Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

to simplify complexity and its implications, a phenomenon as

common as the “old sage” known to India’s philosophical psy-

chology. Such oversimplification of the causative picture as

regards the genesis of evil, often to a single easily understood

cause or one perpetrator, itself becomes, itself, a cause in this

genesis.

With great respect for the shortcomings of our human rea-

son, let us consciously take the middle road and use the ab-

straction process, first describing selected phenomena, then the

causative chains characteristic for ponerogenic processes. Such

chains can then be linked into more complex structures ever

more sufficient for grasping the full picture of the real causa-

tive network. At first the holes in the net will be so large that a

school of sprats can swim through undetected, although large

fish will be caught. However, this world’s evil represents a

kind of continuum, where minor species of human evil effec-

tively add up to the genesis of large evil. Making this net

denser and filling in the details of the picture appear to be eas-

69 !obaczewski seems to be referring to war and other physical conflicts and

suggesting that, if normal people would refuse to get involved and allow only

the deviants to fight, they would eventually kill each other off. [Editor’s

note.]

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145

ier, since ponerogenic laws are analogous regardless of the

scale of occurrences. Our common sense thus commits minor

errors at the level of minor matters.

In attempting closer observation of these psychological

processes and phenomena which lead one man or one nation to

hurt another, let us select phenomena as characteristic as possi-

ble. We shall see that the participation of various pathological

factors in these processes is the rule ; the situation where such

participation is not noticeable tends to be the exception.

~~~

The second chapter sketched the human instinctive substra-

tum’s role in our personality development, the formation of the

natural world view, and societal links and structures. We also

indicated that our social, psychological, and moral concepts, as

well as our natural forms of reaction, are not adequate for every

situation with which life confronts us. We generally wind up

hurting someone if we act according to our natural concepts

and reactive archetypes in situations which seem to be appro-

priate to our imaginings, although they are in fact essentially

different. As a rule, such different situations allowing para-

appropriate reactions occur because some pathological factor

difficult to understand has entered the picture. Thus, the practi-

cal value of our natural world view generally ends where psy-

chopathology begins.

Familiarity with this common weakness of human nature

and the normal person’s “naïveté” is part of the specific knowl-

edge we find in many psychopathic individuals , as well some

characteropaths. Spellbinders of various schools attempt to

provoke such para-appropriate reactions from other people in

the name of their specific goals, or in the service of their reign-

ing ideologies. That hard-to-understand pathological factor is

located within the spellbinder himself.

~~~

Egotism : We call egotism the attitude, subconsciously con-

ditioned as a rule, to which we attribute excessive value to our

instinctive reflexes, early acquired imaginings and habits, and

individual world view. Egotism hampers a personality’s normal

evolution because it fosters the domination of subconscious life

and makes it difficult to accept disintegrative states which can

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be very helpful for growth and development. This egotism and

rejection of disintegration70 in turn favors the appearance of

para-appropriate reactions as described above. An egotist

measures other people by his own yardstick, treating his con-

cepts and experiential manner as objective criteria. He would

like to force other people to feel and think very much the same

way he does. Egotist nations have the subconscious goal of

teaching or forcing other nations to think in their own catego-

ries, which makes them incapable of understanding other peo-

ple and nations or becoming familiar with the values of their

cultures.

Proper rearing and self-rearing thus always aims at de-

egotizing a young person or adult, thereby opening the door for

his mind and character to develop. Practicing psychologists

nevertheless commonly believe that a certain measure of ego-

tism is useful as a factor stabilizing the personality, protecting

it from overly facile neurotic disintegration, and thereby mak-

ing it possible to overcome life’s difficulties. However rather

exceptional people exist whose personality is very well inte-

grated even though they are almost totally devoid of egotism;

this allows them to understand others very easily.

The kind of excessive egotism which hampers the develop-

ment of human values and leads to misjudgment and terrorizing

of others well deserves the title “king of human faults”. Diffi-

culties, disputes, serious problems, and neurotic reactions

sprout up in everyone around such an egotist like mushrooms

after a rainfall. Egotist nations start wasting money and effort

in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reason-

ing and overly emotional reactions. Their inability to acknowl-

edge other nations’ values and dissimilarities, derived from

other cultural traditions, leads to conflict and war.

70 See footnote p. 128. Kazimierz Dabrowski developed the theory of Positive

Disintegration which posits that individuals with strong developmental poten-

tial tend to experience frequent and intense crises (positive disintegrations)

that create opportunities for the development of an autonomous, self-crafted

personality. Dabrowski observed that gifted and creative populations tend to

exhibit increased levels of developmental potential and thus may be predis-

posed to experience the process of positive disintegration. ( A Brief Overview

Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration by William Tillier

Calgary, Alberta, Canada) [Editor’s note.]

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147

We can differentiate between primary and secondary ego-

tism. The former comes from a more natural process, namely

the child’s natural egotism and child-rearing errors that tend to

perpetuate this childish egotism. The secondary one occurs

when a personality that has overcome his childish egotism

regresses to this state under stress, which leads to an artificial

attitude characterized by greater aggression and social nox-

iousness. Excessive egotism is a constant property of the hys-

terical personality71, whether their hysteria be primary or sec-

ondary. That is why the increase in a nations’ egotism should

be attributed to the above described hysterical cycle before

anything else.

If we analyze the development of excessively egotistical

personalities, we often find some non-pathological causes, such

as having been raised in a constricted and overly routine envi-

ronment or by persons less intelligent than the child. However,

the main reason for the development of an overly egotistical

personality in a normal person is contamination, through psy-

chological induction, by excessively egotistical or hysterical

persons who, themselves, developed this characteristic under

the influence of various pathological causes. Most of the

above-described genetic deviations cause the development of

pathologically egotistical personalities , among other things.

Many people with various hereditary deviations and ac-

quired defects develop pathological egotism. For such people,

forcing others in their environment, whole social groups, and,

if possible, entire nations, to feel and think like themselves

becomes an internal necessity, a ruling concept. A game that a

normal person would not take seriously can become a lifelong

goal for them, the object of effort, sacrifices, and cunning psy-

chological strategy.

Pathological egotism derives from repressing from one’s

field of consciousness any objectionable, self-critical associa-

tions referring to one’s own nature or normality. Dramatic

71 A personality disorder marked by immaturity, dependence, self-

centeredness, and vanity, with a craving for attention, activity, or excitement,

and behavior that is markedly unstable or manipulative. ( The American Heri-

tage Stedman's Medical Dictionary , 2nd Edition 2004; Houghton Mifflin

Company) [Editor’s note.]

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question such as “who is abnormal here, me or this world of

people who feel and think differently?” are answered in the

world’s disfavor. Such egotism is always linked to a dissimula-

tive attitude, with a Cleckley mask over some pathological

quality being hidden from consciousness, both one’s own and

that of other people. The greatest intensity of such egotism can

be found in the prefrontal characteropathy described above.

The importance of the contribution of this kind of egotism

to the genesis of evil thus hardly needs elaboration. It is a pri-

marily societal influence, egotizing or traumatizing others,

which in turn causes further difficulties. Pathological egotism

is a constant component of variegated states wherein someone

who appears to be normal (although he is in fact not quite so) is

driven by motivations or battles for goals a normal person con-

siders unrealistic or unlikely. The average person might ask:

“What could he expect to gain by that?”. Environmental opin-

ion, however, often interprets such a situation in accordance

with “common sense” and is thus prone to accept a “more

likely” version of the situation and events. Such interpretation

often results in human tragedy. We should thus always remem-

ber that the principle of law cui prodest72 becomes illusory

whenever some pathological factor enters the picture.

~~~

Moralizing interpretation : The tendency to impart a moral-

izing interpretation upon essentially pathological phenomena is

an aspect of human nature whose discernable substratum is

encoded in our specific instinct; namely humans normally fail

to differentiate between moral and biological evil. Moralizing

always surfaces, albeit to varying degrees, within the natural

psychological and moral world view, which is why we should

consider this tendency a permanent error of public opinion. We

may curb it with increased self-knowledge, but overcoming it

requires specific knowledge in the psychopathological area.

Young people and less cultured circles always tend toward

such interpretations (although it characterizes traditional es-

thetes too), which intensifies whenever our natural reflexes

take over control from reason, i.e. in hysterical states, and in