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

voke overly dramatic reactions among pathocrats, e.g. a wave

of cruelty or suicide. No! Those individuals described as essen-

tial psychopaths, in addition to many other carriers of related

hereditary anomalies, have since childhood elaborated a feeling

of being psychologically different from others. Revealing this

awareness to them is less traumatizing than, for instance, sug-

gesting psychological abnormality to a normal person. The ease

with which they repress uncomfortable material from their field

of consciousness will protect them from violent reactions.

What can they do if no ideology can be used as a mask any

more? Once the essence of the phenomenon has been scientifi-

cally unmasked, the psychological result is that they then feel

their historical role to have reached the end. Their work fur-

thermore takes on some historically creative meaning, if the

world of normal people offers them conciliation upon unprece-

dented advantageous conditions. This will cause overall demo-

bilization of the pathocracy, especially in those countries

where, practically speaking, the support of an ideology has

already been lost. This internal demobilization they fear so

much constitutes the second important goal.

A crucial condition and a complement of therapeutic work

must be forgiveness for the pathocrats as derived from under-

standing, both of them and of the signs of the times. This must

be effected by means of correspondingly amended law based

on comprehension of man and of the processes of the genesis

of evil operating within societies, which will counteract such

processes in a causative manner and supersede the former “pe-

nal” law. Forecasting the creation of such law must not be

treated merely as a psychotherapeutic promise; it must be sci-

entifically prepared and thereupon effected.

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Forgiveness

The contemporary evolution of legal concepts and democ-

ratic social morality is geared toward dismantling the old tradi-

tions of maintaining law and order by means of punitive re-

pression. Many countries have abandoned capital punishment,

disturbed by its genocidal abuses during the last world war.

Other punishments and the methods of their execution have

also been mitigated, taking psychological motivation and the

circumstances of the crime into account. The conscience of the

civilized nations protests against the Roman principle Dura lex

sed lex , and, at the same time, psychologists discern the possi-

bility that many presently unbalanced people can revert to

normal social life thanks to appropriate pedagogical measures;

practice confirms it only partially, however.

The reason is that mitigating the law has not been balanced

with the corresponding methods of stifling the processes of the

genesis of evil as based upon its comprehension . This pro-

vokes a crisis in the area of societies’ anti-crime protection and

makes it easier for pathocratic circles to utilize terrorism in

order to realize their expansionist goals. Under such conditions,

many people feel that returning to the tradition of legal severity

is the only way to protect society from an excess of evil. Others

believe that such traditional behavior morally cripples us and

opens the door to irrevocable abuses. They therefore subsume

others’ life and health to humanistic values.

In order to emerge from this crisis, we must galvanize all

our efforts in a search for a new road, one which would both be

more humanitarian and would effectively protect defenseless

individuals and societies. Such a possibility exists and can be

implemented, based on an objective comprehension of the

genesis of evil.

In factual essence, the unrealistic tradition of a relationship

between a person’s “crime”, which no other person is in the

position to evaluate objectively, and his “punishment”, which

is rarely effective in reforming him, should be relegated to

history. The science of the causes of evil should strengthen

society’s moral discipline and have a prophylactic effect. Often

merely making a person aware that he was under the influence

of a pathological individual breaks the circle of destructiveness.

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An appropriate psychotherapy should therefore be permanently

included in any measures to counteract evil. Unfortunately, if

someone is shooting at us, we must shoot back even better. At

the same time, however, we should bring back the law of for-

giveness, that old law of wise sovereigns. After all, it has pro-

found moral and psychological foundations and is more effec-

tive than punishment in some situations.

The codices of penal law foresee that the perpetrator of a

penal act who, at the time of his transgression, was limited in

his ability to discern the meaning of the act or to direct his own

behavior as a result of mental illness or some other psychologi-

cal deficiency, receives a lesser sentence to the appropriate

degree. If we should therefore consider the responsibility of

pathocrats in the light of such regulations and in light of what

we have already said about the motivations for their behavior,

we must then considerably mitigate the scope of justice within

the frame of existing regulations.

The above-mentioned legal regulations, which are more

modern in Europe than in the U.S.A., are rather outdated eve-

rywhere and insufficiently congruent with bio-psychological

reality. They are a compromise between traditional legal think-

ing and medical humanism. Furthermore, the legislators were

in no position to perceive macrosocial pathological phenomena

that dominate individuals and significantly limit their ability to

discern the meaning of their own behavior. Susceptible indi-

viduals are sucked in surreptitiously, since they are unaware of

the pathological quality of such a phenomenon. The specific

properties of these phenomena cause the selection of attitudes

to be decisively determined by unconscious factors, followed

by pressure from pathocratic rulers, who are none too fastidi-

ous as to their methods, not even with regard to their own ad-

herents. How should the degree of penal mitigation then judge

them fairly?

For instance, if essential psychopathy is virtually 100% pre-

dictive concerning attraction to and inclusion in pathocratic

activity, should a judgment recognize similar mitigation of

punishment? This should also be applied to other hereditary

anomalies to a lesser extent, since they too have proved to be

primary factors in the selection of attitudes.

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291

We should not fault anyone for having inherited some psy-

chological anomalies from his parents any more than we fault

someone in the case of physical or physiological anomalies

such as Daltonism. We should also stop blaming people who

succumbed to traumas and diseases, leaving brain tissue dam-

age behind, or those who become the object of inhuman peda-

gogical methods.

In the name of their good and that of society, we should use

force with regard to such people, sometimes including forced

psychotherapy, supervision, prevention, and care. Any concept

of blame or guilt would only make it more difficult to behave

in a way which is not only humanitarian and purposeful, but

more effective as well.

In dealing with a macrosocial phenomenon, particularly one

whose life is longer than an individual’s active life, its perma-

nent influence forces even normal people to adapt to a certain

degree. Are we, whose instincts and intelligence are normal

and, according to the criteria of our moral world view, in the

position to evaluate the guilt of these others for actions they

performed within pathocracy’s collective madness? Judging

them in accordance with traditional legal regulations would

constitute reverting to the imposition of normal man’s force

upon psychopathic individuals, i.e. to the initial position which

engendered pathocracy to begin with. Is subjecting them to

vindictive justice worth prolonging the duration of pathocracy

for even a single year, let alone an unspecified time? Would

eliminating a certain number of psychopaths significantly di-

minish these anomalies’ burden upon society’s gene pool and

contribute toward a solution to this problem?

Unfortunately, the answer is no!

People with various psychological deviations have always

existed in every society on earth. Their way of life is always

some form of predation upon society’s economic creativity,

since their own creative capabilities are generally substandard.

Whoever plugs into this system of organized parasitism gradu-

ally loses whatever limited capacity for legal work he might

have had.

This phenomenon and its brutality are actually maintained

by the threat of legal retaliation or, even worse, of retribution

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THERAPY OF THE WORLD

on the part of the enraged masses. Dreams of revenge distract a

society’s attention from understanding the bio-psychological

essence of the phenomenon and stimulate the moralizing inter-

pretations whose results we are already familiar with. This

would make it more difficult to find a solution to the present

dangerous situation and would similarly complicate any possi-

bilities of solving the problem of burdening society’s gene pool

with psychological anomalies with a view to future genera-

tions. These problems, however, both present and future, can

be solved if we approach them with an understanding of their

naturalistic essence and a comprehension of the nature of those

people who commit substantial evil.

Legal retribution would be a repetition of the Nuremberg er-

ror. That judgment upon war criminals could have been a

never-to-be repeated opportunity to show the world the entire

psychopathology of the Hitlerian system, with the person of the

“Fuehrer” at the head. That would have led to a faster and

deeper disabusement of the Nazi tradition in Germany. Such

conscious exposure of the operations of pathological factors on

a macrosocial scale would have reinforced the process of psy-

chological rehabilitation for Germans and the world as a whole

by means of the naturalistic categories applicable to that state

of affairs. That would also have constituted a healthy precedent

for illuminating and stifling other pathocracies’ operations.

What actually happened is that psychiatrists and psycholo-

gists succumbed all too easily to the pressures of their own

emotions and political factors, their judgments giving short

shrift to the actual pathological properties of both the majority

of the defendants and of Nazism as a whole. Several famous

individuals with psychopathic features or other deviations were

hanged or sentenced to prison terms. Many facts and data

which could have served the purposes adduced in this work

were hanged and imprisoned along with these individuals. We

can thus easily understand why pathocrats were so eager to