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

versive thinking, but some people are relatively close to this

state, while others remain slaves to these processes. Those

people who use conversive operations too often for the purpose

of finding convenient conclusions, or constructing some cun-

ning paralogistic or paramoralistic statements, eventually begin

to undertake such behavior for ever more trivial reasons, losing

the capacity for conscious control over their thought process

altogether. This necessarily leads to behavior errors which must

be paid for by others as well as themselves.

People who have lost their psychological hygiene and ca-

pacity of proper thought along this road also lose their natural

critical faculties with regard to the statements and behavior of

individuals whose abnormal thought processes were formed on

a substratum of pathological anomalies, whether inherited or

acquired. Hypocrites stop differentiating between pathological

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and normal individuals, thus opening an “infection entry” for

the ponerologic role of pathological factors.

Generally, each community contains people in whom simi-

lar methods of thinking were developed on a large scale, with

their various deviations as a backdrop. We find this both in

characteropathic and psychopathic personalities. Some have

even been influenced by others to grow accustomed to such

“reasoning”, since conversion thinking is highly contagious

and can spread throughout an entire society. In “happy times”

especially, the tendency for conversion thinking generally in-

tensifies. It appears accompanied by a rising wave of hysteria

in said society. Those who try to maintain common sense and

proper reasoning finally wind up in the minority, feeling

wronged because their human right to maintain psychological

hygiene is violated by pressure from all sides. This means that

unhappy times are not far away.

We should point out that the erroneous thought processes

described herein also, as a rule, violate the laws of logic with

characteristic treachery. Educating people in the art of proper

reasoning can thus serve to counteract such tendencies; it has a

hallowed age-old tradition which seems to have been insuffi-

ciently effective for centuries. As an example: according to the

laws of logic, a question containing an erroneous or uncon-

firmed suggestion has no answer. Nevertheless, not only does

operating with such questions become epidemic among people

with a tendency to conversion thinking, and a source of terror

when used by psychopathical individuals; it also occurs among

people who think normally, or even those who have studied

logic.

This decreasing tendency in a society’s capacity for proper

thought should be counteracted, since it also lowers its immu-

nity to ponerogenic processes. An effective measure would be

teaching both proper thought and skillful detection of errors in

thought. The front of such education should be expanded, in-

cluding psychology, psychopathology, and the science de-

scribed herein, for the purpose of raising people who can easily

detect any paralogism.

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Spellbinders

In order to comprehend ponerogenic pathways of contagion,

especially those acting in a wider social context, let us observe

the roles and personalities of individuals we shall call “spell-

binders”, who are highly active in this area in spite of their

statistically negligible number.

Spellbinders are generally the carriers of various pathologi-

cal factors, some characteropathies, and some inherited anoma-

lies. Individuals with malformations of their personalities fre-

quently play similar roles, although the social scale of influ-

ence remains small (family or neighborhood) and does not

cross certain boundaries of decency.

Spellbinders are characterized by pathological egotism.

Such a person is forced by some internal causes to make an

early choice between two possibilities: the first is forcing other

people to think and experience things in a manner similar to his

own; the second is a feeling of being lonely and different, a

pathological misfit in social life. Sometimes the choice is either

snake-charming or suicide.

Triumphant repression of self-critical or unpleasant con-

cepts from the field of consciousness gradually gives rise to the

phenomena of conversion thinking, or paralogistics, paramoral-

isms, and the use of reversion blockades. They stream so pro-

fusely from the mind and mouth of the spellbinder that they

flood the average person’s mind. Everything becomes subordi-

nated to the spellbinder’s over-compensatory conviction that

they are exceptional, sometimes even messianic. An ideology

emerges from this conviction, true in part, whose value is sup-

posedly superior. However, if we analyze the exact functions of

such an ideology in the spellbinder’s personality, we perceive

that it is a nothing other than a means of self-charming , useful

for repressing those tormenting self-critical associations into

the subconscious. The ideology’s instrumental role in influenc-

ing other people also serves the spellbinder’s needs.

The spellbinder believes that he will always find converts to

his ideology, and most often, they are right. However, they feel

shock (or even paramoral indignation) when it turns out that

their influence extends to only a limited minority, while most

people’s attitude to their activities remains critical, pained and

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disturbed. The spellbinder is thus confronted with a choice:

either withdraw back into his void or strengthen his position by

improving the effectiveness of his activities.

The spellbinder places on a high moral plane anyone who

has succumbed to his influence and incorporated the experien-

tial method he imposes. He showers such people with attention

and property, if possible. Critics are met with “moral” outrage.

It can even be proclaimed that the compliant minority is in fact

the moral majority, since it professes the best ideology and

honors a leader whose qualities are above average.

Such activity is always necessarily characterized by the in-

ability to foresee its final results , something obvious from the

psychological point of view because its substratum contains

pathological phenomena, and both spellbinding and self-

charming make it impossible to perceive reality accurately

enough to foresee results logically. However, spellbinders nur-

ture great optimism and harbor visions of future triumphs simi-

lar to those they enjoyed over their own crippled souls. It is

also possible for optimism to be a pathological symptom.

In a healthy society, the activities of spellbinders meet with

criticism effective enough to stifle them quickly. However,

when they are preceded by conditions operating destructively

upon common sense and social order; such as social injustice,

cultural backwardness, or intellectually limited rulers some-

times manifesting pathological traits, spellbinders’ activities

have led entire societies into large-scale human tragedy.

Such an individual fishes an environment or society for

people amenable to his influence, deepening their psychologi-

cal weaknesses until they finally join together in a ponerogenic

union. On the other hand, people who have maintained their

healthy critical faculties intact, based upon their own common

sense and moral criteria, attempt to counteract the spellbinders’

activities and their results. In the resulting polarization of so-

cial attitudes, each side justifies itself by means of moral cate-

gories. That is why such commonsense resistance is always

accompanied by some feeling of helplessness and deficiency of

criteria.

The awareness that a spellbinder is always a pathological

individual should protect us from the known results of a moral-

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157

izing interpretation of pathological phenomena, ensuring us an

objective criteria for more effective action . Explaining what

kind of pathological substratum is hidden behind a given in-

stance of spellbinding activities should enable a modern solu-

tion to such situations.

It is a characteristic phenomenon that a high IQ generally

helps a person to be more immune to spellbinding activities

only to a moderate degree . Actual differences in the formation

of human attitudes to the influence of such activities should be

attributed to other properties of human nature. The most deci-

sive factor in assuming a critical attitude is good basic intelli-

gence, which conditions our perception of psychological real-

ity. We can also observe how a spellbinder’s activities “husk

out” amenable individuals with an astonishing regularity.

We shall later return to the specific relations that occur

among the spellbinder’s personality, the ideology he expounds,

and the choices made by those who easily succumb. More ex-

haustive clarification thereof would require separate study

within the framework of general ponerology, a work intended

for specialists, in order to explain some of those interesting

phenomena which are still not properly understood today.

Ponerogenic Associations

We shall give the name “ponerogenic association” to any

group of people characterized by ponerogenic processes of

above-average social intensity, wherein the carriers of various

pathological factors function as inspirers, spellbinders, and

leaders, and where a proper pathological social structure gener-

ates. Smaller, less permanent associations may be called

“groups” or “unions”.

Such an association gives birth to evil which hurts other

people as well as its own members. We could list various

names ascribed to such organizations by linguistic tradition:

gangs, criminal mobs, mafias, cliques, and coteries, which

cunningly avoid collision with the law while seeking to gain

their own advantage. Such unions frequently aspire to political

power in order to impose their expedient legislation upon so-

cieties in the name of a suitably prepared ideology, deriving

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advantages in the form of disproportionate prosperity and the

satisfaction of their craving for power.

A description and classification of such associations with a

view of their numbers, goals, officially promulgated ideologies,

and internal organizations would of course be scientifically

valuable. Such a description, effected by a perceptive observer,

could help a ponerologist determine some of the properties of

such unions, which cannot be determined by means of natural

conceptual language.

A description of this kind, however, ought not to cloak the

more factual phenomena and psychological dependencies oper-

ating within these unions. Failure to heed this warning can

easily cause such a sociological description to indicate proper-

ties which are of secondary importance, or even made “for