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

achieve this precise result. We are not allowed to repeat such

errors, since the results make it more difficult to comprehend

the essence of macrosocial pathological phenomena, and they

thereby limit the possibilities of stifling their internal causation.

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In today’s real world situation, there is only one scientifi-

cally and morally justified solution which could remedy our

current plight of nations and also furnish a proper beginning for

solving the problem of societies’ genetic burden with a view to

the future. That would be an appropriate law based upon the

best possible understanding of macrosocial pathological phe-

nomena and their causes, which would limit pathocrats’ re-

sponsibility to those cases alone (usually of a criminal sadistic

nature) in which it is hard to accept the inability to discern the

meaning of such an act. Nothing else could enable the societies

of normal people to take over power and liberate the internal

talents which could ensure a nation’s return to normal life.

Such an act of forgiveness is in fact justified by nature,

since it is derived from a recognition of the psychological cau-

sation governing a person while committing evil, both within

the scope of our cognition and outside the area we have been

able to understand. This scope accessible to scientific cognition

increases along with progress in general knowledge; in a

pathocracy, however, the image of the phenomenon is so

dominated by causality that there is not much room left for free

choice.

We shall in fact never be in the position to evaluate the

scope of free choice with which an individual person has been

endowed. In forgiving, we subordinate our minds to the laws of

nature, to a basic extent. When we withhold judgment regard-

ing the scope of the remainder unknown to us, we subject our

mind to the discipline of refraining from entering a domain

barely accessible to our mind.

Forgiveness thus leads our reason into a state of intellectual

discipline and order, thereby permitting us to discern life’s

realia and their causative links more clearly. This makes it

easier for us to control our instinct’s vindictive reflexes and

protect our minds from the tendency to impose moralizing

interpretations upon psychopathological phenomena. This is of

course to the advantage of both individuals and of societies.

Simultaneously, and in accordance with the precepts of

great religions, forgiveness helps us enjoy supernatural order

and thereby gain the right to self forgiveness. It makes us better

able to perceive the voice within saying “do this” or “don’t do

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that”. This improves our capacity for proper decision making in

thorny situations when we are lacking some necessary data. In

this extremely difficult battle, we may not renounce this assis-

tance and privilege; they may be decisive in tipping the scales

toward victory.

Nations which have long had to endure pathocratic rule are

now close to accepting such a proposition as a result of their

practical knowledge of that other reality and the characteristic

evolution of their world view. However, their motivations are

dominated by practical data which are also derived from adap-

tation to life in that divergent reality. Religious motivations

also appear; comprehension and affirmation thereof mature

under such specific conditions. Their thought process and so-

cial ethics also evidence a feel for a certain teleological mean-

ing to phenomena, in the sense of a historical watershed.

Such an act of renunciation of judicial and emotional re-

venge with regard to people whose behavior was conditioned

by psychological causation, especially certain specific heredi-

tary factors, is justified by naturalism to a significant degree.

Therefore, such naturalistic and rational principles should per-

mit the definitive decisions to mature. The intellectual effort

involved in cutting the links to a natural comprehending of the

problems of evil and a confrontation thereof with moral pre-

cepts shall bear fruit in many products of human thought.

People who have lost their ability to adapt to sensible work

for hire will have to be guaranteed tolerable living conditions

and assistance in their efforts to readapt. The costs incurred by

society with regard thereto will probably be less than those

involved with any other solution. All this will require appropri-

ate organizational efforts based on this manner of understand-

ing such matters, which will be far removed from traditional

legal practice. The promises should be made to the pathocrats,

and then kept with the honesty worthy of a society of normal

people. Such an act and its execution should therefore be pre-

pared ahead of time from the moral, legal and organizational

points of view.

Just as the idea adduced herein finds a lively response

among people familiar with the above-described macrosocial

phenomenon from experience, it insults the vengeful feelings

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of numerous political émigrés who retain the old experiential

methods regarding social and moral problems. We should thus

expect more opposition from this quarter, justified by moral

indignation. Persuasive efforts should therefore be made in that

direction.

It would also be advantageous if the solution to this prob-

lem could be prepared with a view to the contemporary heri-

tage of the bio-humanistic sciences, a heritage which aims at a

similar evolution of law even though it continues to hide in the

academic world, too immature for practical realization. The

value of scientific studies in this area tends to be underrated by

conservative-minded societies. The work may be facilitated by

means of using such information with a view toward the need

for rapid preparation or updating of the law.

Our civilization’s legislations arose first from the tradition

of Roman law, then from the rights of sovereigns ruling by

“divine right”, a system which predictably defended their posi-

tion, and though they were commanding the law of grace, they

proved almost completely soulless and vengeful within today’s

conception of codified regulations. Such a state of affairs abet-

ted rather than prevented the emergence of pathological sys-

tems of force.

This explains the actual need to effect an essential break-

through and formulation of new principles derived from an

understanding of man , including enemies and evildoers.

Having emerged from great suffering and a comprehension

of its causes, such legislation will be more modern and humani-

tarian as well as more effective in the area of protecting socie-

ties from the products of ponerogenesis. The great decision to

forgive similarly derives from the most credible precepts of

eternal moral teachings, something also in accordance with

contemporary evolution in societal thought. It expresses practi-

cal concerns as well as a naturalistic comprehension of the

genesis of evil. Only such an act of mercy, unprecedented in

history, can break the age-old chain of the ponerogenic cycles

and open the door both to new solutions for perennial problems

and to a new legislative method based on an understanding of

the causes of evil.

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Such a difficult decisions therefore appear in keeping with

the signs of the times. The author believes that this precise kind

of breakthrough in the methodology of thought and action is

within the Divine Plan for this generation.

Ideologies

Just as a psychiatrist is mainly interested in disease, paying

less attention to the patient’s delusional system deforming

whatever individual reality he has, the object of global therapy

should be the world’s diseases. The deformed ideological sys-

tems which grew from historical conditions and a given civili-

zation’s weaknesses should be understood insofar as they are a

disguise, operational instrument, or Trojan horse for

pathocratic infection.

Societal consciousness should first separate these two het-

erogeneous layers of the phenomenon by means of analysis and

scientific evaluation effected upon them. Such a correct and

selective understanding should become part and parcel of all

nations’ consciousness in some appropriately accessible form.

This would correspondingly reinforce their capacity for inde-

pendent orientation within today’s complicated reality by

means of discriminating such phenomena in keeping with its

nature. This will bring about a correction in moral and world

view attitudes. Concentrating our efforts upon the pathological

phenomenon shall then produce proper understanding and suf-

ficiently complete results.

The absence of this basic discrimination in political opera-

tions is an error leading to wasted effort. We may not agree

with ideologies, since all nineteenth-century political ideolo-

gies oversimplified social reality to the point of crippling it,

even in their original form, not to mention their pathologically

deformed versions. The foreground should nevertheless be

occupied by an identification of their role within the macroso-

cial phenomenon; analysis, criticism, and even, more particu-

larly, combating them can be placed in the background. Any

discussions regarding directions needed to change social struc-

tures may be held concurrently as long as they take this basic

separation of phenomena into account. Thus corrected, social

consciousness can effect a solution to these problems more

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297

easily, and social groups which are intransigent today will be-

come more amenable to compromise.

Once a mentally ill person has been successfully cured of

his illness, we often try to restore the former patient to the

world of his more real convictions. The psychotherapist then

searches the delusionally caricaturized world for the primeval

and always more sensible contents, thereupon building a bridge

right over the period of madness to a now healthy reality. Such

an operation of course requires the necessary skills in the do-

main of psychopathology, since every disease has its own style

of deforming the patient’s original world of experiences and

convictions. The deformed ideological system created by

pathocracy should be subjected to analogous analysis, fishing

out the primeval and certainly more sensible values. This must

utilize knowledge of the specific style whereby a pathocracy

caricaturizes the ideology of a movement upon which it feeds

parasitically.

This great disease of Pathocracy accommodates various so-

cial ideologies to its own properties and the pathocrats’ inten-

tions, thereby depriving them of any possibility of natural de-

velopment and maturation in the light of man’s healthy com-

mon sense and scientific reflection. This process also trans-

forms these ideologies into destructive factors, preventing them