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

however, then goes on to explain that these individuals’ hyper-

activity and sense of being exceptional are derived from their

drive to overcompensate for a feeling of some deficiency. This

aberrant attitude results in the obscuration of the truth: that

normal people are the richest of all.

The fourth chapter of the book contains a concise descrip-

tion of some of these anomalies, their causes, and the biologi-

cal reality, selected in such a way as to facilitate comprehen-

sion of this work as a whole. Other data are distributed

throughout many specialized works that will not be included

here. However, we must consider the overall shape of our

knowledge in this area, which is so basic to our understanding

of, and practical solutions to, many difficult problems of social

life, is unsatisfactory. Many scientists treat this area of science

as being peripheral; others consider it “thankless” because it

easily leads to misunderstandings with other specialists. As a

consequence, various concepts and various semantic conven-

tions emerge, and the totality of knowledge in this science is

still characterized by an excessively descriptive nature. This

book therefore encompasses efforts whose purpose was to

bring to light the causative aspects of the descriptively known

phenomena.

The pathological phenomena in question, usually of a suffi-

ciently low intensity which can be more easily concealed from

environmental opinion, merge without much difficulty into the

eternal process of the genesis of evil, which later affects peo-

ple, families, and entire societies. Later in this book, we shall

learn that these pathological factors become indispensable

components in a synthesis which results in widescale human

suffering, and also that tracking their activities by means of

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SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS

scientific control and social consciousness may prove to be an

effective weapon against evil.

For the above reasons, this scope of psychopathological sci-

ence represents an indispensable part of that objective language

we have dealt with before. Ever-increasing accuracy in biologi-

cal and psychological facts in this area is an essential precondi-

tion for an objective comprehension of many phenomena

which become extremely onerous for societies, as well as for a

modern solution to age-old problems. Biologists, physicians,

and psychologists who have been struggling with these elusive

and convoluted problems deserve assistance and encourage-

ment from society, since their work will enable the future pro-

tection of people and nations from an evil whose causes we do

not as yet sufficiently understand.

Society

Nature has designed man to be social, a state of affairs en-

coded early, on the instinctual level of our species as described

above. Our minds and personalities could not possibly develop

without contact and interaction with an ever-widening circle of

people. Our mind receives input from others, whether con-

sciously or unconsciously, in regard to matters of emotional

and mental life, tradition and thought, by means of resonant

sensitivity, identification, imitation, and by exchange of ideas,

and permanent rules. The material we obtain in these ways is

then transformed by our psyche in order to create a new human

personality, one we call “our own”. However, our existence is

contingent upon necessary links with those who lived before,

those who presently make up our society, and those who shall

exist in the future. Our existence only assumes meaning as a

function of societal bonds; hedonistic isolation causes us to

lose our selves.

It is man’s fate to actively cooperate in giving shape to the

fate of society by two principal means: forming his individual

and family life within it, and becoming active in the sum total

of social affairs based on his – hopefully sufficient - compre-

hension of what needs to be done, what ought to be done, and

whether or not he can do it. This requires an individual to de-

velop two somewhat overlapping areas of knowledge about

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

71

things; his life depends on the quality of this development, as

does his nation and humanity as a whole.

If, say, we observe a beehive with a painter’s eye, we see

what looks like a crowding throng of insects linked by their

species-similarity. A beekeeper, however, tracks complicated

laws encoded in every insect’s instinct and in the collective

instinct of the hive as well; that helps him understand how to

cooperate with the laws of nature governing apiary society. The

beehive is a higher-order organism; no individual bee can exist

without it, and thus it submits to the absolute nature of its laws.

If we observe the throngs of people crowding the streets of

some great human metropolis, we see what looks like individu-

als driven by their business and problems, pursuing some

crumb of happiness. However, such an oversimplification of

reality causes us to disregard the laws of social life which ex-

isted long before the metropolis ever did, and which will con-

tinue to exist long after huge cities are emptied of people and

purpose. Loners in a crowd have a difficult time accepting that

reality, which – for them - exists in only potential form, al-

though they cannot perceive it directly.

In reality, accepting the laws of social life in all their com-

plexity, even if we find initial difficulties in comprehending

them, helps us to come, finally, to a certain level of understand-

ing that we acquire by something akin to osmosis. Thanks to

this comprehension, or even just an instinctive intuition of such

laws, an individual is able to reach his goals and mature his

personality in action. Thanks to sufficient intuition and com-

prehension of these conditions, a society is able to progress

culturally and economically and to achieve political maturity.

The more we progress in this understanding, the more social

doctrines strike us as primitive and psychologically naive, es-

pecially those based on the thoughts of thinkers living during

the 18th and 19th centuries which were characterized by a

dearth of psychological perception. The suggestive nature of

these doctrines derives from their oversimplification of reality,

something easily adapted and used in political propaganda.

These doctrines and ideologies show their basic faults, in re-

gard to the understanding of human personalities and differ-

ences among people, all rather clearly if viewed in the light of

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SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS

our natural language of psychological concepts, and even more

so in the light of objective language.

A psychologist’s view of society, even if based only on pro-

fessional experience, always places the human individual in the

foreground; it then widens the perspective to include small

groups, such as families, and finally societies and humanity as

whole. We must then accept from the outset that an individ-

ual’s fate is significantly dependent upon circumstance. When

we gradually increase the scope of our observations, we also

gain a greater pictorial specificity of causative links, and statis-

tical data assume ever greater stability.

In order to describe the interdependence between someone’s

fate and personality, and the state of development of society,

we must study the entire body of information collected in this

area to date, adding a new work written in objective language.

Herein I shall adduce only a few examples of such reasoning in

order to open the door to questions presented in later chapters.

~~~

Throughout the ages and in various cultures, the best peda-

gogues have understood the importance, regarding the forma-

tion of a culture and a person’s character, of the scope of con-

cepts describing psychological phenomena. The quality and

richness of concepts and terminology20 mastered by an individ-

20 !obaczewski’s emphasis on language is very important. Semiotics is the

study of language or any other symbol system that conveys meaning. One of

the great philosophical discussions that has continued for centuries relates to

that of the alphabet giver and “namer” of things. In the monotheistic world,

Adam is, of course, the one we think of when we think of the “giving of

names” to things. In terms of the study of Semiotics, the question is: did he

name things based on what they were, in essence, or did he simply create a

convention, and arbitrarily name them whatever appealed to him?

The theories of Semiotics propose that there are two levels, or “planes of

articulation”. At the level of any given language, such as Greek, English,

Chinese, or whatever, there is what they call the “Expression plane” that

consists of a lexicon, a phonology and syntax. In other words, the Expression

Plane is the selection of words that belong to that language, the sounds that

the selection of words produce, and the way they are arranged to convey

meaning. That is the first plane. The second plane is called the Content Plane.

This is the array of concepts that the language is capable of expressing. This

last is rather important because, as we have all heard at least once in our

lives, Eskimos have many words for snow while people who do not live in an

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

73

ual and society, as well as the degree to which they approxi-

mate an objective world view, condition the development of

our moral and social attitudes. The correctness of our under-

standing of self and others characterizes the components condi-

tioning our decisions and choices, be they mundane or impor-

tant, in our private lives and social activities.

The level and quality of a given society’s psychological

worldview is also a condition of realization of the full socio-

psychological structure present as a potential in the psycho-

logical variety within our species. Only when we can under-

stand a person in relation to his actual internal contents, not

some substituted external label, can we help him along his path

to proper adjustment to social life, which would be to his ad-

vantage and would also assist in the creation of a stable and

creative structure of society.

Supported by a proper feel for, and understanding of, psy-

chological qualities, such a structure would impart high social

office to individuals possessing both full psychological normal-

ity, sufficient talent and specific preparation. The basic collec-

tive intelligence of the masses of people would then respect

and support them.

And so, in such a society, the only pending problems to be

resolved would be those matters so difficult as to overwhelm

the natural language of concepts, however enriched and quali-

tatively ennobled.

However, there have always been “society pedagogues”,

less outstanding but more numerous, who have become fasci-

nated by their own great ideas, which might, sometimes, even

environment where snow and ice are the dominant features may only have