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

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