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

they are psychopaths, but their attitudes to the pathocratic sys-

tem are quite different; the first is affirmative, the second pain-

fully critical. Studies on the basis of tests detecting brain tissue

damage will indicate such pathology in the second person, but

not in the first; in the second case we are dealing with behavior

which may be strongly reminiscent of psychopathy, but the

substratum is different.

If a carrier of an essential psychopathy gene was a member

of the decidedly anti-communist government party before the

war, he will be treated as an “ideological enemy” during the

pathocracy’s formative period. However, he soon appears to

find a modus vivendi with the new authorities and enjoys a

certain amount of tolerance. The moment when he becomes

transformed into an adherent of the new “ideology” and finds

the way back to the ruling party is only a matter of time and

circumstance.

If the family of a typical zealous pathocrat produces a son

who does not inherit the appropriate gene, thanks to a happy

genetic coincidence, (or he was born from a bio-

psychologically normal partner), such a son will be raised in

the corresponding youth organization, faithful to the ideology

and the party, which he joins early. By mature manhood, how-

ever, he will begin to list toward the society of normal people.

The opposition, that world which feels and thinks normally,

becomes ever closer to him; therein he finds himself and a set

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PATHOCRACY

of values unknown – yet familiar - to him. A conflict eventu-

ally arises between himself and his family, party, and environ-

ment, under conditions which may be more or less dramatic.

This starts out with critical statements and the writing of rather

naive appeals requesting changes in the party, in the direction

of healthy common sense, of course. Such people then finally

begin to do battle on society’s side, enduring sacrifices and

suffering. Others decide to abandon their native country and

wander foreign lands, lonely among people who cannot under-

stand them or the problems under which they were raised.

With regard to the phenomenon as whole, one can predict

its primary properties and processes of change and estimate the

time at which they will occur. Regardless of its genesis, no

pathocratic activation of the population of a country affected by

this phenomenon can exceed the above discussed boundaries

set by biological factors.

The phenomenon will develop according to the patterns we

have already described, gnawing ever deeper into the country’s

social fabric. The resulting pathocratic monoparty will bifur-

cate from the very outset: one wing is consistently pathological

and earns nicknames such as “doctrinarian”, “hard-headed”,

“beton”, etc. The second is considered more liberal, and in fact

this is where the reverberation of the original ideology remains

alive for the longest. The representatives of this second wing

try as hard as their shrinking powers permit to bend this strange

reality into a direction more amenable to human reason, and

they do not lose complete touch with society’s links. The first

internal crisis of weakness occurs some ten years after such a

system has emerged; as a result, the society of normal people

gains a bit more freedom. During this time frame, skillful out-

side action can already count on internal cooperation.

Pathocracy corrodes the entire social organism, wasting its

skills and power.

The effects of the more ideational wing of the party and its

enlivening influence upon the workings of the entire country

gradually weaken. Typical pathocrats take over all the manage-

rial functions in a totally destroyed structure of a nation. Such a

state must be short-term, since no ideology can vivify it. The

time comes when the common masses of people want to live

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229

like human beings again and the system can no longer resist.

There will be no great counter-revolution; a more or less

stormy process of regeneration will instead ensue.

Pathocracy is even less of a socioeconomic system than a

social structure or political system. It is a macrosocial disease

process affecting entire nations and running the course of its

characteristic pathodynamic properties. The phenomenon

changes too quickly in time for us to be able to comprehend it

in categories which would imply a certain stability, not ruling

out the evolutionary processes to which social systems are

subject. Any way of comprehending the phenomenon by im-

puting certain enduring properties to it thus quickly causes us

to lose sight of its current contents. The dynamics of transfor-

mation in time is part of the nature of the phenomenon; we

cannot possibly achieve comprehension from outside its pa-

rameters.

As long as we keep using methods of comprehending this

pathological phenomenon, which apply certain political doc-

trines whose contents are heterogeneous with regard to its true

nature, we will not be able to identify the causes and properties

of the disease. A prepared ideology will be able to cloak the

essential qualities from the minds of scientists, politicians, and

common people. In such a state of affairs, we will never elabo-

rate any causatively active methods which could stifle the phe-

nomenon’s pathological self-reproduction or its expansionist

external influences. Ignota nulla curatio morbi !

However, once we understand a disease’s etiological factors

and their activities as well as the pathodynamics of its changes,

we find that the search for a curative method generally be-

comes much easier. Something similar applies with regard to

the macrosocial pathological phenomenon discussed above.

CHAPTER VI

NORMAL PEOPLE

UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

As adduced above, the anomaly distinguished as essential

psychopathy inspires the overall phenomenon in a well-

developed pathocracy and betrays biological analogies to the

well known phenomenon called Daltonism, color-blindness or

near-blindness as regard to red and green. For the purpose of an

intellectual exercise, let us thus imagine that Daltonists have

managed to take over power in some country and have forbid-

den the citizens from distinguishing these colors, thus eliminat-

ing the distinction between green (unripe) and ripe tomatoes.

Special vegetable patch inspectors armed with pistols and pick-

ets would patrol the areas to make sure the citizens were not

selecting only ripe tomatoes to pick, which would indicate that

they were distinguishing between red and green. Such inspec-

tors could not, of course, be totally color-blind themselves

(otherwise they could not exercise this extremely important

function), They could not suffer more than near-blindness as

regards these colors. However, they would have to belong to

the clan of people made nervous by any discussion about col-

ors.

With such authorities around, the citizens might even be

willing to eat a green tomato and affirm quite convincingly that

it was ripe. But once the severe inspectors left for some other

garden far away, there would be the shower of comments it

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231

does not behoove me to reproduce in a scientific work. The