Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
Lorenz joined the Nazi Party in 1938 and accepted a university chair under
the Nazi regime. His publications during that time led in later years to allega-
tions that his scientific work had been contaminated by Nazi sympathies.
When accepting the Nobel Prize, he apologized for a 1940 publication that
included Nazi views of science, saying that “many highly decent scientists
hoped, like I did, for a short time for good from National Socialism, and
many quickly turned away from it with the same horror as I.” It seems highly
likely that Lorenz’s ideas about an inherited basis for behavior patterns were
congenial to the Nazi authorities, but there is no evidence to suggest that his
experimental work was either inspired or distorted by Nazi ideas. [Editor’s
note.]
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instinctively tend to judge the latter more severely, harkening
to nature’s striving to eliminate biologically or psychologically
defective individuals. Our tendency to such evil generating
error is thus conditioned at the instinctual level.
It is also at this level that differences begin to occur be-
tween normal individuals, influencing the formation of their
characters, world views, and attitudes. The primary differences
are in the bio-psychical dynamism of this substratum; differ-
ences of content are secondary. For some people the sthenic16
instinct supersedes psychology; for others, it easily relinquishes
control to reason. It also appears that some people have a
somewhat richer and more subtle instinctual endowment than
others. Significant deficiencies in this heritage nevertheless
occur in only a tiny percentage of the human population; and
we perceive this to be qualitatively pathological. We shall have
to pay closer attention to such anomalies, since they participate
in that pathogenesis of evil which we would like to understand
more fully.
A more subtle structure of effect is built upon our instinc-
tual substratum, thanks to constant cooperation from the latter
as well as familial and societal child-rearing practices. With
time, this structure becomes a more easily observable compo-
nent of our personality, within which it plays an integrative
role. This higher effect is instrumental in linking us to society,
which is why its correct development is a proper duty of peda-
gogues and constitutes one of the objects of a psychotherapist’s
efforts, if perceived to be abnormally formed. Both pedagogues
and psychotherapists sometimes feel helpless, if this process of
formation was influenced by a defective instinctual substratum.
~~~
Thanks to memory, that phenomenon ever better described
by psychology, but whose nature remains partly mysterious,
man stores life-experiences and purposely acquired knowledge.
There are extensive individual variations in regard to this ca-
pacity, its quality, and its contents. A young person also looks
at the world differently from an old man endowed with a good
memory. People with a good memory and a great deal of
16 Relating to or marked by sthenia; strong, vigorous, or active. [Editor’s
note.]
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
63
knowledge have a greater tendency to reach for the written data
of collective memory in order to supplement their own.
This collected material constitutes the subject matter of the
second psychological process, namely association; our under-
standing of its characteristics is constantly improving, although
we have not yet been able to shed sufficient light upon its nur-
turance. In spite of, or maybe thanks to, the value judgments
contributed to this question by psychologists and psychoana-
lysts, it appears that achieving a satisfactory synthetic under-
standing of the associative processes will not be possible unless
and until we humbly decide to cross the boundaries of purely
scientific comprehension.
Our reasoning faculties continue to develop throughout our
entire active lives, thus, accurate judgmental abilities do not
peak until our hair starts greying and the drive of instinct, emo-
tion, and habit begins to abate. It is a collective product derived
from an interaction between man and his environment, and
from many generations’ worth of creation and transmission.
The environment may also have a destructive influence upon
the development of our reasoning faculties. In its environment
in particular, the human mind is contaminated by conversive
thinking17, which is the most common anomaly in this process.
It is for this reason that the proper development of mind re-
quires periods of solitary reflection on occasion.
Man has also developed a psychological function not found
among animals. Only man can apprehend a certain quantity of
material or abstract imaginings within his field of attention,
inspecting them internally in order to effect further operations
of the mind upon this material. This enables us to confront
facts, affect constructive and technical operations, and predict
future results. If the facts subjected to internal projection and
inspection deal with man’s own personality, man performs an
act of introspection essential for monitoring the state of a hu-
17 Conversive thinking: using terms but giving them opposing or twisted
meanings. Examples: peacefulness = appeasement; freedom = license; initia-
tive = arbitrariness; traditional = backward; rally = mob; efficiency = small-
mindedness. Example: the words “peacefulness” and “appeasement” denote
the same thing: a striving to establish peace, but have entirely different con-
notations which indicate the speaker’s attitude toward this striving toward
peace. [Editor’s note.]
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SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS
man personality and the meaning of his own behavior. This act
of internal projection and inspection complements our con-
sciousness; it characterizes no species other than the human.
However, there is exceptionally wide divergence among indi-
viduals regarding the capacity for such mental acts. The effi-
ciency of this mental function shows a somewhat low statistical
correlation with general intelligence.
Thus, if we speak of man’s general intelligence, we must
take into account both its internal structure and the individual
differences occurring at every level of this structure. The sub-
stratum of our intelligence, after all, contains nature’s instinc-
tual heritage of wisdom and error, giving rise to the basic intel-
ligence of life experience. Superimposed upon this construct,
thanks to memory and the associative capacity, is our ability to
effect complex operations of thought, crowned by the act of
internal projection, and to constantly improve their correctness.
We are variously endowed with these capabilities, which
makes for a mosaic of individually variegated talents.
Basic intelligence grows from this instinctual substratum
under the influence of an amicable environment and a readily
accessible compendium of human experience; it is intertwined
with higher effect, enabling us to understand others and to in-
tuit their psychological state by means of some naive realism.
This conditions the development of moral reason.
This layer of our intelligence is widely distributed within
society; the overwhelming majority of people have it, which is
why we can so often admire the tact, the intuition, of social
relationships, and sensible morality of people whose intellec-
tual gifts are only average. We also see people with an out-
standing intellect who lack these very natural values. As is the
case with deficiencies in the instinctual substratum, the deficits
of this basic structure of our intelligence frequently take on
features we perceive as pathological.
The distribution of human intellectual capacity within so-
cieties is completely different, and its amplitude has the great-
est scope. Highly gifted people constitute a tiny percentage of
each population, and those with the highest quotient of intelli-
gence constitute only a few per thousand. In spite of this, how-
ever, the latter play such a significant role in collective life that
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
65
any society attempting to prevent them from fulfilling their duty
does so at its own peril. At the same time, individuals barely
able to master simple arithmetic and the art of writing are, in
the majority, normal people whose basic intelligence is often
entirely adequate.
It is a universal law of nature that the higher a given spe-
cies’ psychological organization, the greater the psychological
differences among individual units. Man is the most highly
organized species; hence, these variations are the greatest. Both
qualitatively and quantitatively, psychological differences oc-
cur in all structures of the human personality dealt with here,
albeit in terms of necessary oversimplification. Profound psy-
chological variegations may strike some as an injustice of na-
ture, but they are her right and have meaning.
Nature’s seeming injustice, alluded to above, is, in fact, a
great gift to humanity, enabling human societies to develop
their complex structures and to be highly creative at both the
individual and collective level. Thanks to psychological vari-
ety, the creative potential of any society is many times higher
than it could possibly be if our species were psychologically
more homogeneous. Thanks to these variations, the societal
structure implicit within can also develop. The fate of human
societies depends upon the proper adjustment of individuals
within this structure and upon the manner in which innate
variations of talents are utilized.
Our experience teaches us that psychological differences
among people are the cause of misunderstandings and prob-
lems. We can overcome these problems only if we accept psy-
chological differences as a law of nature and appreciate their
creative value. This would also enable us to gain an objective
comprehension of man and human societies; unfortunately, it
would also teach us that equality under the law is inequality
under the law of nature.
~~~
If we observe our human personality by consistently track-
ing psychological causation within, if we are able to exhaust
the question to a sufficient degree, we shall come ever closer to
phenomena whose biopsychological energy is very low, which
begin to manifest themselves to us with certain characteristic
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subtlety. Discovering this phenomenon, we then attempt to
track our associations particularly because we have exhausted
the available analytical platform. Finally, we must admit to
noticing something within us which is a result of supra-sensory
causation. This path may be the most laborious of all, but it
will nevertheless lead to the most material certainty regarding
the existence of what all the major religious systems talk about.
Attaining some small piece of truth via this path brings us to
respect for some of the teachings of the ancients regarding the
existence of something beyond the material universe.
If we thus wish to understand mankind, man as whole,
without abandoning the laws of thought required by the objec-
tive language, we are finally forced to accept this reality, which
is within each of us, whether normal or not, whether we have
accepted it because we have been brought up that way, or have
achieved such gnosis on our own, or whether we have rejected
it for reasons of materialism or science. After all, invariabley,
when we analyze negative psychological attitudes, we always
discern an affirmation which has been repressed from the field
of consciousness. As a consequence, the constant subconscious
effort of denying concepts about existing things engenders a
zeal to eliminate them in other people.
Trustfully opening our mind to perception of this reality is
thus indispensable for someone whose duty is to understand
other people, and is advisable for everyone else as well. Thanks
to this, our mind is rendered free of internal tensions and
stresses and can be liberated from its tendency to select and
substitute information, including those areas which are more
easily accessible to naturalistic comprehension.
~~~
The human personality is unstable by its very nature, and a
lifelong evolutionary process is the normal state of affairs.
Some political and religious systems advocate slowing down
this process or achieving excessive stability in our personali-
ties, but these are unhealthy states from the point of view of
psychology. If the evolution of a human personality or world
view becomes frozen long and deeply enough, the condition
enters the realm of psychopathology. The process of personal-
ity transformation reveals its meaning thanks to its own crea-
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
67
tive nature which is based on the conscious acceptance of this
creative changing as the natural course of events.
Our personalities also pass through temporary destructive
periods as a result of various life events, especially if we un-
dergo suffering or meet with situations or circumstances which
are at variance with our prior experiences and imaginings.
These so-called disintegrative stages are often unpleasant, al-
though not necessarily so. A good dramatic work, for instance,
enables us to experience a disintegrative state, simultaneously
