extracted from "Political
Ponerology - A Science on The Nature of Evil"
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 forbidden the
citizens from distinguishing these colors, thus eliminating the distinction
between green (unripe) and ripe tomatoes.
Special vegetable patch inspectors armed with
pistols and pickets 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 inspectors 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 colors.
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 does not behoove me to reproduce in a scientific work.
The citizens would than pick nicely vine-ripened tomatoes, make a salad with
cream, and add a few drops of rum for flavor.
May I suggest that all normal people whom fate has forced to live under
pathocratic rule make the serving of a salad according to the above recipe
into a symbolic custom. Any guest recognizing the symbol by its color and
aroma will refrain from making any comments. Such a custom might hasten the
reinstallation of a normal man’s system.
The pathological authorities are convinced that the appropriate pedagogical,
indoctrinational, propaganda, and terrorist means can teach a person with a
normal instinctive substratum, range of feelings, and basic intelligence to
think and feel according to their own different fashion. This conviction is
only slightly less unrealistic, psychologically speaking, than the belief
that people able to see colors normally can be broken of this habit.
Actually, normal people cannot get rid of the characteristics with which the
Homo sapiens species was endowed by its phylogenetic past. Such people will
thus never stop feeling and perceiving psychological and socio-moral
phenomena in much the same way their ancestors had been doing for hundreds
of generations.
Any attempt to make a society subjugated to the
above phenomenon “learn” this different experiential manner imposed by
pathological egotism is, in principle, fated for failure regardless of how
many generations it might last. It does, however, call forth a series of
improper psychological results which may give the pathocrats the appearance
of success. However, it also provokes society to elaborate pinpointed,
well-thought-out self-defense measures based on its cognitive and creative
efforts.
Pathocratic leadership believes that it can achieve a state wherein those
“other” people’s minds become dependent by means of the effects of their
personality, perfidious pedagogical means, the means of mass-disinformation,
and psychological terror; such faith has a basic meaning for them. In their
conceptual world, pathocrats consider it virtually self-evident that the
“others” should accept their obvious, realistic, and simple way of
apprehending reality. For some mysterious reason, though, the “others”
wriggle out, slither away, and tell each other jokes about pathocrats.
Someone must be responsible for this:
pre-revolutionary oldsters, or some radio stations abroad. It thus becomes
necessary to improve the methodology of action, find better “soul engineers”
with a certain literary talent, and isolate society from improper literature
and any foreign influence. Those experiences and intuitions whispering that
this is a Sisyphean labor must be repressed from the field of consciousness
of the pathocrat.
The conflict is thus dramatic for both sides. The first feels insulted in
its humanity, rendered obtuse, and forced to think in a manner contrary to
healthy common sense. The other stifles the premonition that if this goal
cannot be reached, sooner or later things will revert to normal man’s rule,
including their vengeful lack of understanding of the pathocrats’
personalities. So if it does not work, it is best not to think about the
future, just prolong the status quo by means of the above-mentioned efforts.
Toward the end of this book, it will behoove us to consider the
possibilities for untying this Gordian knot.
However, such a pedagogical system, rife with pathological egotisation and
limitations, produces serious negative results, especially in those
generations unfamiliar with any other conditions of life. Personality
development is impoverished, particularly regarding the more subtle values
widely accepted in societies.
We observe the characteristic lack of respect
for one’s own organism and the voice of nature and instinct, accompanied by
brutalization of feelings and customs, to be explained away by the excuse of
injustice. The tendency to be morally judgmental in interpreting the
behavior of those who caused one’s suffering sometimes leads to a
demonological world view. At the same time, adaptation and resourcefulness
within these different conditions become the object of cognition.
A person who has been the object of the egotistic behavior of pathological
individuals for a long time becomes saturated with their characteristic
psychological material to such an extent that we can frequently discern the
kind of psychological anomalies which affected him. The personalities of
former concentration-camp inmates were saturated with generally psychopathic
material ingested from camp commanders and tormentors, creating a phenomenon
so widespread that it later became a primary motive to seek psychotherapy.
Becoming aware of this makes it easier for them
to throw off this burden and re-establish contact with the normal human
world. In particular, being shown appropriate statistical data concerning
the appearance of psychopathy in a given population facilitates their search
for understanding of their nightmare years and a rebuilding of trust in
their fellow man.
This kind of psychotherapy would be extremely useful for those people who
need it most, but it has unfortunately proved too risky for a
psychotherapist. Patients easily make connective transfers, unfortunately
all too often correct, between the information learned during such therapy
(particularly in the area of psychopathy) and the reality surrounding them
under the rule of so-called “popular democracy”. Former camp inmates are
unhappily unable to hold their tongues in check, which causes intervention
on the part of political authorities.
When American soldiers returned from North Vietnamese prison camps, many of
them proved to have been subjected to indoctrination and other methods of
influencing by pathological material. A certain degree of
transpersonification appeared in many of these. In the U.S.A. this was
called “programming” and outstanding psychotherapists proceeded to effect
therapy for the purpose of deprogramming them.
It turned out that they met with opposition and
critical commentary concerning their skills, among other things. When I
heard about this, I breathed a deep sigh and thought: Dear God, what
interesting work that would make for a psychotherapist who understands such
matters well.
The pathocratic world, the world of pathological egotism and terror, is so
difficult to understand for people raised outside the scope of this
phenomenon that they often manifest childlike naiveté, even if they have
studied psychopathology and are psychologists by profession. There are no
real data in their behavior, advice, rebukes, and psychotherapy. That
explains why their efforts are boring and hurtful and frequently come to
naught. Their egotism transforms their good will into bad results.
If someone has personally experienced such a nightmarish reality, he
considers people who have not progressed in understanding it within the same
time frame to be simply presumptuous, sometimes even malicious. In the
course of his experience and contact with this macrosocial phenomenon, he
has collected a certain amount of practical knowledge about the phenomenon
and its psychology and learned to protect his own personality.
This experience, unceremoniously rejected by
“people who don’t understand anything”, becomes a psychological burden for
him, forcing him to live within a narrow circle of persons whose experiences
have been similar. Such a person should rather be treated as the bearer of
valuable scientific data; understanding would constitute at least partial
psychotherapy for him, and would simultaneously open the door to a
comprehension of reality.
I would here like to remind psychologists that these kinds of experiences
and their destructive effects upon the human personality are not unknown to
scientific practice and experience. We often meet with patients requiring
appropriate assistance: individuals raised under the influence of
pathological, especially psychopathic, personalities who were forced with a
pathological egotism to accept an abnormal way of thinking.
Even an approximate determination of the type of
pathological factors which operated on him allow us to pinpoint
psycho-therapeutic measures. In practice we most frequently meet cases
wherein such a pathological situation operated on a patient’s personality in
early childhood, as a result of which we must utilize long term measures and
work very carefully, using various techniques, in order to help him develop
his true personality.
Children under parental pathocratic rule are “protected” until school age.
Then they meet with decent, normal people who attempt to limit the
destructive influences as much as possible. The most intense effects occur
during adolescence and the ensuing time frame of intellectual maturation
which can occur with the input of decent people.
This rescues the society of normal people from
deeper deformations in personality development and widespread neurosis. This
period remains within persistent memory and is thus amenable to insight,
reflection, and disillusion. Such people’s psychotherapy would consist
almost exclusively of utilizing the correct knowledge of the essence of the
phenomenon.
Regardless of the social scale within which human individuals were forcibly
reared by pathological persons, whether individual, group, societal, or
macrosocial, the principles of psychotherapeutic action will thus be
similar, and should be based upon data known to us, and an understanding of
the psychological situation. Making a patient aware of the kind of
pathological factors which affected him, and jointly understanding the
results of such effects, is basic to such therapy. We do not utilize this
method if, in an individual case, we have indications that the patient has
inherited this factor.
However, such limitations should not be
consistent with regard to macro-social phenomena affecting the welfare of
entire nations.
From the Perspective of Time
If a person with a normal instinctive substratum and basic intelligence has
already heard and read about such a system of ruthless autocratic rule
“based on a fanatical ideology”, he feels he has already formed an opinion
on the subject.
However, direct confrontation with the phenomenon will
inevitably produce in him the feeling of intellectual helplessness. All his
prior imaginings prove to be virtually useless; they explain next to
nothing. This provokes a nagging sensation that he and the society in which
he was educated were quite naive.
Anyone capable of accepting this bitter void with an awareness of his own
nescience, which would do a philosopher proud, can also find an orientation
path within this deviant world. However, egotistically protecting his world
view from disintegrative disillusionment and attempting to combine them with
observations from this new divergent reality, only reaps mental chaos.
The latter has produced unnecessary conflicts
and disillusionment with the new rulership in some people; others have
subordinated themselves to the pathological reality. One of the differences
observed between a normally resistant person and somebody who has undergone
a transpersonifica-tion is that the former is better able to survive this
disintegrating cognitive void, whereas the latter fills the void with the
pathologic propaganda material without sufficient controls.
When the human mind comes into contact with this new reality so different
from any experiences encountered by a person raised in a society dominated
by normal people, it releases psychophysiological shock symptoms in the
human brain with a higher tonus of cortex inhibition and a stifling of
feelings, which then sometimes gush forth uncontrollably. The mind then
works more slowly and less keenly because the associative mechanisms have
become inefficient.
Especially when a person has direct contact with
psychopathic representatives of the new rule, who use their specific
experience so as to traumatize the minds of the “others” with their own
personalities, his mind succumbs to a state of short-term catatonia. Their
humiliating and arrogant techniques, brutal paramoralizations, and so forth
deaden his thought processes and his self-defense capabilities, and their
divergent experiential method anchors in his mind. In the presence of this
kind of phenomenon, any moralizing evaluation of a person’s behavior in such
a situation thus becomes inaccurate at best.
Only once these unbelievably unpleasant psychological states have passed,
thanks to rest in benevolent company, is it possible to reflect, always a
difficult and painful process, or to become aware that one’s mind and common
sense have been fooled by something which cannot fit into the normal human
imagination.
Man and society stand at the beginning of a long road of unknown experiences
which, after much trial and error, finally leads to a certain hermetic
knowledge of what the qualities of the phenomenon are and how best to build
up psychological resistance thereto.
Especially during the dissimulative
phase, which makes it possible to adapt to life in this different world and
thus arrange more tolerable living conditions. We shall then be able to
observe psychological phenomena, knowledge, immunization, and adaptation
such as could not have been predicted before and which cannot be understood
in the world remaining under the rule of normal man’s systems. A normal
person, however, can never completely adapt to a pathological system; it is
easy to be pessimistic about the final results of this.
Such experiences are exchanged during evening discussions among a circle of
friends, thereby creating within people’s minds a kind of cognitive
conglomeration which is initially incoherent and contains factual
deficiencies. The participation of moral categories in such a comprehension
of the macrosocial phenomenon, and the manner in which particular
individuals behave, is proportionally much greater within such a new world
view than the above adduced scientific knowledge would dictate. The ideology
officially preached by the pathocracy continues to retain its
ever-diminishing suggestive powers until such time as human reason manages
to localize it as something subordinate, which is not descriptive of the
essence of phenomenon.
Moral and religious values, as well as a nation’s centuries-old cultural
heritage, furnish most societies with support for the long road of both
individual and collective searching through the jungle of strange phenomena.
This apperceptive capacity possessed by people within the framework of the
natural world view contains a deficiency which hides the nucleus of the
phenomenon for many years. Under such conditions, both instinct and
feelings, and the resulting basic intelligence, play instrumental roles,
stimulating man to make selections which are to a great extent subconscious.
Under the conditions created by imposed pathocratic rule in particular,
where the described psychological deficiencies are decisive in joining the
activities of such a system, our natural human instinctive substratum is an
instrumental factor in joining the opposition.
Similarly, the environmental, economic, and ideological motivations which
influenced the formation of an individual personality, including those
political attitudes which were assumed earlier, play the role of modifying
factors, though they are not as enduring in time. The activity of these
latter factors, albeit relatively clear with relation to individuals,
disappear within the statistical approach and diminish through the years of
pathocratic rule. The decisions and the choices made for the side of the
society of normal people are once again finally decided by factors usually
inherited by biological means, and thus not the product of the person’s
option, and predominantly in subconscious processes.
Man’s general intelligence, especially his intellectual level, plays a
relatively limited role in this process of selecting a path of action, as
expressed by statistically significant but low correlation (-0.16). The
higher a person’s general level of talent, the harder it usually is for him
to reconcile himself with this different reality and to find a modus vivendi
within it.
At the same time, there are gifted and talented people who join the
pathocracy, and harsh words of contempt for the system can be heard on the
part of simple, uneducated people. Only those people with the highest degree
of intelligence, which, as mentioned, does not accompany psychopathies, are
unable to find meaning to life within such a system.106
They are sometimes able to take advantage of their superior mentality in
order to find exceptional ways in which to be useful to others. Wasting the
best talents spells eventual catastrophe for any social system.
106 Historically,
pathocracies target the intelligentsia for elimination first. As Lobaczewski
points out, this wasting of the best minds and talents eventually leads to
catastrophe. [Editor’s note.]
Since those factors subject to the laws of genetics prove decisive, society
becomes divided, by means of criteria not known before, into the adherents
of the new rule, the new middle class mentioned above, and the majority
opposition.
Since the properties which cause this new division appear in
more or less equal proportions within any old social group or level, this
new division cuts right through the traditional layers of society. If we
treat the former stratification, whose formation was decisively influenced
by the talent factor, as horizontal, the new one should be referred to as
vertical. The most instrumental factor in the latter is good basic
intelligence which, as we already know, is widely distributed throughout all
social groups.
Even those people who were the object of social injustice in the former
system and then bestowed with another system, which allegedly protected
them, slowly start criticizing the latter. Even though they were forced to
join the pathocratic party, most of the former prewar Communists in the
author’s homeland later gradually became critical, using the most emphatic
of language.
They were first to deny that the ruling system
was Communist in nature, persuasively pointing out the actual differences
between the ideology and reality. They tried to inform their comrades in
still independent countries of this by letters. Worried about this
“treason”, these comrades transmitted such letters to their local party in
those other countries, from where these were returned to the security police
of the country of origin. The authors of the letters paid with their lives
or with years of prison; no other social group was finally subjected to such
stringent police surveillance as were they.
Regardless of whatever our evaluation of Communist ideology or the parties
might be, we are presumably justified in believing that the old Communists
were quite competent to distinguish what was and what was not in accordance
with their ideology and beliefs.
Their highly emphatic statements on the subject,
quite popular among Poland’s old Communists circles, are impressive or even
persuasive.107 Because of the
operational language used therein, however, we must designate them as overly
moralizing interpretations not in keeping with the character of this work.
At the same time, we must admit that the majority of Poland’s prewar
Communists were not psychopaths.
107 “A hoard of
sons of bitches who climbed up to the feeding trough upon the backs of the
working class.”
From the point of view of economics and reality, any system wherein most of
the property and workplaces are state owned de jure and de facto is state
capitalism and not Communism. Such a system exhibits the traits of a
primitive nineteenth-century capitalist exploiter who had an insufficient
grasp of his role in society and of how his interests were linked to his
workers’ welfare. Workers are very much aware of these traits, especially if
they have collected a certain amount of knowledge in connection with their
political activities.
A reasonable socialist aiming to replace capitalism with some system in
conformity with his idea, which would be based on worker participation in
the administration of the work place and the profits, will reject such a
system as the “worst variety of capitalism”. After all, concentrating
capital and rulership in one place always leads to degeneration. Capital
must be subject to the authority of fairness. Eliminating such a degenerate
form of capitalism should thus be a priority task for any socialist.
Nonetheless, such reasoning by means of social and economic categories
obviously misses the crux of the matter.
The experience of history teaches us that any attempt to realize the
Communist idea by way of revolutionary means, whether violent or
underhanded, leads to a skewing of this process in the direction of
anachronic and pathological forms whose essence and contents remain
inaccessible to minds utilizing the concepts of the natural world view.
Evolution constructs and transforms faster than revolution, and without such
tragic complications.
One of the first discoveries made by a society of normal people is that it
is superior to the new rulers in intelligence and practical skills, no
matter what geniuses they seek to appear to be. The knots stultifying reason
are gradually loosened, and fascination with the new rulership’s
non-existent secret knowledge and plan of action begins to diminish,
followed by familiarization with the accurate knowledge about this new
deviant reality.
The world of normal people is always superior to the deviant one whenever
constructive activity is needed, whether it be the reconstruction of a
devastated country, the area of technology, the organization of economic
life, or scientific and medical work.
“They want to build things, but they can’t
get much done without us.”
Qualified experts are frequently able to make
certain demands; unfortunately, they are just as often only considered
qualified until the job has been done, at which point they can be
eliminated. Once the factory has started up, the experts can leave;
management will be taken over by someone else, incapable of further
progress, under whose leadership much of the effort expended will be wasted.
As we have already pointed out, every psychological anomaly is in fact a
kind of deficiency. Psychopathies are based primarily upon deficiencies in
the instinctive substratum; however, their influence exerted upon the mental
development of others also leads to deficiencies in general intelligence, as
discussed above. This deficiency of intelligence in a normal person, induced
by psychopathy, is not compensated by the special psychological knowledge we
observe among some psychopaths.
Such knowledge loses its mesmerizing power when
normal people learn to understand these phenomena as well. The
psychopathologist was thus not surprised by the fact that the world of
normal people is dominant regarding skill and talent. For that society,
however, this represented a discovery which engendered hope and
psychological relaxation.
Since our intelligence is superior to theirs, we can recognize them and
understand how they think and act. This is what a person learns in such a
system on his own initiative, forced by everyday needs. He learns it while
working in his office, school, or factory, when he needs to deal with the
authorities, and when he is arrested, something only a few people manage to
avoid.
The author and many others learned a good deal
about the psychology of this macrosocial phenomenon during compulsory
indoctrinational schooling. The organizers and lecturers cannot have
intended such a result. Practical knowledge of this new reality thus grows,
thanks to which the society gains a resourcefulness of action which enables
it to take ever better advantage of the weak spots of the rulership system.
This permits gradual reorganization of societal links, which bears fruit
with time.
This new science is incalculably rich in casuist108
detail; I would nevertheless characterize it as overly literary. It contains
knowledge and a description of the phenomenon in the categories of the
natural world view, correspondingly modified in accordance with the need to
understand matters which are in fact outside the scope of its applicability.
This also opens the door to the creation of
certain doctrines which merit separate study because they contain a partial
truth, such as a demonological interpretation of the phenomenon.
108
Casuistry (argument by cases) is an attempt to determine the correct
response to a moral problem, often a moral dilemma, by drawing conclusions
based on parallels with agreed responses to pure cases, also called
paradigms. Casuistry is a method of ethical case analysis. [Editor’s note.]
The development of familiarity with the phenomenon is accompanied by
development of communicative language, by means of which society can stay
informed and issue warnings of danger.
A third language thus appears alongside the
ideological doubletalk described above; in part, it borrows names used by
the official ideology in their transformed modified meanings. In part, this
language operates with words borrowed from still more lively circulating
jokes. In spite of its strangeness, this language becomes a useful means of
communication and plays a part in regenerating societal links.
Lo and behold, this language can be translated
and communicated in relations with residents of other countries with
analogous governmental systems, even if the other country’s “official
ideology” is different. However, in spite of efforts on the part of literati
and journalists, this language remains only communicative inside; it becomes
hermetic outside the scope of the phenomenon, uncomprehended by people
lacking the appropriate personal experience.
The specific role of certain individuals during such times is worth pointing
out; they participate in the discovery of the nature of this new reality and
help others find the right path. They have a normal nature but experienced
an unfortunate childhood, being subjected very early to the domination of
individuals with various psychological deviations, including pathological
egotism and methods of terrorizing others.
The new rulership system strikes such people as
a large scale societal multiplication of what they knew from personal
experience. From the very outset, such individuals saw this reality much
more prosaically, immediately treating the ideology in accordance with the
paralogistic stories well known to them, whose purpose was to cloak the
bitter reality of their youthful experiences. They soon reach the truth,
since the genesis and nature of evil are analogous irrespective of the
social scale in which it appears.
Such people are rarely understood in happy societies, but they were
invaluable then; their explanations and advice proved accurate and were
transmitted to others joining the network of this apperceptive heritage.
However, their own suffering was doubled, since this was too much of a
similar kind of abuse for one life to handle. They therefore nursed dreams
of escaping into the freedom still existing in the outside world.
Finally, society sees the appearance of individuals who have collected
exceptional intuitive perception and practical knowledge in the area of how
pathocrats think and how such a system of rule operates. Some of them become
so proficient in their deviant language and its idiomatics that they are
able to use it, much like a foreign language they have learned well. Since
they are able to decipher the rulership’s intentions, such people then offer
advice to people who are having trouble with the authorities. These
advocates of the society of normal people play a irreplaceable role in the
life of society.
The pathocrats, however, can never learn to think in normal human
categories. At the same time, the inability to predict the reaction of
normal people to such an authority also leads to the conclusion that the
system is rigidly causative and lacking in the natural freedom of choice.
This new science, expressed in language derived from a deviant reality, is
something foreign to people who wish to understand this macrosocial
phenomenon but think in the categories of the countries of normal man.
Attempts to understand this language produce a certain feeling of
helplessness which gives rise to the tendency of creating one’s own
doctrines, built from the concepts of one’s own world and a certain amount
of appropriately co-opted pathocratic propaganda material. Such a doctrine,
for example, would be the American anti-Communist propaganda. Such twisted
and distorted concepts makes it even more difficult to understand that other
reality. May the objective description adduced herein enable them to
overcome the impasse thus engendered.
In countries subjected to pathocratic rule, this knowledge and language,
especially human experience, create a mediating concatenation in such a way
that most people could assimilate this objective description of the
phenomenon without major difficulties with the help of active apperception.
Difficulties will only be encountered by the oldest generation and a certain
proportion of young people raised in the system from childhood, and these
are psychologically understandable.
I was once referred a patient who had been an inmate in a Nazi concentration
camp. She came back from that hell in such exceptionally good condition that
she was able to marry and bear three children. However, her child rearing
methods were so extremely iron-fisted as to be reminiscent of the
concentration camp life so stubbornly persevering in former prisoners. The
children’s reaction was neurotic protest and aggressiveness against other
children.
During the mother’s psychotherapy, we recalled the figures of male and
female SS officers to her mind, pointing out their psychopathic
characteristics (such people were primary recruits). In order to help her
eliminate their pathological material from her person, I furnished her with
the approximate statistical data regarding the appearance of such
individuals within the population as a whole. This helped her reach a more
objective view of that reality and re-establish trust in the society of
normal people.
During the next visit, the patient showed to me a little card on which she
had written the names of local pathocratic notables and added her own
diagnoses, which were largely correct. So I made a hushing gesture with my
finger and admonished her with emphasis that we were dealing only with her
problems. 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 phenomena take form; they are truly
significant in the transformation 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 buffoonery and does not deprive the victim
of his ability to think and react purposefully. His answers are usually
well-thought-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, familiarization 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 antidepressants 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, arrogance, and
psychopathic methods of forcible confession deprived 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 anything they wanted to me.
When I was arrested for last time in 1968, I was interrogated by five
fierce-looking security functionaries. At one particular moment, after
thinking through their predicted reactions, 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 hospital.”
They were taken aback for a while, whereupon the
same man exclaimed,
“Because it’s such damned horrible work!”
“I am of the opinion that it’s the other way
round”, I calmly responded.
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 police officials wind up in psychiatric hospitals, I also knew
that their “occupational disease” is the congestive dementia formerly
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 viewpoint, 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 unconsciousness 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 elements of authority and
achieving goals which are socially useful. Patiently instructing and
convincing the rulership’s mediocre representatives takes considerable time
and requires pedagogical 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 inaccurate. In reality, society does co-govern to a certain
extent, 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 majority 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 assistance 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 dissolve 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 domination 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 processes 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 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 – economic and
social differences - represent something which is operational even though it
crosses the boundaries of the imagination.
One would think that a nation’s cultural and intellectual life would quickly
degenerate when subjected to the country’s isolation 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 finding some
tolerable way of life, not totally bereft of moral sense within such a
deviant reality, causes the development of realistic perception, especially
in the area of socio-psychological phenomena. Protecting one’s mind from the
effects of paralogistic propaganda, as well as one’s personality from the
influence of paramoralisms and the other techniques already described,
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 interpretations of the facts which would be more
profound from the point of view of psychological and moral realism.
We soberly discern 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 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, including 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
109 “To
understand all is to forgive all.”
A society’s religion is affected by analogous
transformations. The proportion of the people maintaining religious beliefs
is not significantly affected, particularly in countries wherein the
pathocracy was imposed; it does, however, undergo 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 something that is hard to
understand for other Christians. So real is the similarity between the
social relations, there under the government 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 advice which
he can use in his situations.
Thus, during brutal times of confrontation with
evil, human capabilities of discriminating 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 and frivolous Le”mian’s110
poems: ‘Our ancestor Noah was a brave man...’, and others. The text,
however, had been corrected with humor and literary talent, eliminating
whatever irritated these young people raised during difficult times. Was
it an unintended result?”
110 Boles”aw Le#mian (born Boles”aw Lesman;
18781-1937) was a Polish poet, artist and member of the Polish Academy of
Literature. He was one of the most influential poets of the early 20th
century in Poland. [Editor’s note.]
As a result of all these transformations, including the de-egotization of
thought and attitude connected thereto, society becomes capable of a mental
creativity which goes beyond normal conditions. This effort could be useful
in any cultural, technical, or economic area if the authorities did not
oppose and stifle it because they feel threatened by such activity.
Human genius is not born of lazy prosperity and among genteel camaraderie,
but rather stands in perpetual confrontation with a recalcitrant reality
which is different from ordinary human imaginations. Under such conditions,
wide-scale theoretical approaches are found to have practical existential
value. The old system of thought which remains in use in free countries
starts to look backward, naive, and bereft of feeling of values.
If nations which arrived at such a state were to regain their freedom, many
valuable accomplishments of human thought would mature within a short time.
No excessive fears would be in order as to whether such a nation would then
be capable of elaborating a workable socio-economic system.
Quite the contrary: the absence of egoistical
pressure groups, the conciliatory nature of a society which has years of
bitter experience behind it, and the penetrating, morally profound thought
processes would permit the way out to be found relatively rapidly. Danger
and difficulty would rather come from outside pressures on the part of
nations which do not adequately understand the conditions in such a country.
But unfortunately, the pathocracy cannot be dosed as a bitter medicine!
The older generation, raised in a normal man’s country, generally reacts by
developing the above-mentioned skills, i.e. by enrichment; the younger
generation, however, was raised under pathocratic rule and thus succumbs to
a greater world view impoverishment, reflex rigidification of personality,
and domination by habitual structures, those typical results of the
operation of pathological personalities.
Paralogistic propaganda and its corresponding
indoctrination are consciously rejected; however, this process demands time
and effort which could better be used for active apperception of valuable
contents. The latter are accessible only with difficulty, due both to
limitations and to apperceptive problems. There arises the feeling of a
certain void which is hard to fill. In spite of human good will, certain
paralogisms and paramoralisms, as well as cognitive materialism, anchor and
persevere in brains. The human mind is not able to disprove every single
falsity which has been suggested to it.
The emotional life of people raised within such a deviant psychological
reality is also fraught with difficulties. In spite of critical reason, a
certain saturation of a youngster’s personality with pathological
psychological material is unavoidable, as is a degree of primitivization and
rigidity of feelings. The constant efforts to control one’s emotions, so as
to avoid having some stormy reaction provoke repression on the part of a
vindictive and retentive regime, cause feelings to be repressed into a role
of something rather problematic, something which should not be given a
natural outlet.
Suppressed emotional reactions surface later,
when the person can afford to express them; they are delayed and
inappropriate to the situation at hand. Worries about the future awaken
egotism among people thus adapted to life in a pathological social
structure.
Neurosis is a natural response of human nature if a normal person is
subordinated to domination of pathological people. The same applies to the
subordination of a society and its members to a pathological system of
authority. In a pathocratic state, every person with a normal nature thus
exhibits a certain chronic neurotic state, controlled by the efforts of
reason. The intensity of these states varies among individuals, depending
upon different circumstances, usually more serious in direct proportion to
the individual’s intelligence. Psychotherapy upon such people is only
possible and effective if we can rely on adequate familiarity with the
causes of these states. Western educated psychologists thus prove completely
impractical with regard to such patients.
A psychologist working in such a country must develop special operational
techniques unknown and even unfathomable to specialists practicing in the
free world. They have the purpose of partially liberating the voice of
instinct and feeling from this abnormal over-control, and of rediscovering
the voice of nature’s wisdom within, but this must be done in such a way as
to avoid exposing the patient to the unfortunate results of excessive
freedom of reaction in the conditions under which he must live.
A psychotherapist must operate carefully, with
the help of allusions, because only rarely may he openly inform the patient
of the system’s pathological nature. However, even under such conditions, we
can achieve a greater experiential freedom, more appropriate thought
processes, and better decision making capabilities. As a result of all this,
the patient subsequently behaves with greater caution and feels much safer.
If Western radio stations, unhampered by the fears of psychologists on the
other side, abandoned the simple counter propaganda in favor of a similar
psychotherapeutic technique, they would contribute mightily to the future of
countries still under pathocratic rule today.
Toward the end of this book, I shall attempt to
persuade the reader that psychological matters are as important to the
future as grand politics or powerful weapons.
Understanding
Comprehending those normal people, whether outstanding or average, fated to
live under pathocratic rule, their human nature and their responses to this
basically deviant reality, their dreams, their methods of comprehending such
a reality (including all the difficulties along the road), and their need to
adapt and become resistant (including the side-effects) is a sine qua non
precondition for learning the behavior that would effectively assist them in
their efforts to achieve a normal man’s system.
It would be psychologically impossible for a
politician in a free country to incorporate the practical knowledge such
people acquired over many years of day to day experience. This knowledge
cannot be transmitted; no journalistic or literary efforts will ever achieve
anything in this area. However, an analogous science formulated in objective
naturalistic language can be communicated in both directions.
It can be
assimilated by people who have no such specific experiences; it can also be
back transmitted over there where a great need for this science exists as do
the minds which are already prepared to receive it. Such a science would
actually act upon their battered personalities in much the same way as the
best of medicines.
Mere awareness that one was subject to the influence of a
mental deviant is in and of itself a crucial part of treatment.
Whoever wants to maintain the freedom of his country and of the world
already threatened by this macrosocial pathological phenomenon, whoever
would like to heal this sick planet of ours, should not only understand the
nature of this great disease, but should also be conscious of potentially
regenerative healing powers.
Every country within the scope of this macrosocial phenomenon contains a
large majority of normal people living and suffering there who will never
accept pathocracy; their protest against it derives from the depths of their
own souls and their human nature as conditioned by properties transmitted by
means of biological heredity. The forms of this protest and the ideologies
by which they would like to realize their natural wishes may nevertheless
change.
The ideology or societal structure via which they would like to regain their
human right to live in a normal man’s system are, however, of secondary
importance to these people. There are of course differences of opinion in
this area, but they are not likely to lead to overly violent conflict among
persons who see before them a goal worthy of sacrifice.
Those whose attitudes are more penetrating and balanced see the original
ideology as it was before its caricaturization by the ponerization process,
as the most practical basis for effecting society’s aims. Certain
modifications would endow this ideology with a more mature form more in
keeping with the demands of present times; it could thereupon serve as the
foundation for a process of evolution, or rather transformation, into an
socio-economic system capable of adequate functioning.
The author’s convictions are somewhat different. Grave difficulties could be
caused by outside pressure aiming at the introduction of an economic system
which has lost its historically conditioned roots in such a country.
People who have long had to live in the strange world of this divergence are
therefore hard to understand for someone who has fortunately avoided that
fate. Let us refrain from imposing imaginings upon them which are only
meaningful within the world of normal man’s governments; let us not
pigeonhole them into any political doctrines which are often quite unlike
the reality they are familiar with.
Let us welcome them with feelings of human
solidarity, reciprocal respect, and a greater trust in their normal human
nature and their reason.