Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
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-
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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
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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
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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
individual, social, and historical world views in this search for
meaning of life and history is a product of unhappy times and
will help along the way back to happy ones.
Another object of consideration became: moral problems
applicable in individual life as well as in history and politics.
The mind starts reaching ever deeper in this area, achieving
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
249
ever more subtle understanding of the matter, because it is
precisely in this world that the old oversimplifications proved
to be unsatisfactory. An understanding of other people, includ-
ing those who commit errors and crimes, appears in a problem-
solving way which was formerly underrated. Forgiveness is
only one step beyond understanding. As Mme. de Stael wrote:
“Tout comprendere, c’est tout pardoner”109.
A society’s religion is affected by analogous transforma-
tions. The proportion of the people maintaining religious be-
liefs is not significantly affected, particularly in countries
wherein the pathocracy was imposed; it does, however, un-
dergo a modification of the contents and quality of such beliefs
in such a way that religion in time becomes more attractive to
people raised indifferent to faith. The old religion, dominated
by tradition, ritual, and insincerity, now becomes transformed
into faith, conditioned by necessary studies and convictions
which determine behavioral criteria.
Anyone reading the Gospel during such times finds some-
thing that is hard to understand for other Christians. So real is
the similarity between the social relations, there under the gov-
ernment of ancient pagan Rome, and these under the atheistic
pathocracy, that the reader imagines the situations described
more easily and senses the reality of occurrences more vividly.
Such reading also furnishes him with encouragement and ad-
vice which he can use in his situations. Thus, during brutal
times of confrontation with evil, human capabilities of dis-
criminating phenomena become subtler; apperceptive and
moral sensibility develops. Critical faculties sometimes border
with cynicism.
~~~
“I once got into a mountain-bound bus full of young high-
school and university students. During the trip, song filled the
vehicle and the neighboring hills. Old prewar songs both witty
