The Ethics of Banking: Conclusions from the Financial Crisis (Issues ...

Wager or Gambling: What Is Speculation? 125
Sakuni, who is a cheat, expands the narcissistic element of the game, i.e. that the
player sees himself as superior in the skills necessary for the game, and emphasizes
the neither dishonorable nor honorable character of the contest. The other actors in
the epic, in contrast, recognize the desire to gamble as the desire to submit entirely
to fate and the wish to experience the thrill of the loss of autonomy and ability to
control one’s own destiny.
The cheat represents the game as a fair contest and as a wager, which Sakuni,
because he masters the game better and knows how to cheat, will win. Only the
cheat can master the game. The genuine player in a game of chance entrusts the
outcome to fate. He believes that fate and luck will smile on him. He passes up his
autonomy, and derives excitement from the actively-chosen loss of control.
In the epic Mahabharata, fate and the willingness of the actors to submit to fate
are so strong that the king himself, having lost his kingdom and regained it through
mercy, sits down to play a second game. The outcome, as in the first game, is his
own destruction. 9 Again he loses his kingdom, and he and his tribe must spend 13
years in the jungle before he is allowed to return to civilization. The punishment for
abandoning reason and autonomy is regression to the pre-rational and pre-civilized
condition: regression to the jungle.
Wagers and Gambling in Cultural Theory
Underlying the game of chance is a belief in fortune and fate, the belief that we are
not free, and the desire to submit to fate’s irresistible power, to indulge in the game
as the antidote to reason. This desire also makes it almost impossible to be a rational
player. Dostoevsky in his gambling period was convinced that he would always win
if he could play with complete rationality and distance and remain unmoved by
either good luck or bad. This position is self-contradictory and self-refuting. If the
player plays with such complete distance, he does not experience the dependency
on luck which is what the game is all about. If he feels like a gambler, somebody
dependent on fate, he is no longer distanced from the game. In this period of his life,
Dostoevsky conceded that he was not capable of distanced gambling for longer than
30 minutes. 10
learned person approacheth another (in a contest of learning). Such motives, however, are scarcely
regarded as really dishonest. So also, O Yudhishthira, a person skilled at dice approacheth one that
is not so skilled from a desire of vanquishing him. One also who is conversant with the truths of
science approacheth another that is not from desire of victory, which is scarcely an honest motive.
But (as I have already said) such a motive is not really dishonest. And, O Yudhishthira, so also one
that is skilled in weapons approacheth one that is not so skilled; the strong approacheth the weak.
This is the practice in every contest.’ ”
9 Mahabharata, Ch. 75: “And compelled by Fate they once more sat down at ease for gambling for
the destruction of themselves.”
10 Quoted in E. J. CARTER: “Breaking the Bank: Gambling Casinos, Finance Capitalism, and
German Unification”, in: Central European History, 39 (2006), pp. 185–213, here p. 187.
–CARTER, ibid., p. 188, n. 9, follows Joseph Frank’s interpretation that ultimately, Dostoevsky