Cursing the world and oneself

 The attitude you speak of, that of cursing the world and oneself, is, in a sense, the beginning of wisdom. Revolt is the first reaction of an intelligent man when he begins to understand the desperate nature of his situation in the world; and it is probably true to say that nothing great has ever been achieved except by a man in revolt against his situation. But revolt alone is not enough—it eventually contradicts itself. A man in blind revolt is like someone in a railway compartment trying to stop the train by pushing against the opposite seat with his feet: he may be strong enough to damage the compartment, but the damaged compartment will nevertheless continue to move with the train. Except for the arahat, we are all in this train of samsāra, and the problem is to stop the train whilst still travelling in it. Direct action, direct revolt, won’t do; but something, certainly, must be done. That it is, in fact, possible to stop the train from within we know from the Buddha, who has himself done it:

I, monks, being myself subject to birth, decay, and death, having seen the misery of subjection to birth, decay, and death, went in search of the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction (nibbāna), and I reached the unborn, undecaying, un-dying, uttermost quietus of extinction. <M. 26: i,167> 

Revolt by all means, but let the weapons be intelligence and patience, not disorder and violence; and the first thing to do is to find out exactly what it is that you are revolting against. Perhaps you will come to see that what you are revolting against is avijjā.

Nanavira Thera 

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

 FOREWORD BY NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

When I start at the top left corner of a page in The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, I have the feeling of reading a satire. Ten lines into it, some doubts erupt – could this be serious? When I reach the bottom right corner, I am certain it must be a serious work of scholarship in economic analysis. Then, upon turning the page, the cycle starts again, thankfully, because economics is boring (by design) and this is playful, hence fun to read.

The Basic Laws asserts that 1) there will always be more stupid people than you think, 2) the proportion of stupid people is invariant to intellectual, social or geographic segmentation. The ratio will be the same among Nobel Prize winners as it will be among a selection of tax accountants (except I am sure that there must be a higher prevalence among laureates of the pseudo-Nobel in economics). I will leave the remaining laws to avoid spoiling the read – this is a very short book.

By the time my eyes reach the bottom right corner, and I realise this is not a joke, the following ideas pop into my head. First, the author has a formal axiomatic definition of what stupid means: someone who harms others without procuring any gain for himself or herself – in contrast to the much more predictable bandit who gains something from harming you. As such, stupid persons can cause a lot of damage – unlike bandits, they have no interest in the survival of the system because they do not benefit from their stupidity. Second, the laws here are real laws, as far as economic laws are concerned, no less rigorously obtained than Adam Smith’s three laws, the law of diminishing return, Okun’s law, or some such thing you forget about seconds after taking the final exam. (By contrast, I promise that you will remember Cipolla’s laws forever.)

Finally, one wonders: why is there a constant proportion of stupid people, invariant to time, place, geography, profession, body mass index, degrees of separation from the Queen of Denmark, and professional rank? The solution of the mystery may lie in the Italian title of Cipolla’s work, Allegro ma non troppo. Fast, but not too fast. Could it be that Mother Nature (or God, whatever your theology) wants to put a brake on things, reduce the speed of progress, slow down the growth of your employer, prevent GDP from an exponential rise so the economy doesn’t overheat? So She created the stupid person acting against both his and the collective interest to do just that?

A masterly book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Originally written in English, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity was published for the first time in 1976 in a numbered and private edition bearing the unlikely imprint of ‘Mad Millers’.

The author believed that his short essay could only be fully appreciated in the language in which it had been written. He consequently long declined any proposal to have it translated. Only in 1988 did he accept the idea of its publication in an Italian version as part of the volume entitled Allegro ma non troppo, together with the essay Pepper, Wine (and Wool) as the Dynamic Factors of the Social and Economic Development of the Middle Ages, also originally written in English and published privately by Mad Millers for Christmas 1973.

Allegro ma non troppo has been a bestseller both in Italy and in all the countries where translated versions have appeared. Yet, with an irony that the author of these laws would have appreciated, it has never been published in the language in which it was first written.

Thus, more than a quarter of a century since publication of Allegro ma non troppo, this in fact is the first edition that makes The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity available in its original version.

THE MAD MILLERS TO THE READER

The private edition of 1976 was preceded by the following publisher’s note written by the author himself:

The Mad Millers printed only a limited number of copies of this book which addresses itself not to stupid people but to those who on occasion have to deal with such people. To add that none of those who will receive this book can possibly fall in area S of the basic graph (figure 1) is therefore a work of supererogation. Nevertheless, like most works of supererogation, it is better done that left undone. For, as the Chinese philosopher said: ‘Erudition is the source of universal wisdom: but that does not prevent it from being an occasional cause of misunderstanding between friends.’

INTRODUCTION

Human affairs are admittedly in a deplorable state. This, however, is no novelty. As far back as we can see, human affairs have always been in a deplorable state. The heavy load of troubles and miseries that human beings have to bear as individuals as well as members of organised societies is basically a by-product of the most improbable – and I would dare say, stupid – way in which life was set up at its very inception.

After Darwin we know that we share our origin with the lower members of the animal kingdom, and worms as well as elephants have to bear their daily share of trials, predicaments, and ordeals. Human beings, however, are privileged in so far as they have to bear an extra load – an extra dose of tribulations originated daily by a group of people within the human race itself. This group is much more powerful than the Mafia, or the Military Industrial Complex, or International Communism – it is an unorganised unchartered group which has no chief, no president, no by-laws and yet manages to operate in perfect unison, as if guided by an invisible hand, in such a way that the activity of each member powerfully contributes to strengthen and amplify the effectiveness of the activity of all other members. The nature, character and behaviour of the members of this group are the subject of the following pages.

Let me point out at this juncture that most emphatically this little book is neither a product of cynicism nor an exercise in defeatism – no more than a book on microbiology. The following pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, know and thus possibly neutralise one of the most powerful, dark forces which hinder the growth of human welfare and happiness.

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST BASIC LAW

The First Basic Law of Human Stupidity asserts without ambiguity that

‘Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.’fn1

At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:

a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid;

b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.

The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol σ.

CHAPTER II

THE SECOND BASIC LAW

Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than the others, this is attributable to nurture and not to nature.

I take an exception to this general view. It is my firm conviction, supported by years of observation and experimentation, that men are not equal, that some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.

Although convinced that fraction σ of human beings are stupid and that they are so because of genetic traits, I am not a reactionary trying to reintroduce surreptitiously class or race discrimination. I firmly believe that stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion. This fact is scientifically expressed by the Second Basic Law which states that

‘The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.’

In this regard, Nature seems indeed to have outdone herself. It is well known that Nature manages, rather mysteriously, to keep constant the relative frequency of certain natural phenomena. For instance, whether men proliferate at the Northern Pole or at the Equator, whether the matching couples are developed or underdeveloped, whether they are black or white the female to male ratio among the newly born is a constant, with a very slight prevalence of males. We do not know how Nature achieves this remarkable result but we know that in order to achieve it Nature must operate with large numbers. The most remarkable fact about the frequency of stupidity is that Nature succeeds in making this frequency equal to the probability σ quite independently from the size of the group. Thus one finds the same percentage of stupid people whether one is considering very large groups or one is dealing with very small ones. No other set of observable phenomena offers such striking proof of the powers of Nature.

The evidence that education has nothing to do with the probability σ was provided by experiments carried on in a large number of universities all over the world. One may distinguish the composite population which constitutes a university in five major groups, namely the blue-collar workers, the white-collar employees, the students, the administrators and the professors.

Whenever I analysed the blue-collar workers I found that the fraction σ of them were stupid. As σ’s value was higher than I expected (First Law), paying my tribute to fashion I thought at first that segregation, poverty, lack of education were to be blamed. But moving up the social ladder I found that the same ratio was prevalent among the white-collar employees and among the students. More impressive still were the results among the professors. Whether I considered a large university or a small college, a famous institution or an obscure one, I found that the same fraction σ of the professors are stupid. So bewildered was I by the results, that I made a special point to extend my research to a specially selected group, to a real élite, the Nobel laureates. The result confirmed Nature’s supreme powers: σ fraction of the Nobel laureates are stupid.

This idea was hard to accept and digest but too many experimental results proved its fundamental veracity. The Second Basic Law is an iron law, and it does not admit exceptions. The Women’s Liberation Movement will support the Second Basic Law as it shows that stupid individuals are proportionally as numerous among men as among women. The ‘underdeveloped’ of the ‘Third World’ will probably take solace at the Second Basic Law as they can find in it the proof that after all the developed are not so developed. Whether the Second Basic Law is liked or not, however, its implications are frightening: the Law implies that whether you move in distinguished circles or you take refuge among the head-hunters of Polynesia, whether you lock yourself into a monastery or decide to spend the rest of your life in the company of beautiful and lascivious women, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people – which percentage (in accordance with the First Law) will always surpass your expectations.

CHAPTER III

A TECHNICAL INTERLUDE

At this point it is imperative to elucidate the concept of human stupidity and to define the dramatis persona.

Individuals are characterised by different degrees of propensity to socialise. There are individuals for whom any contact with other individuals is a painful necessity. They literally have to put up with people and people have to put up with them. At the other extreme of the spectrum there are individuals who absolutely cannot live by themselves and are even ready to spend time in the company of people whom they do not really like rather than to be alone. Between these two extremes, there is an extreme variety of conditions, although by far the greatest majority of the people are closer to the type who cannot face loneliness than to the type who has no taste for human intercourse. Aristotle recognised this fact when he wrote that ‘Man is a social animal’ and the validity of his statement is demonstrated by the fact that we move in social groups, that there are more married people than bachelors and spinsters, that so much wealth and time is wasted in fatiguing and boring cocktail parties and that the word loneliness carries normally a negative connotation.

Whether one belongs to the hermit or to the socialite type, one deals with people although with different intensity. Even the hermits occasionally meet people. Moreover, one affects human beings also by avoiding them. What I could have done for an individual or a group but did not do is an opportunity-cost (i.e. a lost gain or loss) for that particular person or group. The moral of the story is that each one of us has a current balance with everybody else. From action or inaction each one of us derives a gain or a loss and at the same time one causes a gain or a loss to someone else. Gains and losses can be conveniently charted on a graph, and figure 1 shows the basic graph to be used for the purpose.

The graph refers to an individual – let us say Tom. The X axis measures the gain that Tom derives from his actions. On the Yaxis the graph shows the gain that another person or group of persons derive from Tom’s actions. Gains can be positive, nil or negative – a negative gain being actually a loss. The X axis measures Tom’s positive gains to the right of point O and Tom’s losses to the left of point O. The Y axis measures the gains and losses of the person or persons with whom Tom dealt respectively above and below point O.

To make all this clear, let us make a hypothetical example and refer to figure 1. Tom takes an action which affects Dick. If Tom derives from the action a gain and Dick suffers from the same action a loss, the action will be recorded on the graph with a dot which will appear in the graph somewhere in area B.

Fig. 1.Gains and losses may be recorded on the X and Y axis in dollars or francs, if one wants, but one has to include also psychological and emotional rewards and satisfactions as well as psychological and emotional stresses. These are intangibles and they are very difficult to measure according to objective standards. Cost-benefit analysis can help to solve the problem, although not completely, but I do not want to bother the reader with such technicalities: a margin of imprecision is bound to affect the measurement but it does not affect the essence of the argument. One point though must be made clear. When considering Tom’s action one makes use of Tom’s values but one has to rely on Dick’s values and not on Tom’s values to determine Dick’s gains (whether positive or negative). All too often this rule of fairness is forgotten and many troubles originate from failure to apply this essentially urbane point of view. Let me resort once again to a banal example. Tom hits Dick on Dick’s head and he derives satisfaction from his action. He may pretend that Dick was delighted to be hit on the head. Dick, however, may not share Tom’s view. In fact he may regard the blow on his head as an unpleasant event. Whether the blow on Dick’s head was a gain or a loss to Dick is up to Dick to decide and not to Tom.

CHAPTER IV

THE THIRD (AND GOLDEN) BASIC LAW

The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid. It will be easily recognised by the perspicacious reader that these four categories correspond to the four areas I, H, S, B, of the basic graph (see figure 1).

If Tom takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to Dick, Tom’s mark will fall in field H: Tom acted helplessly. If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain while yielding a gain also to Dick, Tom’s mark will fall in area I: Tom acted intelligently. If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain causing Dick a loss, Tom’s mark will fall in area B: Tom acted as a bandit. Stupidity is related to area S and to all positions on axis Y below point O.

As the Third Basic Law explicitly clarifies:

‘A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.’

When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of scepticism and incredulousness. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour. But let us abandon the lofty plane of theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life. We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and in our loss: we had to deal with a bandit. We also recollect cases in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and in our gain: we had to deal with a helpless person.fn1 We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do indeed occur. But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life. Our daily life is mostly made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation – or better, there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

CHAPTER V

FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION

Most people do not act consistently. Under certain circumstances a given person acts intelligently and under different circumstances the same person will act helplessly. The only important exception to the rule is represented by the stupid people who normally show a strong proclivity toward perfect consistency in all fields of human endeavours.

From all that proceeds, it does not follow that we can chart on the basic graph only stupid individuals. We can calculate for each person his weighted average position in the plane of figure 1 quite independently from his degree of inconsistency. A helpless person may occasionally behave intelligently and on occasion he may perform a bandit’s action. But since the person in question is fundamentally helpless most of his action will have the characteristics of helplessness. Thus the overall weighted average position of all the actions of such person will place him in the H quadrant of the basic graph.

The fact that it is possible to place on the graph individuals instead of their actions allows some digression about the frequency of the bandit and stupid types.

The perfect bandit is one who, with his actions, causes to other individuals losses equal to his gains. The crudest type of banditry is theft. A person who robs you of 100 pounds without causing you an extra loss or harm is a perfect bandit: you lose 100 pounds, he gains 100 pounds. In the basic graph the perfect bandits would appear on a 45-degree diagonal line that divides the area B into two perfectly symmetrical sub-areas (line OM of figure 2).

However the ‘perfect’ bandits are relatively few. The line OM divides the area B into two sub-areas, BI and BS, and by far the largest majority of the bandits fall somewhere in one of these two sub-areas.

Fig. 2.The bandits who fall in area BI are those individuals whose actions yield to them profits which are larger than the losses they cause to other people. All bandits who are entitled to a position in area BI are bandits with overtones of intelligence and as they get closer to the right side of the X axis they share more and more the characteristics of the intelligent person. Unfortunately the individuals entitled to a position in the BI area are not very numerous. Most bandits actually fall in area BS. The individuals who fall in this area are those whose actions yield to them gains inferior to the losses inflicted to other people. If someone kills you in order to rob from you fifty pounds or if he murders you in order to spend a weekend with your wife at Monte Carlo, we can be sure that he is not a perfect bandit. Even by using his values to measure his gains (but still using your values to measure your losses) he falls in the BS area very close to the border of sheer stupidity. Generals who cause vast destructions and innumerable casualties in return for a promotion or a medal fall in the same area.

The frequency distribution of the stupid people is totally different from that of the bandit. While bandits are mostly scattered over an area stupid people are heavily concentrated along one line, specifically on the Y axis below point O. The reason for this is that by far the majority of stupid people are basically and unwaveringly stupid – in other words they perseveringly insist in causing harm and losses to other people without deriving any gain, whether positive or negative. There are however people who by their improbable actions not only cause damage to other people but in addition hurt themselves. They are a sort of super-stupid who, in our system of accounting, will appear somewhere in the area S to the left of the Y axis.

CHAPTER VI

STUPIDITY AND POWER

Like all human creatures, also stupid people vary enormously in their capacity to affect their fellow men. Some stupid people normally cause only limited losses while others egregiously succeed in causing ghastly and widespread damages not only to one or two individuals but to entire communities or societies. The damaging potential of the stupid person depends on two major factors. First of all, it depends on the genetic factor. Some individuals inherit exceptional doses of the gene of stupidity and by virtue of inheritance they belong from birth to the élite of their group. The second factor which determines the potential of a stupid person is related to the position of power and consequence which he occupies in society. Among bureaucrats, generals, politicians and heads of state one has little difficulty in finding clear examples of basically stupid individuals whose damaging capacity was (or is) alarmingly enhanced by the position of power which they occupied (or occupy). Religious dignitaries should not be overlooked.

The question that reasonable people often raise is how and why stupid people can reach positions of power and consequence.

Class and caste were the social arrangements which favoured the steady supply of stupid people to positions of power in most societies of the pre-industrial world. Religion was another contributing factor. In the modern industrial world class and caste are banished both as words and as concepts and religion is fading away. But in lieu of class and caste we have political parties and bureaucracy and in lieu of religion we have democracy. Within a democratic system, general elections are a most effective instrument to insure the steady maintenance of fraction σ among the powerful. One has to keep in mind that according to the Second Basic Law, the fraction σ of the voting population are stupid people and elections offer to all of them at once a magnificent opportunity to harm everybody else without gaining anything from their action. They do so by contributing to the maintenance of the σ level among those in power.

CHAPTER VII

THE POWER OF STUPIDITY

It is not difficult to understand how social, political and institutional power enhances the damaging potential of a stupid person. But one still has to explain and understand what essentially it is that makes a stupid person dangerous to other people – in other words what constitutes the power of stupidity.

Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behaviour. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty manoeuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defences.

With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy.

Because the stupid person’s actions do not conform to the rules of rationality, it follows that:

a) one is generally caught by surprise by the attack;

b) even when one becomes aware of the attack, one cannot organise a rational defence, because the attack itself lacks any rational structure.

The fact that the activity and movements of a stupid creature are absolutely erratic and irrational not only makes defence problematic but it also makes any counterattack extremely difficult – like trying to shoot at an object which is capable of the most improbable and unimaginable movements. This is what both Dickens and Schiller had in mind when the former stated that ‘with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much’ and the latter wrote that ‘against stupidity the very Gods fight in vain’.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FOURTH BASIC LAW

That helpless people, namely those who in our accounting system fall into the H area, do not normally recognise how dangerous stupid people are, is not at all surprising. Their failure is just another expression of their helplessness. The truly amazing fact, however, is that also intelligent people and bandits often fail to recognise the power to damage inherent in stupidity. It is extremely difficult to explain why this should happen and one can only remark that when confronted with stupid individuals often intelligent men as well as bandits make the mistake of indulging in feelings of self-complacency and contemptuousness instead of immediately secreting adequate quantities of adrenalin and building up defences.

One is tempted to believe that a stupid man will only do harm to himself but this is confusing stupidity with helplessness. On occasion one is tempted to associate oneself with a stupid individual in order to use him for one’s own schemes. Such a manoeuvre cannot but have disastrous effects because:

a) it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the essential nature of stupidity;

b) it gives the stupid person added scope for the exercise of his gifts.

One may hope to outmanoeuvre the stupid and up to a point one may actually do so. But because of the erratic behaviour of the stupid, one cannot foresee all the stupid’s actions and reactions and before long one will be pulverised by the unpredictable moves of the stupid partner.

This is clearly summarised in the Fourth Basic Law which states that:

‘Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake.’

Through centuries and millennia, in public as in private life, countless individuals have failed to take account of the Fourth Basic Law and the failure has caused mankind incalculable losses.

CHAPTER IX

MACRO ANALYSIS AND THE FIFTH BASIC LAW

The consideration on which the previous chapter ends is conducive to a macro-type of analysis in which instead of considering the welfare of the individual one considers the welfare of the society, regarded in this context as the algebric sum of the individual conditions. A full understanding of the Fifth Basic Law is essential to the analysis. It may be parenthetically added here that of the Five Basic Laws, the Fifth is certainly the best known and its corollary is quoted very frequently. The Fifth Basic Law states that

‘A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.’

The corollary of the Law is that

‘A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.’

The formulation of the Law and its corollary is still of the micro-type. As indicated above, however, the Law and its corollary have far-reaching implications of a macro-nature.

The essential point to keep in mind is this: the result of the action of a perfect bandit (the person who falls on line OM of figure 2) is purely and simply a transfer of wealth and/or welfare. After the action of a perfect bandit, the bandit has a plus on his account which plus is exactly equivalent to the minus he has caused to another person. The society as a whole is neither better nor worse off. If all members of a society were perfect bandits the society would remain stagnant but there would be no major disaster. The whole business would amount to massive transfers of wealth and welfare in favour of those who would take action. If all members of the society would take action in regular turns, not only the society as a whole but also individuals would find themselves in a perfectly steady state of no change.

When stupid people are at work, the story is totally different. Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account. Thus the society as a whole is impoverished.

The system of accounting which finds expression in the basic graphs shows that while all actions of individuals falling to the right of the line POM (see figure 3) add to the welfare of a society, although in different degrees, the actions of all individuals falling to the left of the same line POM cause a deterioration.

In other words the helpless with overtones of intelligence (area HI), the bandits with overtones of intelligence (area BI) and above all the intelligent (area I) all contribute, though in different degrees, to accrue to the welfare of a society. On the other hand the bandits with overtones of stupidity (area BS) and the helpless with overtones of stupidity (area HS) manage to add losses to those caused by stupid people thus enhancing the nefarious destructive power of the latter group.

Fig. 3.All this suggests some reflection on the performance of societies. According to the Second Basic Law, the fraction of stupid people is a constant σwhich is not affected by time, space, race, class or any other socio-cultural or historical variable. It would be a profound mistake to believe the number of stupid people in a declining society is greater than in a developing society. Both such societies are plagued by the same percentage of stupid people. The difference between the two societies is that in the society which performs poorly:

a) the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to become more active and take more actions;

b) there is a change in the composition of the non-stupid section with a relative decline of populations of areas I, HI and BI and a proportionate increase of populations of areas HS and BS.

This theoretical presumption is abundantly confirmed by an exhaustive analysis of historical cases. In fact the historical analysis allows us to reformulate the theoretical conclusions in a more factual way and with more realistic detail.

Whether one considers classical, or medieval, or modern, or contemporary times one is impressed by the fact that any country moving uphill has its unavoidable σ fraction of stupid people. However the country moving uphill also has an unusually high fraction of intelligent people who manage to keep the σ fraction at bay and at the same time produce enough gains for themselves and the other members of the community to make progress a certainty.

In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is still equal to σ; however, in the remaining population one notices among those in power an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity (sub-area BS of quadrant B in figure 3) and among those not in power an equally alarming growth in the number of helpless individuals (area H in basic graph, figure 1). Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the σ fraction and makes decline a certainty. And the country goes to Hell.

Nanamoli Thera - Consciousness and Being

 What follows will have to be stated in terms of ordinary speech, though that necessarily involves the word “is” and logical constructions, because speech is hardly possible without them.

Nevertheless they have to be regarded here as a makeshift, and the whole of what follows tends to undermine the ultimate value of speech, retaining it, however, as a necessity for communication in conditions where separateness and individuality predominate.

The word “consciousness,” it seems to me, can only refer to what one might define provisionally as “the knowing that cannot know itself without intermediary and that cannot function in experience (of which it is an indispensable component) except negatively.”

To the question “What is consciousness,” then, a low level provisional answer might be “It is the pure subjective” or “It is the bare knowing of what it is not that constitutes (orders) experience and allows it being.” It must be added that, when consciousness is, it seems to be individualized by what it knows. But on another (higher) level the “is” in the question has still to be questioned, and so the low-level (and logical) answer is only a conventional makeshift, a conventional view, nothing more. And this qualification applies not only to logically inductive and deductive statements necessitating use of the word “is,” but also to descriptive statements that appear in “logical” form, using that term, or any equivalent.

When I ask myself, “What does the verbal expression ‘universal consciousness’ refer to?,” I confess to be unable to find an answer, because, in spite of its “attractive” form, I cannot distinguish it from non-consciousness (see below). So I seem to have no alternative but to regard the phrase as one of those abstract expressions that appear on the surface to mean something, but when more closely examined, do not. (This, I know, may seem shocking, but I am more interested here in finding the facts than in avoiding shock.) The more I examine and observe experience (What else can one do? Build castles?), the more I find that I can only say of consciousness (and in this I find a notable confirmation in the Pali Suttas) that it seems only describable (knowable) “in terms of what it arises dependent upon” (i.e. seeing-cum-seen … mind-knowing-cum-mind, known or mind cum-ideas), that is, negatively as to itself. And so, instead of being said to appear, it should rather be called that negativeness or “decompression of being” which makes the appearance of life, movement, behaviour, etc., and their opposites, possible in things and persons. But while life, etc. cannot be or not be without the cooperation of the negative presence of consciousness, which gives room for them (and itself) to “come to be” in this way (gaining its own peculiar form of negative being, perhaps from them)—the only possible way of being—they are, by ignorance, simultaneously individualized in actual experience.

Unindividualized experience cannot, I think, be called experience at all. Thus there appears the positive illusion also of individual consciousness: “illusion” because its individuality is borrowed from the individualness of (1) its percepts, and (2) the body seen as its perceiving instrument.

Unindividualized perception cannot, any more, I think, be called perception at all. The supposed individuality of consciousness (without which it is properly inconceivable) is derived from that of its concomitants. This illusory individualization of consciousness, this mirage, manifests itself in the sense both of “my consciousness” and of “consciousness that is not mine” (as e.g. in the sensation of being seen when one fancies or actually finds one is caught, say, peeping through a keyhole, and from which the abstract notion of universal consciousness develops). The example shows that the experience of being seen does not necessarily mean that another’s consciousness is seeing one, as one may have been mistaken in one’s fancy owing to a guilty sense (though the experience was just as real at the time), before one found no one was there. To repeat: my supposed consciousness seems only distinguishable from the supposed consciousness that is not mine on the basis of the particular non-consciousness (i.e.material body, etc.) through which its negativity is manifested and with which it is always and inevitably associated in some way. It is impossible, I think, to overemphasize the importance of this fact.

So of the concept, “universal consciousness,” I at present think that the word “universal” misleads. (Perhaps some hidden desire for power to “catch all consciousness in the net of one’s understanding,” and so escape the horrors of the unknown, seduces one to catch at this seemingly attractive term.)

Again it may be asked: What knows universal consciousness?

Would not individual consciousness (if the “universal” is accepted) be held inadequate to judge it? And how can it know itself, or what are the means by which it can know itself and distinguish itself from non-consciousness and individual consciousness? I can find no answer to that and so I conclude that, if I ask it, that is simply because I must have started out with an unjustified assumption about the nature of consciousness (which, platitudinous as it may seem, is horribly difficult to understand and handle in view of its negativity; when one talks about “consciousness” normally, one finds on examination that one has not been talking about it at all but about the positive things like pleasure and pain, action, perception, etc., that always accompany and screen it). Is the question then really necessary? Consciousness, of course, cannot be denied as a necessary constituent of experience, but the trouble starts when we begin to ask what consciousness (or its nature) is. We have assumed the individuality of consciousness, apparently unjustifiably, because of the observed individuality of the objective part of experience through which we say it is manifested; and the assumption of its individuality logically leads to the further assumption of some universal form. Why?

Now, as I said earlier, when I begin to ask what something is (is, say, consciousness individual, universal, both, or neither?), we have taken being for granted and failed to examine the nature of a part of my question. In one sense consciousness seems correctly describable as functioning (that is in its true negativity) by putting everything in question: What is this? What am I? What is life? What is consciousness? What is being? Now here the emphasis must be removed from “what” and “this” and placed squarely on “is.”

Suppose I suggest this: for “is” read “belief-attitude” (as a mode of craving combined with ignorance). In other words, it is the nature of consciousness to make be (with the aid of desire-for-being and of ignorance-of-how-anything-comes-to-be) and the nature of being to depend on consciousness. The multiplicity and the contradictoriness of the answers normally given to these questions ought to be sufficient evidence for something of the sort, or at least for the suspicion, that all the methods of answering them in the way normally done are radically wrong in some way. In fact the contradictory answers in all their variety, as usually given, each bolstered up by logic, betray, it seems to me, just that form of ignorance-craving combination which make perception/non-perception, change/immortality, time/eternity, life/death, action/ inaction, choice/fatality, unity/variety, individuality/universality, seem not only possible but real. (It then seems necessary or “right” [here we have craving] to determine what among these is [here we have ignorance] real and what is not.) And the trouble begins again: I begin asserting “I am this, I am not that,” “This is that,” “A is B,” “Consciousness is life,” “Truth is beauty,” “Life is good,” “Killing is right,” “The end is the justification of the means,” “I am,” “God is,” etc., all of which others may deny. Perhaps we get angry and come to blows. How many more people in history have been killed for the sake of opinions about what is and what is not than have been killed for the sake of facts? View-points, interpretations, and opinions about the raw material of experience differ, less or more, from individual person to individual person. The more consistent and logically strengthened any moral, religious, or philosophical system becomes, the more possible it becomes for it to be contradicted by an opposing system. And then bare craving has to arbitrarily choose and bash the opponent on the head if it can. That is why Buddhism (especially Nāgārjuna, but also Theravada) favours a dialectic that pulls down all such positivistic-negativistic systems (the positive is always haunted by the negative, and so there is really no true via negativa or via positiva in any absolute sense). It pulls them down using their own premises.

Of whatever I can say that it is, by that very fact I imply that it is not: It is this, is not that. It then is in virtue of what it is not, being so constituted by the consciousness that determines it thus. But the consciousness on which its being depends is negative, whose negativity appears in objective things as their temporality and change, the change in their being. But while the being of whatever is objective to it appears as positive, even though it may change, its own being appears as a negation of itself and a denial, flight or movement, the temporalizing of the temporalized objective world.

Now, perhaps, you will understand why it is really impossible for a Buddhist to answer the questions, “Does Buddhism teach the extinction of consciousness? Is nibbāna the extinction of consciousness?” On the basis of what has been said above, could it be answered yes or no without examining each term of the question?

There is, of course, another, different approach to the analysis of (not the answer to) that question: Why should consciousness (however conceived) seem preferable to cessation-of-consciousness (however conceived)? Consciousness of deprivation, of an “abyss of nothingness,” is not cessation of consciousness. Would not any preference (absolute one-sided choice) for one over the other show craving in the aim if that were set up as the ultimate aim? The desire-to-end-craving, as I see it, is a provisional measure adopted while craving is still present in order to use craving to terminate itself, while the aim is absence-of-craving and consequently ending of suffering. Use of the word is (which implies presence of ignorance) in this way is also use of present ignorance to terminate itself, while the aim is (to me in this state) liberation from ignorance.

Second, suppose a state of consciousness without suffering.

Would it not have to be entirely without change since the slightest change in the state must imply a degree of suffering intruding. But can a state of consciousness absolutely without change be distinguished at all from absence of consciousness? I do not see how it can. However a mixture of longing for the incompatible (craving) and fear of or disinclination to face the facts of the association and complexity which are inseparable from conscious experience (ignorance) can make it seem as possible and realizable as the catching of the red in a rainbow with a butterfly net. So out we go with our butterfly nets chasing colour … and get wet instead.

Craving and ignorance persist in heaven, though suffering may be suspended there for a time.

That is how I see Emerson’s “Take what you will but pay the price,” viz. “Pay death as the price of life,” or “Pay suffering as the price of consciousness.” May get it on loan, but if one does not pay up when the bill comes in, the bailiffs distrain. But that does not mean that I think one should counter with undiminished craving and ignorance and use them to denounce life, consciousness, etc. I say one should take them as they are and develop understanding of them. That, as I see it, and only that, along with the sharing of it, is the true source of joy, not joy of life haunted by fear of loss-of-consciousness, and so on. This you know, so I am not saying anything new.

If I ask myself “Is it possible for me to end consciousness?” I have to reply to myself that I see no possibility at present. (What might happen if I succeeded in ending craving and ignorance, of which I see no prospect at present, is, of course, hard to say!) If the possibility were available now, I at present see no sound reason why I should not avail myself of it. Pure speculation! Yes, but at least it prevents me coming down one-sidedly in favour of consciousness or in favour of non-consciousness in the crude mode.

I do regard death (my life’s end, murder, or suicide) as the ending of consciousness: to presume that conscious continuity (negativity) ends because a particular continuity of its material objective world (including its body) ends seems to me a pure assumption whose opposite is just as valid, with possibly better logical arguments in favour of it if the evidence is observed without bias. However, what happens to me at death cannot be known. Consequently I am at liberty to assume (since I cannot avoid assuming something about it) what seems most reasonable. Death seems above all to be forgetting. I do not know. But since I have to believe something about it whether I like it or not, I do not believe that consciousness ends with death. Memory may well do so. I don’t, however, know that this is what I want not to believe.

It is, I think, rather important to bear in mind one thing in regard to what has been said above. With this view there are two scales of value (not so much divorced as crossing at right-angles) which must be carefully discriminated. The physical world of consciousness-being-action in which we live and are, biased by ignorance and propelled by craving, is governed by perception of being and the practical values based on that. But any positive metaphysical system, whether based only logically or emotionally on it, which is founded on that, is haunted by the shadows that it cannot avoid casting and that it cannot itself see (like the Sun). It acts in virtue of cause and effect and its thought is logical by its dependence on the word “is.” As far as we live in this world we have to live its mode and by its values, or we risk falling into wells through star-gazing. But none of its laws are made absolute (without divorcing idea from experience). The Void, of which it cannot be said that it is or is not, nor that it has consciousness or has none, while it denies absoluteness to any experiential value (alike to being and to consciousness) cannot be identified. And that is the doctrine of not-self (anattā) as I see it in one aspect at present. This voidness cannot be “is-ed” and so introduced into the worldly scheme, except as the denial of absoluteness of all particular values. It has no more effect on ordinary life than the theory of relativity. But just as that theory completely alters calculation of enormous speeds, so, as I see it, this void-element completely alters calculations of extraordinary situations, of death (as killing, suicide or the partner of old age).

Written in June 1957

With ignorance as condition - death

Nanamoli Thera:

There are certain aspects of truth that one can only discover in oneself; if one is told of them, one will certainly, and in the very nature of existence itself, reject them absolutely. But perhaps they can be shared by those who have discovered them individually for themselves, and perhaps those who have not discovered them can be aided indirectly to discover them for themselves. The use of the word "truth" here is in the sense is desirability of discovery).
*
In a syllogism (1. All man are mortal, 2. Socrates is a man, 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal), the generalization (all man a mortal) must have been arrived at by induction. No inductive process is ever absolutely certain. There is always the leap, the assumption, of gereralizing and therefore one of the premises of a syllogism must have an element of uncertainty. So it cannot prove anything with certainty.

A syllogism is therefore a signpoint pointing where to look for direct experience, but it inherently never give information that is 100% certain. But a syllogism (on metaphysical subjects) can point to what can, inherently, never be experienced; then it is an anomaly.
*
All the questions asked about death are wrongly put.
***
So long as one assumes death as an absolute fact, one must have, as an assumed absolute value based on it, the decision either to kill or to be killed in the last extreme (and this includes attitudes to suicide¹ and to "natural death"). This alternative ultimately divides all people (who make that assumption about death) into two types. With a proper understanding of death, the decision (dialectic) must collapse on the laying bare of the assumption. Freud has remarked that death is inconceivable to the Unconscious, a statement which, thought open to usual criticism of F's mechanistic assumptions about consciousness, does point to very important factual dialectic in assumptions about death.
***
Three forms of agnosticism (1) I am certain (know) that this is impossible for anyone else to know. (2) I am uncertain (do not know at present) whether this which I don't know now, can be known by me or by anyone at some time. (3) I am certain (know) that this which I do not know, can be known sometime.

These three cover agnosticism about death.

Three main attitudes to death (my death): (i) I believe (know) that I shall survive my death. (ii) I believe (know) that I shall not survive my death. (iii) one of the three forms of agnosticism.

It is impossible for ordinary, normal thought to confront the idea of (my) death except in one of these attitudes. All of these attitudes are wrong through the assumption (explicit and implicit) that they are necessitate. Consequently it is impossible for normal thought to confront (my) death with a correct attitude.
***
Wandering in the deserted places there are found many traces from which we deduce the movements of heroes and gods and so we weave history. Yet were our vision to become a little clearer we might discover that all these tracks are merely made by ourselves during our own ealier wanderings.
***
Cioran:

Once you have thought a lot about death, you start to wonder if it wasn't all a huge lie. Having risen above death, the truths below appear as illusions.
*
Have you looked at yourself in the mirror when nothing stood between you and death? Have you questioned your eyes? And by looking in to them, have you then understood that you cannot die? Your pupils dilated by conquered terror are more impenetrable than the Sphinx. From their glassy immobility a certitude, strangely tonic in its brief mysterious form is born: you cannot die. It comes from the silence of our gaze meeting itself, the Egyptian calmness of a dream facing the reality of death. Each time the fear of death grubs you, look in the mirror. Your eyes know everything. For in them, there are specks of nothingness, which assure you that nothing more can happen.
***
Upasena

On one occasion the Venerable Sāriputta and the Venerable Upasena were dwelling at Rājagaha in the Cool Grove, in the Snake’s Hood Grotto. Now on that occasion a viper had fallen on the Venerable Upasena’s body. Then the Venerable Upasena addressed the bhikkhus thus: “Come, friends, lift this body of mine on to the bed and carry it outside before it is scattered right here like a handful of chaff.” When this was said, the Venerable Sāriputta said to the Venerable Upasena:

“We do not see any alteration in the Venerable Upasena’s body nor any change in his faculties; yet the Venerable Upasena says: ‘Come, friends, lift this body of mine on to the bed and carry it outside before it is scattered right here like a handful of chaff.’”

“Friend Sāriputta, for one who thinks, ‘I am the eye’ or ‘The eye is mine’; ‘I am the ear’ or ‘The ear is mine’ … ‘I am the mind’ or ‘The mind is mine,’ there might be alteration of the body or a change of the faculties. But, friend Sāriputta, it does not occur to me, ‘I am the eye’ or ‘The eye is mine’; ‘I am the ear’ or ‘The ear is mine’ … ‘I am the mind’ or ‘The mind is mine,’ so why should there be any alteration in my body or any change in my faculties?”

“It must be because I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit have been thoroughly uprooted in the Venerable Upasena for a long time that it does not occur to him, ‘I am the eye’ or ‘The eye is mine’; ‘I am the ear’ or ‘The ear is mine’ … ‘I am the mind’ or ‘The mind is mine.’” Then those bhikkhus lifted the Venerable Upasena’s body on to the bed and carried it outside. Then the Venerable Upasena’s body was scattered right there just like a handful of chaff.
SN 35: 69

***

¹ Q: It is because I have grown in intelligence that I would not tolerate my suffering again. What is wrong with suicide?
M: Nothing wrong, if it solves the problem. What, if it does not? Suffering caused by extraneous factors — some painful and incurable disease, or unbearable calamity — may provide some justification, but where wisdom and compassion are lacking, suicide cannot help. A foolish death means foolishness reborn. Besides there is the question of karma to consider. Endurance is usually the wisest course.
Q: Must one endure suffering, however acute and hopeless?
M: Endurance is one thing and helpless agony is another. Endurance is meaningful and fruitful, while agony is useless.

Ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge

The radio that had been blaring in a corner all morning could not bother me either: pop songs, stockmarket figures, muzak, horseracing reports, more pop songs, a lecture on foot-and-mouth disease in cows—whatever: this audio-pap kept dripping like lukewarm water from a leaky faucet and nobody was listening anyway.

Suddenly a miracle occurred. For a reason that will forever remain mysterious, this vulgar broadcasting routine gave way without transition (or, if there had been one, it escaped my attention) to the most sublime music: the first bars of Mozart’s clarinet quintet began to flow and with serene authority filled the entire space of the café, turning it at once into an antechamber of Paradise. But the other patrons who had been chatting, drinking, playing cards or reading newspapers were not deaf after all: this magical irruption of a voice from heaven provoked a general start among them—all faces turned round, frowning with puzzled concern. Yet, in a matter of seconds, to the huge relief of all, one customer resolutely stood up, walked straight to the radio, turned the tuning knob and cut off this disquieting intermède, switched to another station and restored at once the more congenial noises, which everyone could again comfortably ignore.

At that moment the realisation hit me—and has never left me since: true Philistines are not people who are incapable of recognising beauty; they recognise it all too well; they detect its presence anywhere, immediately, and with a flair as infallible as that of the most sensitive aesthete—but for them, it is in order to be able better to pounce upon it at once and to destroy it before it can gain a foothold in their universal empire of ugliness.

Ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge, obscurantism does not result from a dearth of light, bad taste is not merely a lack of good taste, stupidity is not a simple want of intelligence: all these are fiercely active forces, that angrily assert themselves on every occasion; they tolerate no challenge to their omnipresent rule. In every department of human endeavour, inspired talent is an intolerable insult to mediocrity. If this is true in the realm of aesthetics, it is even more true in the world of ethics. More than artistic beauty, moral beauty seems to exasperate our sorry species. The need to bring down to our own wretched level, to deface, to deride and debunk any splendour that is towering above us, is probably the saddest urge of human nature.

Simon Leys
The Hall of Uselessness

Dependent Arising - Illusion of being

It has been said by someone that the weakness of Buddhism is that it has no Ontology. But it can be asked, is it weakness or a strength?

My point simply hinges on the question of translating bhava by "becoming" as is usually done. It is generally argued against translating bhava by being that "being is static" but while admitting that "becoming" 1) no offers solution since in Concise Oxford Dictionary "to become" means "to begin to be", 2) it completely severs the hoti of (incipient) syllogisms eg "hoti Tathagato paramaram? ..." and other vaguer uses of hoti (bhavati) and indirectly atthi from connection with Paticca-samuppada, tending to make the P/S subordinate to syllogistic logic rather than the other way about; 3) it is incompatible with S ... Itv (and also with M131-134). "Becoming" (and still more "werden") suggest a flux where the future "becomes" by "flowing" through the present and then past, while what is meant or implied by constant and unavoidable use of the verb "to be" is left unaccounted for. 

Hence I argue, to translate (even to interpret to oneself) bhava by "becoming" is opiate that leaves the illusion of "being" untreated. I doubt if that is what the Buddha intended.

As I see it, the Buddha's treatment of Ontology is most clearly set out, according to right view, in M 38 which yatha-bhutam, sets out how the illusion of "being" (both in positive and negative forms - with the bhava-tanha and vibhavatanha of D9, 22 and anurodha and pathivirodha of M 11) can and should be treated and eliminated. 

M1 and M 49 are complementary: M1 describes the modes of asmi-mana (which is pre-logical) and M 49 present the same situation in "ontological" terms i.e in the functioning of logically formulated wrong view (while M1 describes the pre-reflexive asmimana - the manusaya, the fundamental wrong attitude). M 44 and M109 describe the logically formulated views which arise out of and are built upon the pre-logical tendency - the connection between these is shown briefly in M1 and forms the subject matter of M49.
*
As I see it at present, the importance of the paticca-samuppada lies not so much in the twelve (or less or more) members as in the relationship imasmin sati ... (and its undoing imasmin asati) which is underlined in D15. This firstly implies complexity in experience (no complexity: no experience). The choice of the "12 members" is less philosophical than psychological, which is why it is variable. The undoing, as I see it, is the detail of "voidness" which is the ethical key to the Dhamma, since it is the "Abschattung" of voidness in samsara itself that renders it impossible in the Dhamma to ascribe absolitiveness to any particular value (such as divine grace, justice, etc) and so enter upon the "War of philosophical systems of the absolute". The formula imasmin sati ... (applied psychologically by a choice of interrelated instances) is used as an instrument in D 15 to describe and analyse the mental process of naming (function of namarupa) and language (nuratti, etc) and in M38 to describe and analyse the peculiar nature of consciousness (vinnana) in its constitutive relationship (through mediate states) to being. But both can only be studied in the Pali with careful discrimination of roots.
*
The ironical and amusing story of Brahmanimanika Sutta conceals a profound meaning, which is ontological. That is, it presents the Buddha's treatment of verbes hoti, bhavati (to be) and the noun bhava (being), both from the root bhu. Some prelate, I forget who, said that Buddhism has no ontology, which in simpler language presumably meant that nibbana, the goal, was or that is had being, with the latent objection that if this was not proved, than nibbana was just an abyss of nothingness.

Now the Buddha has described the world (that is not just the external world but the consciousness that cognizes it, and not only other peoples consciousness objectified, but mine, too, and not only mine (of) past and future objectified, but mine committed to it now - no matter who "I" am). His description of the way it works is the first two truths, while the last two deals with escape from it. If we are interested in "being" we must look to the Dependent Origination (D/O), of which "being" (bhava) is the 10 th member.

"Being" we said, is a member of D/O, in other words, to be is to be dependent, or contingent upon something else. Whatever is, has being only in virtue of something else that lends it its being. Kim pabhava.
*
Now, let us consider the structure of D/O for a moment. Firstly, it is not a logical proposition, nor is it a temporal cause - result chain. Such an approach makes an understanding of it impossible. If we stop to consider each of its components, they will be found to vary so enormously in scope from the particular to the whole. The interpretation of European scholars have been, perhaps without exeption, wild and bad guesses.

The Buddha's purpose is to describe enough of the world to be able to shaw how suffering can be ended, not to produce full and detailed elaborations, which would be endless and arrive nowhere. But this particular description is aimed at including everything. And here a difficulty arises. A description must be made in terms of something other than what it describes, or it is not a description. It has to reproduce in other material certain structures that are in what it describes. This fact made it impossible for a description to be a description and complete at the same time. How is the D/O complete, then? Or is it not a description after all?

It is in fact both, but it attains in a rather peculiar way. The best way to approach it from a European background is from Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am). That is not a logical proposition; it is a description of interconditionality between consciousness and being. Ignoring Descartes' theories of substance and taking only that bare formulation, we can compare it with the fact that "consciousness" (vinianna) and being (bhava) are two of the most obvious members of D/O formulation, which also is not a logical proposition. But now, let us return for a moment to the "enormous" scope from the particular to the general which we noted earlier in the D/O.

 The right way of of treating this fact is to take D/O not as an individual description, but as an integrated set of descriptions. Each member provides in fact a set terms to describe the rest of the world. Together they cover the whole subjective-objective positive-negative world. To the question: what are these set terms intended to describe? we may answer that they are intended to describe experience of any possible kind where ignorance (that is lack of personal realization of the Truths) is present. 

But when taken together becoming and being, impermanence and (illusory) permanence comes within its net. This seeming paradox represents what we actually live, but what we never face up to as a whole.

Any concept of Pure Being is always open to the objection that, if absoluteness is claimed for it, then it cannot be known; for if it is known, it is accessible to consciousness and consequently no longer pure; consequently Pure Being and non-being cannot be distinguished. If absoluteness is claimed for any concept of Pure Consciousness (the Yogacara opposition to the Vedanta) similar objection arises; for if consciousness is pure, it must not be, or it will be adulterated by being. Consequently pure consciousness has to have no being, which is tantamount to saying that it is not.

By making both consciousness and being, in whatever form, subject to the D/O, the Buddha both closes the entry into this logical maze and offers us a picture which if we only bother to observe, rather than malobserve, we shall find corresponds with our experience as we actually live it. Only we keep forgetting what we learn. And forgetting is ignorance. And ignorance, the most reprehensible of all heads the D/O. It is one of the "taints" (asava) - and so is being.

So it is not that "Buddhism has no ontology" but that the Buddha has seen through what a modern writer has called the "ontological mirage" and set being into its true position.

Nibbana is the cessation of ontology "bhava nirodho nibbanam". It is not, however, the abyss of non being since that requires consciousness to cognize it as such. It is "absolute cessation" which includes the non-ascription of either being or non-being: naphahosim.

Now while the D/O has the appearance of, and is, a complete description of the world (as we have defined it) nevertheless, when nibbana is treated of positively in any of its therms instead of, as its cessation, a paradox will appear. Atthi ... abhutam ... or sabbato pabham describes as cognized, to be (by consciousness) is anidassanam, the act of cognizing without "showing" making seen any positive determined (sankhata) object. That this opposing of being and consciousness seems possible and not nonsense (the paradox) also indicates the "incompleteness" of the "complete" description.

*
To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera

Simply by reflexion the puthujjana can never observe avijjā and at the same time recognize it as avijjā; for in reflexion avijjā is the Judge as well as the Accused, and the verdict is always 'Not Guilty'

We must now again ask the question of §17: 'What about the first item of the paticcasamuppādaformulation—since there is no item preceding it, is it therefore permanent?'. The first item is now avijjā, and the Buddha himself answers the question in a Sutta of the Anguttara Nikāya (X,vii,1 <A.v,113>). This answer is to the effect that avijjā depends upon not hearing and not practising the Dhamma. It is not, however, the only way of answering the question, as we may see from the Sammāditthisutta (Majjhima i,9 <M.i,54>). Here we find that avijjā depends upon āsavā, and āsavā depend upon avijjā. But one of the āsavā is, precisely, avijj'āsava, which seems to indicate that avijjā depends upon avijjā.[k] Let us see if this is so. We know that sankhārā depend upon avijjā—avijjāpaccayā sankhārā. But since something that something else depends upon is a sankhāra, it is evident that avijjā is a sankhāra. And, as before, sankhārā depend upon avijjā. Thus avijjādepends upon avijjā. Far from being a logical trick, this result reflects a structural feature of the first importance.[l] Before discussing it, however, we must note that this result leads us to expect that any condition upon which avijjā depends will itself involve avijjā implicitly or explicitly. (In terms of §23 the foregoing argument runs thus. Avijjāpaccayā sankhārā may be taken as 'with non-seeing of paticcasamuppādaas condition there is paticcasamuppāda'. But this itself is seen only when paticcasamuppāda is seen; for paticcasamuppāda cannot be seen as paticcasamuppanna before paticcasamuppāda is seen. To see avijjā or non-seeing, avijjā or non-seeing must cease. Avijjā therefore comes first; for, being its own condition, it can have no anterior term that does not itself involve avijjā.)

 The faculty of self-observation or reflexion is inherent in the structure of our experience. Some degree of reflexion is almost never entirely absent in our waking life, and in the practice of mindfulness it is deliberately cultivated. To describe it simply, we may say that one part of our experience is immediately concerned with the world as its object, while at the same time another part of our experience is concerned with the immediate experience as its object. This second part we may call reflexive experience. (Reflexion is discussed in greater detail in Shorter Notes & FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE.) It will be clear that when there is avijjā there is avijjā in both parts of our experience, the immediate and the reflexive; for though, in reflexion, experience is divided within itself, it is still one single, even if complex, structure. The effect of this may be seen from the Sabbāsavasutta (Majjhima i,2 <M.i,8>) wherein certain wrong views are spoken of. Three of them are: Attanā va attānam sañjānāmī ti; Attanā va anattānam sañjānāmī ti; and Anattanā va attānam sañjānāmī ti. ('With self I perceive self; With self I perceive not-self; With not-self I perceive self.') A man with avijjā, practising reflexion, may identify 'self' with both reflexive and immediate experience, or with reflexive experience alone, or with immediate experience alone. He does not conclude that neither is 'self', and the reason is clear: it is not possible to get outside avijjā by means of reflexion alone; for however much a man may 'step back' from himself to observe himself he cannot help taking avijjā with him. There is just as much avijjā in the self-observer as there is in the self-observed. (See CETANĀ [b].) And this is the very reason why avijjā is so stable in spite of its being sankhatā.[m] Simply by reflexion the puthujjana can never observe avijjā and at the same time recognize it as avijjā; for in reflexion avijjā is the Judge as well as the Accused, and the verdict is always 'Not Guilty'. In order to put an end to avijjā, which is a matter of recognizing avijjā as avijjā, it is necessary to accept on trust from the Buddha a Teaching that contradicts the direct evidence of the puthujjana's reflexion. This is why the Dhamma is patisotagāmī (Majjhima iii,6 <M.i,168>), or 'going against the stream'. The Dhamma gives the puthujjana the outside view of avijjā, which is inherently unobtainable for him by unaided reflexion (in the ariyasāvaka this view has, as it were, 'taken' like a graft, and is perpetually available). Thus it will be seen that avijjā in reflexive experience (actual or potential) is the condition for avijjā in immediate experience. It is possible, also, to take a second step back and reflect upon reflexion; but there is still avijjā in this self-observation of self-observation, and we have a third layer of avijjā protecting the first two. And there is no reason in theory why we should stop here; but however far we go we shall not get beyond avijjā. The hierarchy of avijjā can also be seen from the Suttas in the following way.

But which, friends, is nescience?...
That which is non-knowledge of suffering,
non-knowledge of arising of suffering,
non-knowledge of ceasing of suffering,
non-knowledge of the way that leads to ceasing of suffering,
this, friends, is called nescience.

 
And which, monks, is the noble truth of suffering...
And which, monks, is the noble truth of arising of suffering...
And which, monks, is the noble truth of ceasing of suffering...
And which, monks, is the noble truth of the way that leads to ceasing of suffering? 

 
Just this noble eight-factored path,
that is to say: right view...

And which, monks, is right view?...
That which is knowledge of suffering,
knowledge of arising of suffering,
knowledge of ceasing of suffering,
knowledge of the way that leads to ceasing of suffering,
this, monks, is called right view. 

 
(Dīgha ii,9 <D.ii,305-12>)

Avijjā is non-knowledge of the four noble truths. Sammāditthi is knowledge of the four noble truths. But sammāditthi is part of the four noble truths. Thus avijjā is non-knowledge of sammāditthi; that is to say, non-knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths. But since sammāditthi, which is knowledge of the four noble truths, is part of the four noble truths, so avijjā is non-knowledge of knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths. And so we can go on indefinitely. But the point to be noted is that each of these successive stages represents an additional layer of (potentially) reflexive avijjā. Non-knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths is non-knowledge of vijjā, and non-knowledge of vijjā is failure to recognize avijjā as avijjā. Conversely, it is evident that when avijjā is once recognized anywhere in this structure it must vanish everywhere; for knowledge of the four noble truths entails knowledge of knowledge of the four noble truths, and vijjā('science') replaces avijjā ('nescience') throughout.[n]

Footnotes:

[k] Cf. Avijjā kho bhikkhu eko dhammo yassa pahānā bhikkhuno avijjā pahīyati vijjā uppajjatī ti. ('Nescience, monk, is the one thing with a monk's elimination of which nescience is eliminated and science arises') Salāyatana Samy. viii,7 <S.iv,50>

[l] On the charge of 'circularity' that common sense may like to bring here, see Heidegger, op. cit., pp. 314-6.

[m] The Anguttara Sutta (X,vii,1) referred to in §24 begins thus: Purimā bhikkhave koti na paññāyati avijjāya, Ito pubbe avijjā nāhosi, atha pacchā sambhavī ti. Evañ ce tam bhikkhave vuccati, atha ca pana paññāyati, Idapaccayā avijjā ti. Avijjam p'aham bhikkhave sāhāram vadāmi, no anāhāram. ('An earliest point of nescience, monks, is not manifest: 'Before this, nescience was not; then afterwards it came into being'. Even if that is said thus, monks, nevertheless it is manifest: 'With this as condition, nescience'. I say, monks, that nescience, too, is with sustenance, not without sustenance.') (In the P.T.S. edition, for c'etam read ce tam and adjust punctuation.)

[n] Compare also the following: Rūpā [Saddā ... Dhammā] loke piyarūpam sātarūpam, etth'esā tanhā uppajjamānā uppajjati ettha nivisamānā nivisati ... Rūpatanhā [Saddatanhā ... Dhammatanhā] loke piyarūpam sātarūpam, etth'esā tanhā uppajjamānā uppajjati ettha nivisamānā nivisati. ('Visible forms [Sounds ... Images (Ideas)] are dear and agreeable in the world; herein this craving arises, herein it adheres ... Craving-for-visible-forms [Craving-for-sounds ... Craving-for-images (-ideas)] is dear and agreeable in the world; herein this craving arises, herein it adheres.')

And the converse:

...etth'esā tanhā pahīyamānā pahīyati ettha nirujjhamānā nirujjhati. ('...herein this craving is eliminated, herein it ceases.') Dīgha ii,9 <D.ii,308-11>

Not only is there craving, but there is craving for craving as a condition for craving: indifference to craving destroys it. (Tanhā, be it noted, is not the coarse hankering after what we do not have [which is abhijjhā or covetousness], but the subtle craving for more of what we have. In particular, I am because I crave to be, and with cessation of craving-for-being [bhavatanhā, which is itself dependent on avijjā and, like it, without first beginning—Anguttara X,vii,2 <A.v,116>], 'I am' ceases. Bhavatanhā, in fact, is the craving for more craving on which craving depends.)

Nanavira Thera

The basis of all our truths

Nescience is the basis of everything, it creates everything by an action repeated every moment, it produces this and any world, since it continually takes for real what in fact is not. Nescience is the tremendous mistake that serves as the basis of all our truths, it is older and more powerful than all the gods combined.

Cioran

Revolt is the first reaction of an intelligent man when he begins to understand the desperate nature of his situation in the world

The attitude you speak of, that of cursing the world and oneself, is, in a sense, the beginning of wisdom. Revolt is the first reaction of an intelligent man when he begins to understand the desperate nature of his situation in the world; and it is probably true to say that nothing great has ever been achieved except by a man in revolt against his situation. But revolt alone is not enough—it eventually contradicts itself. A man in blind revolt is like someone in a railway compartment trying to stop the train by pushing against the opposite seat with his feet: he may be strong enough to damage the compartment, but the damaged compartment will nevertheless continue to move with the train. Except for the arahat, we are all in this train of samsāra, and the problem is to stop the train whilst still travelling in it. Direct action, direct revolt, won't do; but something, certainly, must be done. That it is, in fact, possible to stop the train from within we know from the Buddha, who has himself done it:

I, monks, being myself subject to birth, decay, and death, having seen the misery of subjection to birth, decay, and death, went in search of the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction (nibbāna), and I reached the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction.Revolt by all means, but let the weapons be intelligence and patience, not disorder and violence; and the first thing to do is to find out exactly what it is that you are revolting against. Perhaps you will come to see that what you are revolting against is avijjā.

Nanavira Thera