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

into both dodgers and, simultaneously, intermediaries between

the oppositional society and the active ponerological group,

whom they can talk to in the appropriate language. They play

such a crucial role within this system that both sides must take

them into account. Since their technical capacities and skills

are better than those of the active pathocratic group, they as-

sume various managerial positions. Normal people see them as

persons they can approach, generally without being subjected

to pathological arrogance.

So it is that only 18% of the country’s population is in favor

of the new system of government; but concerning the layer we

have called the bourgeoisie, we may even be doubtful of the

sincerity of their attitudes. This is the situation in the author’s

homeland. This proportion can be variously estimated in other

countries, from 15% in Hungary to 21% in Bulgaria, but it is

never more than a relatively small minority.

The great majority of the population forms the society of

normal people, gradually creating an informal communications

network. It behooves us to wonder why these people reject the

advantages conformity affords, consciously preferring the op-

posing role: poverty, harassment, and curtailment of human

freedoms. What ideals motivate them? Is this merely a kind of

romanticism representing ties to tradition and religion? Still, so

many people with a religious upbringing change their world

view to that of the Pathocrats very quickly. The next chapter is

dedicated to this question.

For the moment, let us limit ourselves to stating that a per-

son with a normal human instinctive substratum, good basic

intelligence, and full faculties of critical thought would have a

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difficult time accepting such a compromise; it would devastate

his personality and engender neurosis. At the same time, such a

system easily distinguishes and separates him from its own

kind regardless of his sporadic hesitations. No method of

propaganda can change the nature of this macrosocial phe-

nomenon or the nature of a normal human being. They remain

foreign to each other.

The above-described subdivision into three sections should

not be identified with membership in any party, which is offi-

cially ideological but in fact pathocratic. Such a system con-

tains many normal people forced to join such a party by various

circumstances, and who must pretend as best they can to repre-

sent said party’s more reasonable adherents. After a year or two

of obtusely executed instructions, they start becoming inde-

pendent and reestablishing their severed ties to society. Their

former friends begin to get the gist of their double game. This

is the situation of large numbers of the adherents of the former

ideology, which is now fulfilling its changed function. They are

also the first to protest that this system does not truly represent

their old political beliefs. We must also remember that spe-

cially trusted people, whose loyalty to the pathocracy is a fore-

gone conclusion due to their psychological nature and the

functions they perform, have no need to belong to the party;

they stand above it .

After a typical pathocratic structure has been formed, the

population is effectively divided – polarized - according to

completely different lines from what someone raised outside

the purview of this phenomenon might imagine, and in a man-

ner whose actual conditions are also impossible to comprehend

for someone lacking essential specialized training. However, an

intuitive sense for these causes gradually forms among the

majority of society in a country affected by the phenomenon. A

person raised in a normal man’s system is accustomed since

childhood to seeing economic and ideological problems in the

foreground, possibly also the results of social injustice. Such

concepts have proved illusory and ineffective in a most tragic

manner: the macrosocial phenomenon has its own properties

and laws which can only be studied and comprehended within

the appropriate categories.

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227

However, in leaving behind our old natural method of com-

prehension and learning to track the internal causality of the

phenomenon, we marvel at the surprising exactness with which

the latter turns out to be subjected to its own regular laws. With

regard to individuals, there is always a greater scope of some

individualism and environmental influences. In statistical

analyses these variable factors disappear and the essential con-

stant characteristics surface. The entirety is thus clearly subject

to causative determination. This explains the relative ease of

transition from studying causation to predicting future changes

in the phenomenon. In time, the adequacy of collected knowl-

edge has been confirmed by the accuracy of these predictions.

Let us now take individual cases into consideration. For in-

stance: we meet two people whose behavior makes us suspect

they are psychopaths, but their attitudes to the pathocratic sys-

tem are quite different; the first is affirmative, the second pain-

fully critical. Studies on the basis of tests detecting brain tissue

damage will indicate such pathology in the second person, but

not in the first; in the second case we are dealing with behavior

which may be strongly reminiscent of psychopathy, but the

substratum is different.

If a carrier of an essential psychopathy gene was a member

of the decidedly anti-communist government party before the

war, he will be treated as an “ideological enemy” during the

pathocracy’s formative period. However, he soon appears to

find a modus vivendi with the new authorities and enjoys a

certain amount of tolerance. The moment when he becomes

transformed into an adherent of the new “ideology” and finds

the way back to the ruling party is only a matter of time and

circumstance.

If the family of a typical zealous pathocrat produces a son

who does not inherit the appropriate gene, thanks to a happy

genetic coincidence, (or he was born from a bio-

psychologically normal partner), such a son will be raised in

the corresponding youth organization, faithful to the ideology

and the party, which he joins early. By mature manhood, how-

ever, he will begin to list toward the society of normal people.

The opposition, that world which feels and thinks normally,

becomes ever closer to him; therein he finds himself and a set

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of values unknown – yet familiar - to him. A conflict eventu-

ally arises between himself and his family, party, and environ-

ment, under conditions which may be more or less dramatic.

This starts out with critical statements and the writing of rather

naive appeals requesting changes in the party, in the direction

of healthy common sense, of course. Such people then finally

begin to do battle on society’s side, enduring sacrifices and

suffering. Others decide to abandon their native country and

wander foreign lands, lonely among people who cannot under-

stand them or the problems under which they were raised.

With regard to the phenomenon as whole, one can predict

its primary properties and processes of change and estimate the

time at which they will occur. Regardless of its genesis, no

pathocratic activation of the population of a country affected by

this phenomenon can exceed the above discussed boundaries

set by biological factors.

The phenomenon will develop according to the patterns we

have already described, gnawing ever deeper into the country’s

social fabric. The resulting pathocratic monoparty will bifur-

cate from the very outset: one wing is consistently pathological

and earns nicknames such as “doctrinarian”, “hard-headed”,

“beton”, etc. The second is considered more liberal, and in fact

this is where the reverberation of the original ideology remains

alive for the longest. The representatives of this second wing

try as hard as their shrinking powers permit to bend this strange

reality into a direction more amenable to human reason, and

they do not lose complete touch with society’s links. The first

internal crisis of weakness occurs some ten years after such a

system has emerged; as a result, the society of normal people

gains a bit more freedom. During this time frame, skillful out-

side action can already count on internal cooperation.

Pathocracy corrodes the entire social organism, wasting its

skills and power.

The effects of the more ideational wing of the party and its

enlivening influence upon the workings of the entire country

gradually weaken. Typical pathocrats take over all the manage-

rial functions in a totally destroyed structure of a nation. Such a

state must be short-term, since no ideology can vivify it. The

time comes when the common masses of people want to live

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

229

like human beings again and the system can no longer resist.

There will be no great counter-revolution; a more or less

stormy process of regeneration will instead ensue.

Pathocracy is even less of a socioeconomic system than a

social structure or political system. It is a macrosocial disease

process affecting entire nations and running the course of its

characteristic pathodynamic properties. The phenomenon

changes too quickly in time for us to be able to comprehend it

in categories which would imply a certain stability, not ruling

out the evolutionary processes to which social systems are

subject. Any way of comprehending the phenomenon by im-

puting certain enduring properties to it thus quickly causes us

to lose sight of its current contents. The dynamics of transfor-

mation in time is part of the nature of the phenomenon; we

cannot possibly achieve comprehension from outside its pa-

rameters.

As long as we keep using methods of comprehending this

pathological phenomenon, which apply certain political doc-

trines whose contents are heterogeneous with regard to its true

nature, we will not be able to identify the causes and properties

of the disease. A prepared ideology will be able to cloak the

essential qualities from the minds of scientists, politicians, and

common people. In such a state of affairs, we will never elabo-

rate any causatively active methods which could stifle the phe-

nomenon’s pathological self-reproduction or its expansionist

external influences. Ignota nulla curatio morbi !

However, once we understand a disease’s etiological factors

and their activities as well as the pathodynamics of its changes,

we find that the search for a curative method generally be-

comes much easier. Something similar applies with regard to

the macrosocial pathological phenomenon discussed above.

CHAPTER VI

NORMAL PEOPLE

UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

As adduced above, the anomaly distinguished as essential