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

ety of normal people.

During the next visit, the patient showed to me a little card

on which she had written the names of local pathocratic nota-

bles and added her own diagnoses, which were largely correct.

So I made a hushing gesture with my finger and admonished

her with emphasis that we were dealing only with her prob-

lems. The patient understood and, I am sure, she did not make

her reflections on the matter known in the wrong places.

Parallel to the development of practical knowledge and a

language of insider communication, other psychological phe-

nomena take form; they are truly significant in the transforma-

tion of social life under pathocratic rule, and discerning them is

essential if one wishes to understand individuals and nations

fated to live under such conditions and to evaluate the situation

in the political sphere. They include people’s psychological

immunization and their adaptation to life under such deviant

conditions.

The methods of psychological terror (that specific

pathocratic art), the techniques of pathological arrogance, and

the striding roughshod into other people’s souls initially have

such traumatic effects that people are deprived of their capacity

for purposeful reaction; I have already adduced the psycho-

physiological aspects of such states. Ten or twenty years later,

analogous behavior is already recognized as well known buf-

foonery and does not deprive the victim of his ability to think

and react purposefully. His answers are usually well-thought-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

245

out strategies, issued from the position of a normal person’s

superiority and often laced with ridicule. When Man can look

suffering and even death in the eye with the required calm, a

dangerous weapon falls out of the ruler’s hands.

We have to understand that this process of immunization is

not merely a result of the above-described increase in practical

knowledge of the macrosocial phenomenon. It is the effect of a

many-layered, gradual process of growth in knowledge, famili-

arization with the phenomenon, creation of the appropriate

reactive habits , and self-control , with an overall conception,

and moral principles, being worked out in the meantime. After

several years, the same stimuli which formerly caused chilly

spiritual impotence or mental paralysis now provoke the desire

to gargle with something strong so as to get rid of this filth.

There was a time when many people dreamed of finding

some pill which would make it easier to endure dealing with

the authorities or attending the forced indoctrination sessions

generally chaired by a psychopathic character. Some antide-

pressants did in fact prove to have the desired effect. Twenty

years later, this had been forgotten entirely.

~~~

When I was arrested for the first time in 1951, force, arro-

gance, and psychopathic methods of forcible confession de-

prived me almost entirely of my self-defense capabilities. My

brain stopped functioning after only a few days without water,

to such a point that I couldn’t even properly remember the

incident which resulted in my sudden arrest. I was not even

aware that it had been purposely provoked and that conditions

permitting self-defense did in fact exist. They did almost any-

thing they wanted to me.

When I was arrested for last time in 1968, I was interro-

gated by five fierce-looking security functionaries. At one par-

ticular moment, after thinking through their predicted reac-

tions, I let my gaze take in each face sequentially with great

attentiveness. The most important one asked me, “What’s on

your mind, buster, staring at us like that?” I answered without

any fear of consequences: “I’m just wondering why so many of

the gentlemen in your line of work end up in a psychiatric hos-

pital.” They were taken aback for a while, whereupon the same

246

NORMAL PEOPLE UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

man exclaimed, “Because it’s such damned horrible work!” “I

am of the opinion that it’s the other way round”, I calmly re-

sponded. Then I was taken back to my cell.

Three days later, I had the opportunity to talk to him again,

but this time he was much more respectful. Then he ordered me

to be taken away - outside, as it turned out. I rode the streetcar

home past a large park, still unable to believe my eyes. Once in

my room, I lay down on the bed; the world was not quite real

yet, but exhausted people fall asleep quickly. When I awoke, I

spoke out loud: “Dear God, aren’t you supposed to be in

charge here in this world?!”

~~~

At that time, I knew not only that up to 1/5 of all secret po-

lice officials wind up in psychiatric hospitals, I also knew that

their “occupational disease” is the congestive dementia for-

merly encountered only among old prostitutes. Man cannot

violate the natural human feelings inside him with impunity, no

matter what kind of profession he performs. From that view-

point, Comrade Captain was partially right. At the same time,

however, my reactions had become resistant, a far cry from

what they had been seventeen years earlier.

All these transformations of human consciousness and un-

consciousness result in individual and collective adaptation to

living under such a system. Under altered conditions of both

material and moral limitations, an existential resourcefulness

emerges which is prepared to overcome many difficulties. A

new network of the society of normal people is also created for

self-help and mutual assistance.

This society acts in concert and is aware of the true state of

affairs; it begins to develop ways of influencing various ele-

ments of authority and achieving goals which are socially use-

ful. Patiently instructing and convincing the rulership’s medio-

cre representatives takes considerable time and requires peda-

gogical skills. Therefore, the most even-tempered people are

selected for this job, people with sufficient familiarity with

their psychology and a specific talent for influencing

pathocrats. The opinion that society is totally deprived of any

influence upon government in such a country is thus inaccu-

rate. In reality, society does co-govern to a certain extent,

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

247

sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing in its attempt to

create more tolerable living conditions. This, however, occurs

in a manner totally different from what happens in democratic

countries.

These cognitive processes, psychological immunization,

and adaptation, permit the creation of new interpersonal and

societal links, which operate within the scope of the large ma-

jority we have already called the “society of normal people”.

These links extend discretely into the world of the regime’s

middle class, among people who can be trusted to a certain

extent. In time, the social links created are significantly more

effective than those active in societies governed by normal

human systems. Exchange of information, warnings, and assis-

tance encompass the entire society. Whoever is able to do so

offers aid to anyone who finds himself in trouble, often in such

a way that the person helped does not even know who rendered

the assistance. However, if he caused his misfortune by his

own lack of circumspection with regard to the authorities, he

meets with reproach, but never the withholding of assistance.

It is possible to create such links because this new division

of society gives only limited consideration to factors such as

the level of talent, education or traditions attached to the former

social layers. Neither do reduced prosperity differences dis-

solve these links. One side of this division contains those of the

highest mental culture, simple ordinary people, intellectuals,

headwork specialists, factory workers, and peasants joined by

the common protest of their human nature against the domina-

tion of para-human experiential and governmental methods.

These links engender interpersonal understanding and fellow-

feeling among people and social groups formerly divided by

economic differences and social traditions . The thought proc-

esses serving these links are of a more psychological character,

able to comprehend someone else’s motivations. At the same

time, the ordinary folk retain respect for people who have been

educated and represent intellectual values. Certain social and

moral values also appear and may prove to be permanent.

The genesis, however, of this great interpersonal solidarity

only becomes comprehensible when we know the nature of the

pathological macrosocial phenomenon which brought about the

248

NORMAL PEOPLE UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

liberation of such attitudes, complete with recognition of one’s

own humanity and that of others. Another reflection suggests

itself, namely how very different these great links are from

America’s “competitive society”, for whom the former – eco-

nomic and social differences - represent something which is

operational even though it crosses the boundaries of the imagi-

nation.

One would think that a nation’s cultural and intellectual life

would quickly degenerate when subjected to the country’s iso-

lation from the cultural and scientific links with other nations,

pathocratic limitations upon the development of one’s thought,

a censorship system, the mental level of the executives, and all

those other attributes of such rule. Reality nevertheless does

not validate such pessimistic predictions.

The necessity for constant mental effort so crucial for find-

ing some tolerable way of life, not totally bereft of moral sense

within such a deviant reality, causes the development of realis-

tic perception , especially in the area of socio-psychological

phenomena. Protecting one’s mind from the effects of paralo-

gistic propaganda, as well as one’s personality from the influ-

ence of paramoralisms and the other techniques already de-

scribed, sharpens controlled thinking processes and the ability

to discern these phenomena. Such training is also a special kind

of common man’s university.

During such times, society reaches for historical sources in

searching for the ancient causes of its misfortunes and for ways

to improve its fate in the future. Scientific and societal minds

laboriously review the national history in quest of interpreta-

tions of the facts which would be more profound from the point

of view of psychological and moral realism. We soberly dis-

cern what happened years and centuries ago, perceiving the

errors of former generations and the results of intolerance or

emotionally weighted decision-making. Such a great review of