Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
tic countermeasures to the origin of evil.
Over the centuries, every society has been subjected to natu-
ral eugenic processes which cause defective individuals, in-
cluding those with above-mentioned features, to drop out of
reproductive competition or reduce their birth rate. These proc-
esses are rarely seen as such, often being screened by the ac-
companying evil or some other conditions apparently relegat-
ing them to the background. Conscious comprehension of these
matters based on proper knowledge and approximate moral
criteria could render these processes less stormy in form, not so
full of bitter experience. If human consciousness and con-
science are properly formed and good advice in these matters is
heeded, the balance of these processes could be tipped mark-
edly in the positive direction. After a number of generations,
society’s burden of inherited pathological factors would be
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reduced below a certain critical level, and their participation in
ponerogenic processes would begin to fade away. 69
Ponerogenic Phenomena and Processes
Following the real space-time network of qualitatively
complex causative links as occur in ponerogenic processes
requires the proper approach and experience. The fact that psy-
chologists daily face multiple cases of dealing with such devi-
ants or their victims means that they are becoming progres-
sively more skilled in understanding and describing the many
components of psychological causation. They are observing
feedback on closed causative structures. However, this skill
sometimes proves insufficient in overcoming our human ten-
dency to concentrate upon some facts while ignoring others,
provoking an unpleasant sensation that our mind’s capacity of
understanding the reality surrounding us is inefficient. This
explains the temptation to use the natural world view in order
to simplify complexity and its implications, a phenomenon as
common as the “old sage” known to India’s philosophical psy-
chology. Such oversimplification of the causative picture as
regards the genesis of evil, often to a single easily understood
cause or one perpetrator, itself becomes, itself, a cause in this
genesis.
With great respect for the shortcomings of our human rea-
son, let us consciously take the middle road and use the ab-
straction process, first describing selected phenomena, then the
causative chains characteristic for ponerogenic processes. Such
chains can then be linked into more complex structures ever
more sufficient for grasping the full picture of the real causa-
tive network. At first the holes in the net will be so large that a
school of sprats can swim through undetected, although large
fish will be caught. However, this world’s evil represents a
kind of continuum, where minor species of human evil effec-
tively add up to the genesis of large evil. Making this net
denser and filling in the details of the picture appear to be eas-
69 !obaczewski seems to be referring to war and other physical conflicts and
suggesting that, if normal people would refuse to get involved and allow only
the deviants to fight, they would eventually kill each other off. [Editor’s
note.]
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ier, since ponerogenic laws are analogous regardless of the
scale of occurrences. Our common sense thus commits minor
errors at the level of minor matters.
In attempting closer observation of these psychological
processes and phenomena which lead one man or one nation to
hurt another, let us select phenomena as characteristic as possi-
ble. We shall see that the participation of various pathological
factors in these processes is the rule; the situation where such
participation is not noticeable tends to be the exception.
~~~
The second chapter sketched the human instinctive substra-
tum’s role in our personality development, the formation of the
natural world view, and societal links and structures. We also
indicated that our social, psychological, and moral concepts, as
well as our natural forms of reaction, are not adequate for every
situation with which life confronts us. We generally wind up
hurting someone if we act according to our natural concepts
and reactive archetypes in situations which seem to be appro-
priate to our imaginings, although they are in fact essentially
different. As a rule, such different situations allowing para-
appropriate reactions occur because some pathological factor
difficult to understand has entered the picture. Thus, the practi-
cal value of our natural world view generally ends where psy-
chopathology begins.
Familiarity with this common weakness of human nature
and the normal person’s “naïveté” is part of the specific knowl-
edge we find in many psychopathic individuals, as well some
characteropaths. Spellbinders of various schools attempt to
provoke such para-appropriate reactions from other people in
the name of their specific goals, or in the service of their reign-
ing ideologies. That hard-to-understand pathological factor is
located within the spellbinder himself.
~~~
Egotism: We call egotism the attitude, subconsciously con-
ditioned as a rule, to which we attribute excessive value to our
instinctive reflexes, early acquired imaginings and habits, and
individual world view. Egotism hampers a personality’s normal
evolution because it fosters the domination of subconscious life
and makes it difficult to accept disintegrative states which can
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be very helpful for growth and development. This egotism and
rejection of disintegration70 in turn favors the appearance of
para-appropriate reactions as described above. An egotist
measures other people by his own yardstick, treating his con-
cepts and experiential manner as objective criteria. He would
like to force other people to feel and think very much the same
way he does. Egotist nations have the subconscious goal of
teaching or forcing other nations to think in their own catego-
ries, which makes them incapable of understanding other peo-
ple and nations or becoming familiar with the values of their
cultures.
Proper rearing and self-rearing thus always aims at de-
egotizing a young person or adult, thereby opening the door for
his mind and character to develop. Practicing psychologists
nevertheless commonly believe that a certain measure of ego-
tism is useful as a factor stabilizing the personality, protecting
it from overly facile neurotic disintegration, and thereby mak-
ing it possible to overcome life’s difficulties. However rather
exceptional people exist whose personality is very well inte-
grated even though they are almost totally devoid of egotism;
this allows them to understand others very easily.
The kind of excessive egotism which hampers the develop-
ment of human values and leads to misjudgment and terrorizing
of others well deserves the title “king of human faults”. Diffi-
culties, disputes, serious problems, and neurotic reactions
sprout up in everyone around such an egotist like mushrooms
after a rainfall. Egotist nations start wasting money and effort
in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reason-
ing and overly emotional reactions. Their inability to acknowl-
edge other nations’ values and dissimilarities, derived from
other cultural traditions, leads to conflict and war.
70 See footnote p. 128. Kazimierz Dabrowski developed the theory of Positive
Disintegration which posits that individuals with strong developmental poten-
tial tend to experience frequent and intense crises (positive disintegrations)
that create opportunities for the development of an autonomous, self-crafted
personality. Dabrowski observed that gifted and creative populations tend to
exhibit increased levels of developmental potential and thus may be predis-
posed to experience the process of positive disintegration. ( A Brief Overview
Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration by William Tillier
Calgary, Alberta, Canada) [Editor’s note.]
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We can differentiate between primary and secondary ego-
tism. The former comes from a more natural process, namely
the child’s natural egotism and child-rearing errors that tend to
perpetuate this childish egotism. The secondary one occurs
when a personality that has overcome his childish egotism
regresses to this state under stress, which leads to an artificial
attitude characterized by greater aggression and social nox-
iousness. Excessive egotism is a constant property of the hys-
terical personality71, whether their hysteria be primary or sec-
ondary. That is why the increase in a nations’ egotism should
be attributed to the above described hysterical cycle before
anything else.
If we analyze the development of excessively egotistical
personalities, we often find some non-pathological causes, such
as having been raised in a constricted and overly routine envi-
ronment or by persons less intelligent than the child. However,
the main reason for the development of an overly egotistical
personality in a normal person is contamination, through psy-
chological induction, by excessively egotistical or hysterical
persons who, themselves, developed this characteristic under
the influence of various pathological causes. Most of the
above-described genetic deviations cause the development of
pathologically egotistical personalities, among other things.
Many people with various hereditary deviations and ac-
quired defects develop pathological egotism. For such people,
forcing others in their environment, whole social groups, and,
if possible, entire nations, to feel and think like themselves
becomes an internal necessity, a ruling concept. A game that a
normal person would not take seriously can become a lifelong
goal for them, the object of effort, sacrifices, and cunning psy-
chological strategy.
Pathological egotism derives from repressing from one’s
field of consciousness any objectionable, self-critical associa-
tions referring to one’s own nature or normality. Dramatic
71 A personality disorder marked by immaturity, dependence, self-
centeredness, and vanity, with a craving for attention, activity, or excitement,
and behavior that is markedly unstable or manipulative. ( The American Heri-
tage Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 2nd Edition 2004; Houghton Mifflin
Company) [Editor’s note.]
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question such as “who is abnormal here, me or this world of
people who feel and think differently?” are answered in the
world’s disfavor. Such egotism is always linked to a dissimula-
tive attitude, with a Cleckley mask over some pathological
quality being hidden from consciousness, both one’s own and
that of other people. The greatest intensity of such egotism can
be found in the prefrontal characteropathy described above.
The importance of the contribution of this kind of egotism
to the genesis of evil thus hardly needs elaboration. It is a pri-
marily societal influence, egotizing or traumatizing others,
which in turn causes further difficulties. Pathological egotism
is a constant component of variegated states wherein someone
who appears to be normal (although he is in fact not quite so) is
driven by motivations or battles for goals a normal person con-
siders unrealistic or unlikely. The average person might ask:
“What could he expect to gain by that?”. Environmental opin-
ion, however, often interprets such a situation in accordance
with “common sense” and is thus prone to accept a “more
likely” version of the situation and events. Such interpretation
often results in human tragedy. We should thus always remem-
ber that the principle of law cui prodest72 becomes illusory
whenever some pathological factor enters the picture.
~~~
Moralizing interpretation: The tendency to impart a moral-
izing interpretation upon essentially pathological phenomena is
an aspect of human nature whose discernable substratum is
encoded in our specific instinct; namely humans normally fail
to differentiate between moral and biological evil. Moralizing
always surfaces, albeit to varying degrees, within the natural
psychological and moral world view, which is why we should
consider this tendency a permanent error of public opinion. We
may curb it with increased self-knowledge, but overcoming it
requires specific knowledge in the psychopathological area.
Young people and less cultured circles always tend toward
such interpretations (although it characterizes traditional es-
thetes too), which intensifies whenever our natural reflexes
take over control from reason, i.e. in hysterical states, and in
direct proportion to the intensity of egotism.
72 What or who does it advance? Who does it serve? What’s the point?
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We close the door to a causative comprehension of phe-
nomena and open it to vengeful emotions and psychological
error whenever we impose a moralistic interpretation upon
faults and errors in human behavior, which are in fact largely
