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

8 Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand .

CHAPTER II

SOME INDISPENSABLE CONCEPTS

Three principal heterogeneous items coincided in order to

form our European civilization: Greek philosophy, Roman

imperial and legal civilization, and Christianity, consolidated

by time and effort of later generations. The culture of cogni-

tive/spiritual heritage thus born was internally fuzzy wherever

the language of concepts, being overly attached to matter and

law, turned out to be too stiff to comprehend aspects of psycho-

logical and spiritual life.

Such a state of affairs had negative repercussions upon our

ability to comprehend reality, especially that reality which

concerns humanity and society. Europeans became unwilling to

study reality (subordinating intellect to facts), but rather tended

to impose upon nature their subjective ideational schemes,

which are extrinsic and not completely coherent. Not until

modern times, thanks to great developments in the hard sci-

ences, which study facts by their very nature, as well as the

apperception of the philosophical heritage of other cultures,

could we help clarify our world of concepts and permit its own

homogenization.

It is surprising to observe what an autonomous tribe the cul-

ture of the ancient Greeks represented. Even in those days, a

civilization could hardly develop in isolation, without being

affected by older cultures in particular. However, even with

that consideration, it seems that Greece was relatively isolated,

culturally speaking. This was probably due to the era of decay

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SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS

the archaeologist refer to as the “dark age”, which occurred in

those Mediterranean areas between 1200 and 800 B.C., and

also to the Achaean tribes’ belligerence.

Among the Greeks, a rich mythological imagination, devel-

oped in direct contact with nature and the experiences of life

and war, furnished an image of this link with the nature of the

country and peoples. These conditions saw the birth of a liter-

ary tradition, and later of philosophical reflections searching

for generalities, essential contents, and criteria of values. The

Greek heritage is fascinating due to its richness and individual-

ity, but above all due to its primeval nature. Our civilization,

however, would have been better served if the Greeks had

made more ample use of the achievements of other civiliza-

tions.

Rome was too vital and practical to reflect profoundly upon

the Greek thoughts it had appropriated. In this imperial civili-

zation, administrative needs and juridical developments im-

posed practical priorities. For the Romans, the role of philoso-

phy was more didactic, useful for helping to develop the think-

ing process which would later be utilized for the discharge of

administrative functions and the exercise of political options.

The Greek reflective influence softened Roman customs, which

had a salutary effect on the development of the empire.

However, in any imperial civilization, the complex prob-

lems of human nature are troublesome factors complicating the

legal regulations of public affairs and administrative functions.

This begets a tendency to dismiss such matters and develop a

concept of human personality simplified enough to serve the

purposes of law. Roman citizens could achieve their goals and

develop their personal attitudes within the framework set by

fate and legal principles, which characterized an individual’s

situation based on premises having little to do with actual psy-

chological properties. The spiritual life of people lacking the

rights of citizenship was not an appropriate subject of deeper

studies. Thus, cognitive psychology remained barren, a condi-

tion which always produces moral recession at both the indi-

vidual and public levels.

Christianity had stronger ties with the ancient cultures of the

Asiatic continent, including their philosophical and psycho-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

47

logical reflections. This was of course a dynamic factor render-

ing it more attractive, but it was not the most important one.

Observing and understanding the apparent transformations

faith caused in human personalities created a psychological

school of thought and art on the part of the early believers. This

new relationship to another person, i.e. one’s neighbor, charac-

terized by understanding, forgiveness, and love, opened the

door to a psychological cognition which, often supported by

charismatic phenomena, bore abundant fruit during the first

three centuries after Christ.

An observer at the time might have expected Christianity to

help develop the art of human understanding to a higher level

than the older cultures and religions, and to hope that such

knowledge would protect future generations from the dangers

of speculative thought divorced from that profound psycho-

logical reality which can only be comprehended through sin-

cere respect for another human being.

History, however, has not confirmed such an expectation.

The symptoms of decay in sensitivity and psychological com-

prehension, as well as the Roman Imperial tendency to impose

extrinsic patterns upon human beings, can be observed as early

as 350 A.D. During later eras, Christianity passed through all

those difficulties which result from insufficient psychological

cognition of reality. Exhaustive studies on the historical rea-

sons for suppressing the development of human cognition in

our civilization would be an extremely useful endeavor.

First of all, Christianity adapted the Greek heritage of phi-

losophical thought and language to its purposes. This made it

possible to develop its own philosophy, but the primeval and

materialistic traits of that language imposed certain limits

which hampered communication between Christianity and

other religious cultures for many centuries.

Christ’s message expanded along the seacoast and beaten

paths of the Roman empire’s transportation lines, within the

imperial civilization, but only through bloody persecutions and

ultimate compromises with Rome’s power and law. Rome fi-

nally dealt with the threat by appropriating Christianity to its

own purposes and, as a result, the Christian Church appropri-

ated Roman organizational forms and adapted to existing social

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SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS

institutions. As a result of this unavoidable process of adapta-

tion, Christianity inherited Roman habits of legal thinking,

including its indifference to human nature and its variety.

Two heterogeneous systems were thus linked together so

permanently that later centuries forgot just how strange they

actually were to each other. However, time and compromise

did not eliminate the internal inconsistencies, and Roman influ-

ence divested Christianity of some of its profound primeval

psychological knowledge. Christian tribes developing under

different cultural conditions created forms so variegated that

maintaining unity turned out to be an historical impossibility.

A “Western civilization” thus arose hampered by a serious

deficiency in an area which both can and does play a creative

role, and which is supposed to protect societies from various

kinds of evil. This civilization developed formulations in the