enterprise to take care of themselves unaided by the state; and while they are incessantly denouncing “paternalism,” by which they mean the claim of the defenseless laborer and artisan to a share in this lavish state protection, they are all the while besieging legislatures for relief from their own incompetency, and “pleading the baby act” through a trained body of lawyers and lobbyists. The dispensing of national pap to this class should rather be called “maternalism,” to which a square, open, and dignified paternalism would be infinitely preferable.”