from "Political
Ponerology - A Science on The Nature of Evil"
For centuries, attempts were made to treat various diseases based on naive
understanding and upon experience transmitted from generation to generation.
This activity was not ineffective; in many cases it produced advantageous
results. Superseding this traditional medicine with the newly generating
modern science in Europe caused social health to deteriorate initially.
However, it was only with the help of modern
science that many diseases were vanquished, ailments against which
traditional medicine had been helpless. This occurred because a naturalistic
comprehension of disease and its causes created a basis for counteraction.
Regarding
the phenomena discussed in this work, our situation is similar to
the one engendered by the above-mentioned crisis with reference to the
health of European nations. We have left behind the traditional socio-moral
organization but have not yet elaborated a more valuable science, one which
would fill in the gap. We therefore need newly established criteria which
can become the basis for an analogous discipline with an enduring structure;
simultaneously, this would fulfill a burning need in today’s world.
According to contemporary understanding, effective treatment of a disease
becomes possible once we have apprehended its essence, its etiological
factors and their properties, and its pathodynamic course within organisms
with dissimilar biological properties.
Once such knowledge is available,
finding the proper treatment measures generally proves a less difficult and
dangerous duty. For doctors, disease represents an interesting, even
fascinating, biological phenomenon.
They often accepted the risk of contact with the
contagious pathogenic factors and suffered losses in order to comprehend the
ailment so as to be able to heal people. Thanks to this, they achieved the
possibility of etiotropic disease treatment and artificial immunization of
human organisms to disease. The doctor’s own health is thus also better
protected today; but he ought never to feel any contempt for the patient or
his disease.
When we are faced with a macrosocial pathological phenomenon which requires
us to proceed in a manner analogous in principle to that governing
contemporary medicine, especially with reference to overcoming diseases
which quickly propagate among the populations, the law demands necessary
rigorous measures which become binding upon healthy people as well. It is
also worth pointing out that people and political organizations whose world
view is leftist generally represent a more consistent attitude in this
matter, demanding such sacrifices in the name of the common good.
We must also be aware that the phenomenon facing us is analogous to those
diseases against which the old traditional medicine proved inadequate. In
order to overcome this state of affairs, we must therefore utilize new means
based upon an understanding of the essence and causes of the pathocratic
phenomenon, i.e. according to principles analogous to those governing modern
medicine.
The road to comprehension of the phenomenon was
also much more difficult and dangerous than the one which should lead from
such understanding to the finding of naturalistically and morally justified,
and properly organized, therapeutic activities.
These methods are
potentially possible and feasible, since they derive from an understanding
of the phenomenon per se and become an extension thereof. In this “disease”,
as in many cases treated by psychotherapists, the understanding alone
already begins to heal human personalities.
The author confirmed this in practice in
individual cases. It will also appear that many known experiential results
will similarly become applicable.
The insufficiency of efforts based upon the best moral values has become
common knowledge after years of rebounding as though from rubber bands. The
powerful military weapons that jeopardize all humanity can, on the other
hand, be considered as indispensable as a strait-jacket, something whose use
diminishes in proportion to the improved skills governing the behavior of
those persons entrusted with the healing arts. We need measures which can
reach all people and all nations and which can operate upon the recognized
causes of great diseases.
Such therapeutic measures cannot be limited to the phenomenon of pathocracy.
Pathocracy will always find a positive response if some independent country
is infected with an advanced state of hysterization, or if a small
privileged caste oppresses and exploits other citizens, keeping them
backward and in the dark; anyone willing to treat the world can then be
hounded, and his moral right to act be questioned. Evil in the world, in
fact, constitutes a continuum: one kind opens the door to another,
irrespective of its qualitative essence or the ideological slogans cloaking
it.
It also becomes impossible to find effective means of therapeutic operation
if the minds of people undertaking such tasks are affected by a tendency to
conversive thinking like subconscious selection and substitution of data, or
if some doctrine preventing an objective perception of reality becomes
mandatory. In particular, a political doctrine, for which a macrosocial
pathological phenomenon, in accordance with its famous ideology, has become
a dogma, blocks an understanding of its real nature so well that purposeful
action becomes impossible.
Anyone administering such action should undergo
an appropriate prior examination, or even a kind of psychotherapy, in order
to eliminate any tendencies toward even slightly sloppy thinking.
Like every well-managed treatment, therapy of the world must contain two
basic demands: strengthening the overall defensive powers of the human
community and attacking its most dangerous disease, etiotropically if
possible. Taking into account all the aspects referred to in the theoretical
chapter on ponerology, therapeutic efforts should be directed at subjecting
the operations of the known factors of the genesis of evil, as well as the
processes of ponerogenesis itself, to the controls of scientific and
societal consciousness.
Present attempts at trusting moral data alone, no matter how sincerely
perceived, also prove inadequate as would trying to operate solely on the
basis of the data contained within this book, ignoring the essential support
of moral values.
A ponerologist’s attitude underscores primarily the
naturalistic aspects of phenomena; nevertheless, this does not mean that the
traditional ones have diminished in value. Efforts aimed at endowing the
life of nations with the necessary moral order should therefore constitute a
second wing, working in parallel and rationally supported by naturalistic
principles.
Contemporary societies were pushed into a state of moral recession during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; leading them back out is
the general duty of this generation and should remain an overall backdrop to
activity as a whole. The basic position should be the intent to fulfill the
commandment of loving one’s neighbor, including even those who have
committed substantial evil, and even if this love indicates taking
proplylactic action to protect others from that evil.
A great therapeutic endeavor can only be
affected once we do this with the honest control of moral consciousness,
moderation of words and thoughtfulness of action. At that point,
ponerology
will prove its practical usefulness in fulfilling this task. People and
values mature in action.
Thus, a synthesis of traditional moral teachings
and this new naturalistic approach can only occur with reasoned behavior.
Truth is a Healer
It would be difficult to summarize here the statements of the many famous
authors on the subject of the psychotherapeutic role of making a person
aware of what has crowded his subconscious, stifled within by constant
painful effort, because he feared to look an unpleasant truth in the eye,
lacked the objective data to derive correct conclusions, or was too proud to
permit the awareness that he had behaved in a preposterous fashion. In
addition to being quite well understood by specialists, these matters have
also become common knowledge to an adequate degree.
In any method or technique of analytical psychotherapy, or autonomous
psychotherapy, as T. Szasz119
called it, the guiding operational motivation is exposing to the light of
consciousness whatever material has been suppressed by means of subconscious
selection of data, or given up in the face of intellectual problems. This is
accompanied by a disillusionment of substitutions and rationalizations,
whose creation is usually in proportion to the amount of repressed material.
119 Thomas Szasz,
an American psychiatrist who has argued since the 1950s that compulsory
psychiatry is incompatible with a free society. [Editor’s note.]
In many cases, it turns out that the material fearfully eliminated from the
field of consciousness, and frequently substituted by ostensibly more
comfortable associations, would never have had such dangerous results if we
had initially mustered the courage to perceive it consciously. We would then
have been in the position to find an independent and often creative way out
of the situation.
In some cases, however, especially when dealing with phenomena which are
hard to understand within the categories of our natural world view, leading
the patient out of his problems demands furnishing him with crucial
objective data, usually from the areas of biology, psychology, and
psychopathology, and indicating specific dependencies which he was unable to
comprehend before. Instructional activity begins to dominate in
psychotherapeutic work at this point.
After all, the patient needs this additional
data in order to reconstruct his disintegrated personality and form a new
world view more appropriate to reality. Only then can we go on to the more
traditional methods. If our activities are to be for the benefit of the
people who remained under the influence of pathocratic system, this last
pattern of behavior is the most appropriate; the objective data furnished to
the patients must derive from an understanding of the nature of the
phenomenon.
As already adduced, the author has been able to observe the workings of such
a process of making someone consciously aware of the essence and properties
of the macrosocial phenomenon, on the basis of individual patients rendered
neurotic by the influence of pathocratic social conditions. In countries
ruled by such governments, almost every normal person carries within him
some neurotic response of varying intensity.
After all, neurosis is human
nature’s normal response to being subjugated to a pathological system.
In spite of the anxiety which such courageous psychotherapeutic operations
necessarily engendered on both sides, my patients quickly assimilated the
objective data they were furnished, complemented them with their own
experiences, and required additional information and verification of their
applications of this information.
Spontaneous and creative reintegration of their
personalities took place soon thereafter, accompanied by a similar
reconstruction of their world view. Subsequent psychotherapy merely
continued assistance in this ever more autonomous process and in resolving
individual problems, i.e. a more traditional approach. These people lost
their chronic tensions; their perceptive view of this deviant reality became
increasingly realistic and laced with humor.
Reinforcement of their capacity to maintain
their own psychological hygiene, self-therapy, and self-pedagogy was much
better than expected. They became more resourceful in practical life matters
and were able to offer others good advice. Unfortunately, the number of
persons whom a psychotherapist could trust adequately was very limited.
A similar effect should be attained on a macrosocial scale, something
technically feasible under present conditions. At such an operational scale,
it will liberate spontaneous interaction among such enlightened individuals
and the social multiplication of therapeutic phenomena. The latter will then
create a qualitatively new and most probably rather stormy social reaction;
we should be prepared for this in order to calm it down.
Finally, this will bring an overall feeling of
relaxation and a triumph of proper science over evil; this cannot be negated
by any verbalistic means, and physical force also becomes meaningless. Using
measures so different from anything utilized before will engender an “end of
an era” feeling during which this macrosocial phenomenon was able to emerge
and develop, but is now dying.
That would be accompanied by a sensation of
well-being on the part of normal people.
Within this suggested global psychotherapy, additional objectified material
in the form of a naturalistic understanding of the phenomenon constitutes
the keystone material; this book has therefore collected the most essential
data the author was able to obtain and to present here in a partially
simplified approach. This no doubt does not represent the entirety of the
knowledge needed; further supplementation will be necessary.
On the other hand, I have devoted less attention
to methods, since this would constitute a manifold duplication of those
kinds of therapies many specialists already know and use in their practice.
The purpose of this activity will be letting the world regain its capacity
to make use of healthy common sense and to reintegrate world views based on
scientifically objectified and appropriately popularized data. The
consciousness thus created would be far more appropriate to the reality
which was misunderstood until recently; as a result, man will become more
sensible in practical activity, more independent and resourceful in solving
life’s problems, and he will feel safer.
This task is nothing new; it
constitutes a good psychotherapist’s daily bread. The problem is technical
rather than theoretical, namely how to disseminate such sorely needed
influences throughout the globe.
Every psychotherapist must be prepared for difficulties caused by the
psychological resistance derived from persistent attitudes and convictions
whose lack of foundation becomes revealed in the course of work.
Particularly in the case of a numerous group of people, these resistances
become more demonstratively manifest; however, among the members of such a
group we also find allies who help us break down these resistances.
In order to visualize this, let us revert once
more to the N. family example, wherein a dozen or so persons collaborated in
abusing a pleasant and intelligent thirteen-year-old scapegoat.
When I explained to the uncles and aunts that they had been under the
influence of a psychologically abnormal person for years, accepting her
delusional world as real and participating (with perceived honor) in her
vindictiveness to the boy who was allegedly to blame for her failures,
including those which occurred years before his birth, the shock temporarily
stifled their indignation.
There was no subsequent attack, probably because
this took place in my office of the public health service and I was
protected by the white coat I would usually don whenever I did not feel
completely safe. I thus suffered only verbal threats. A week later, however,
they started returning one by one, pale and rueful; albeit with difficulty,
they did offer their cooperation in helping to repair the family situation
and the future of this unfortunate boy.
Many people suffer an inevitable shock and react with opposition, protest,
and disintegration of their human personality when informed of such a state
of affairs, namely that they have been under the spellbinding and
traumatizing influence of a macrosocial pathological phenomenon, regardless
of whether they were followers or opponents thereof.
Many people are
awakened to anxious protest by the fact that the ideology they either
condemned or somehow accepted, but considered a guiding factor, is now being
treated as something secondary in importance.
The noisiest protests will come from those who consider themselves fair
because they condemned this macrosocial phenomenon with literary talent and
raised voices, utilizing the name derived from its most current ideology, as
well as making excessive use of moralizing interpretations with regard to
pathological phenomena.
Forcing them to an apperception of a correct
understanding of the pathocracy will be quite a Sisyphean labor, since they
would have to become conscious of the fact that their efforts largely served
goals which were the opposite of their intentions. Especially if they
engaged in such activities professionally, it is more practical to avoid
liberating their aggressions; one could even consider such generally elderly
people too old for therapy.
Transforming the world view of people living in countries with normal man’s
systems proves a more troublesome task, since they are much more
egotistically attached to the imaginings suggested to them since childhood,
making it more difficult for them to reconcile themselves with the fact that
there are matters which their natural conceptual system cannot assimilate.
They also lack the specific experience available
to people who have lived under pathocratic rule for years. We must therefore
expect resistance and attack on the part of people protecting their
livelihoods and positions as well as defending their personalities from a
vexatious disintegration. Refraining from such estrangement, we have to
count on the accordant reactions of the majority.
The acceptance of such psychotherapy will be different in countries where
societies of normal people have already been created, offering solid
resistance to pathocratic rule. Many years of experience, practical
familiarity with the phenomenon, and psychological immunization there long
ago produced fertile ground for sowing the seeds of objective truth and
naturalistic comprehension.
An explanation of the essence of macro-social
phenomenon will be treated like delayed psychotherapy which should
regrettably have been served much earlier (that would have enabled the
patient to avoid many errors) but is nevertheless useful because it provides
order and relaxation and permits subsequent reasoned action. Such data,
accepted via a rather painful process there, will be associated with the
experience already possessed. There will be no egoistically or egotistically
inspired protests in that world.
The value of an objective view will be
appreciated much more rapidly, since it ensures a basis for reasoned
activity. Soon thereafter, the feeling of realism in apprehending the
surrounding world, followed by a sense of humor, would begin to compensate
these people for the experience they have survived, namely the
disintegration of their human personalities caused by such therapy.
This disintegration of the prior world view structure will create a
temporary feeling of an unpleasant void.
Therapists well know the consequent
responsibility of filling this void as quickly as possible with material
more credible and trustworthy than the contents which were disabused, thus
helping to avoid primitive methods of personality reintegration. In
practice, it is best to minimize patient anxiety by making advance promises
that appropriately objectified material will be furnished in the form of
truthful data. This promise must then be kept, partially anticipating the
appearance of disintegrative states.
I have successfully tested this technique on
individual patients and would advise its implementation on a mass scale as
safe and effective.
For the people who have already developed natural psychological immunity,
their increased resistance to the pathocracy’s destructive influence upon
their personalities, gained due to a consciousness of pathocracy’s essence,
may be of lesser significance, but still not without value, since it leads
to an ameliorated immunization quality at a less burdensome cost in terms of
nervous tension.
However, for those hesitant people who constitute the part
of well-adjusted members of the new middle class, immunizing activities
furnished by an awareness of the pathological nature of the phenomenon may
tip their attitudinal scale in the direction of decency.
The second key aspect of such operations that should be considered is the
influence of such enlightening behavior upon the personalities of the
pathocrats themselves.
In the course of individual psychotherapy, we tend to avoid making patients
aware of permanent aberrations, especially when we have reason to believe
that they are conditioned by hereditary factors. Psychotherapists, however,
are guided by the consciousness of this condition’s existence in their
decision making.
Only in the case of the results of slight
brain-tissue lesions do we decide to make the patient aware of this, so as
to help him elaborate a better tolerance of his difficulties and to abrogate
unnecessary fears. Regarding psychopathic individuals, we treat their
deviations by means of tactful allusive language, bearing in mind that they
have a kind of self-knowledge, and we proceed with the techniques of
behavior modification to correct their personalities, keeping the interests
of society in mind as well.
As far as operations on the macrosocial scale, it will of course not be
feasible to retain these latter cautious tactics of activity. Traumatizing
the pathocrats will be unavoidable to a certain extent, and even intentional
and morally justified in the interests of peace on earth.
Similarly,
however, our attitude must be defined by an acceptance of biological and
psychological facts; renouncing any morally or emotionally charged
interpretation of their psychological deviations. In undertaking such work,
we must consider the good of society to be paramount; nevertheless, we must
not abandon our psychotherapeutic attitude and refrain from punishing those
whose guilt we are unable to evaluate. Should we forget this, we would
increase the risk of their uncontrolled reaction, which could bring about a
world catastrophe.
At the same time, we should not nourish exaggerated fears, for example, that
such public enlightenment activities will provoke overly dramatic reactions
among pathocrats, e.g. a wave of cruelty or suicide. No!
Those individuals
described as essential psychopaths, in addition to many other carriers of
related hereditary anomalies, have since childhood elaborated a feeling of
being psychologically different from others. Revealing this awareness to
them is less traumatizing than, for instance, suggesting psychological
abnormality to a normal person. The ease with which they repress
uncomfortable material from their field of consciousness will protect them
from violent reactions.
What can they do if no ideology can be used as a mask any more?
Once the
essence of the phenomenon has been scientifically unmasked, the
psychological result is that they then feel their historical role to have
reached the end. Their work furthermore takes on some historically creative
meaning, if the world of normal people offers them conciliation upon
unprecedented advantageous conditions. This will cause overall
demobilization of the pathocracy, especially in those countries where,
practically speaking, the support of an ideology has already been lost. This
internal demobilization they fear so much constitutes the second important
goal.
A crucial condition and a complement of therapeutic work must be forgiveness
for the pathocrats as derived from understanding, both of them and of the
signs of the times. This must be effected by means of correspondingly
amended law based on comprehension of man and of the processes of the
genesis of evil operating within societies, which will counteract such
processes in a causative manner and supersede the former “penal” law.
Forecasting the creation of such law must not be
treated merely as a psychotherapeutic promise; it must be scientifically
prepared and thereupon effected.
Forgiveness
The contemporary evolution of legal concepts and democratic social morality
is geared toward dismantling the old traditions of maintaining law and order
by means of punitive repression.
Many countries have abandoned capital
punishment, disturbed by its genocidal abuses during the last world war.
Other punishments and the methods of their execution have also been
mitigated, taking psychological motivation and the circumstances of the
crime into account.
The conscience of the civilized nations protests
against the Roman principle Dura lex sed lex, and, at the same time,
psychologists discern the possibility that many presently unbalanced people
can revert to normal social life thanks to appropriate pedagogical measures;
practice confirms it only partially, however.
The reason is that mitigating the law has not
been balanced with the corresponding methods of stifling the processes of
the genesis of evil as based upon its comprehension . This provokes a crisis
in the area of societies’ anti-crime protection and makes it easier for
pathocratic circles to utilize terrorism in order to realize their
expansionist goals.
Under such conditions, many people feel that
returning to the tradition of legal severity is the only way to protect
society from an excess of evil. Others believe that such traditional
behavior morally cripples us and opens the door to irrevocable abuses. They
therefore subsume others’ life and health to humanistic values.
In order to emerge from this crisis, we must galvanize all our efforts in a
search for a new road, one which would both be more humanitarian and would
effectively protect defenseless individuals and societies. Such a
possibility exists and can be implemented, based on an objective
comprehension of the genesis of evil.
In factual essence, the unrealistic tradition of a relationship between a
person’s “crime”, which no other person is in the position to evaluate
objectively, and his “punishment”, which is rarely effective in reforming
him, should be relegated to history. The science of the causes of evil
should strengthen society’s moral discipline and have a prophylactic effect.
Often merely making a person aware that he was under the influence of a
pathological individual breaks the circle of destructiveness.
An appropriate psychotherapy should therefore be permanently included in any
measures to counteract evil. Unfortunately, if someone is shooting at us, we
must shoot back even better. At the same time, however, we should bring back
the law of forgiveness, that old law of wise sovereigns.
After all, it has
profound moral and psychological foundations and is more effective than
punishment in some situations.
The codices of penal law foresee that the perpetrator of a penal act who, at
the time of his transgression, was limited in his ability to discern the
meaning of the act or to direct his own behavior as a result of mental
illness or some other psychological deficiency, receives a lesser sentence
to the appropriate degree. If we should therefore consider the
responsibility of pathocrats in the light of such regulations and in light
of what we have already said about the motivations for their behavior, we
must then considerably mitigate the scope of justice within the frame of
existing regulations.
The above-mentioned legal regulations, which are more modern in Europe than
in the U.S.A., are rather outdated everywhere and insufficiently congruent
with bio-psychological reality. They are a compromise between traditional
legal thinking and medical humanism. Furthermore, the legislators were in no
position to perceive macrosocial pathological phenomena that dominate
individuals and significantly limit their ability to discern the meaning of
their own behavior.
Susceptible individuals are sucked in
surreptitiously, since they are unaware of the pathological quality of such
a phenomenon. The specific properties of these phenomena cause the selection
of attitudes to be decisively determined by unconscious factors, followed by
pressure from pathocratic rulers, who are none too fastidious as to their
methods, not even with regard to their own adherents. How should the degree
of penal mitigation then judge them fairly?
For instance, if essential psychopathy is virtually 100% predictive
concerning attraction to and inclusion in pathocratic activity, should a
judgment recognize similar mitigation of punishment? This should also be
applied to other hereditary anomalies to a lesser extent, since they too
have proved to be primary factors in the selection of attitudes.
We should not fault anyone for having inherited some psychological anomalies
from his parents any more than we fault someone in the case of physical or
physiological anomalies such as Daltonism. We should also stop blaming
people who succumbed to traumas and diseases, leaving brain tissue damage
behind, or those who become the object of inhuman pedagogical methods.
In the name of their good and that of society, we should use force with
regard to such people, sometimes including forced psychotherapy,
supervision, prevention, and care. Any concept of blame or guilt would only
make it more difficult to behave in a way which is not only humanitarian and
purposeful, but more effective as well.
In dealing with a macrosocial phenomenon, particularly one whose life is
longer than an individual’s active life, its permanent influence forces even
normal people to adapt to a certain degree. Are we, whose instincts and
intelligence are normal and, according to the criteria of our moral world
view, in the position to evaluate the guilt of these others for actions they
performed within pathocracy’s collective madness?
Judging them in accordance with traditional
legal regulations would constitute reverting to the imposition of normal
man’s force upon psychopathic individuals, i.e. to the initial position
which engendered pathocracy to begin with.
-
Is subjecting them to vindictive
justice worth prolonging the duration of pathocracy for even a single year,
let alone an unspecified time?
-
Would eliminating a certain number of
psychopaths significantly diminish these anomalies’ burden upon society’s
gene pool and contribute toward a solution to this problem?
Unfortunately, the answer is no!
People with various psychological deviations have always existed in every
society on earth. Their way of life is always some form of predation upon
society’s economic creativity, since their own creative capabilities are
generally substandard. Whoever plugs into this system of organized
parasitism gradually loses whatever limited capacity for legal work he might
have had.
This phenomenon and its brutality are actually maintained by the threat of
legal retaliation or, even worse, of retribution on the part of the enraged
masses. Dreams of revenge distract a society’s attention from understanding
the bio-psychological essence of the phenomenon and stimulate the moralizing
interpretations whose results we are already familiar with.
This would make it more difficult to find a
solution to the present dangerous situation and would similarly complicate
any possibilities of solving the problem of burdening society’s gene pool
with psychological anomalies with a view to future generations. These
problems, however, both present and future, can be solved if we approach
them with an understanding of their naturalistic essence and a comprehension
of the nature of those people who commit substantial evil.
Legal retribution would be a repetition of the Nuremberg error. That
judgment upon war criminals could have been a never-to-be repeated
opportunity to show the world the entire psychopathology of the Hitlerian
system, with the person of the “Fuehrer” at the head.
That would have led to a faster and deeper
disabusement of the
Nazi tradition in Germany. Such conscious exposure of
the operations of pathological factors on a macrosocial scale would have
reinforced the process of psychological rehabilitation for Germans and the
world as a whole by means of the naturalistic categories applicable to that
state of affairs. That would also have constituted a healthy precedent for
illuminating and stifling other pathocracies’ operations.
What actually happened is that psychiatrists and psychologists succumbed all
too easily to the pressures of their own emotions and political factors,
their judgments giving short shrift to the actual pathological properties of
both the majority of the defendants and of Nazism as a whole. Several famous
individuals with psychopathic features or other deviations were hanged or
sentenced to prison terms.
Many facts and data which could have served the
purposes adduced in this work were hanged and imprisoned along with these
individuals. We can thus easily understand why pathocrats were so eager to
achieve this precise result. We are not allowed to repeat such errors, since
the results make it more difficult to comprehend the essence of macrosocial
pathological phenomena, and they thereby limit the possibilities of stifling
their internal causation.
In today’s real world situation, there is only one scientifically and
morally justified solution which could remedy our current plight of nations
and also furnish a proper beginning for solving the problem of societies’
genetic burden with a view to the future.
That would be an appropriate law
based upon the best possible understanding of macrosocial pathological
phenomena and their causes, which would limit pathocrats’ responsibility to
those cases alone (usually of a criminal sadistic nature) in which it is
hard to accept the inability to discern the meaning of such an act. Nothing
else could enable the societies of normal people to take over power and
liberate the internal talents which could ensure a nation’s return to normal
life.
Such an act of forgiveness is in fact justified by nature, since it is
derived from a recognition of the psychological causation governing a person
while committing evil, both within the scope of our cognition and outside
the area we have been able to understand. This scope accessible to
scientific cognition increases along with progress in general knowledge; in
a pathocracy, however, the image of the phenomenon is so dominated by
causality that there is not much room left for free choice.
We shall in fact never be in the position to evaluate the scope of free
choice with which an individual person has been endowed. In forgiving, we
subordinate our minds to the laws of nature, to a basic extent. When we
withhold judgment regarding the scope of the remainder unknown to us, we
subject our mind to the discipline of refraining from entering a domain
barely accessible to our mind.
Forgiveness thus leads our reason into a state of intellectual discipline
and order, thereby permitting us to discern life’s realia and their
causative links more clearly. This makes it easier for us to control our
instinct’s vindictive reflexes and protect our minds from the tendency to
impose moralizing interpretations upon psychopathological phenomena. This is
of course to the advantage of both individuals and of societies.
Simultaneously, and in accordance with the precepts of great religions,
forgiveness helps us enjoy supernatural order and thereby gain the right to
self forgiveness. It makes us better able to perceive the voice within
saying “do this” or “don’t do that”. This improves our capacity for proper
decision making in thorny situations when we are lacking some necessary
data. In this extremely difficult battle, we may not renounce this
assistance and privilege; they may be decisive in tipping the scales toward
victory.
Nations which have long had to endure pathocratic rule are now close to
accepting such a proposition as a result of their practical knowledge of
that other reality and the characteristic evolution of their world view.
However, their motivations are dominated by practical data which are also
derived from adaptation to life in that divergent reality. Religious
motivations also appear; comprehension and affirmation thereof mature under
such specific conditions. Their thought process and social ethics also
evidence a feel for a certain teleological meaning to phenomena, in the
sense of a historical watershed.
Such an act of renunciation of judicial and emotional revenge with regard to
people whose behavior was conditioned by psychological causation, especially
certain specific hereditary factors, is justified by naturalism to a
significant degree. Therefore, such naturalistic and rational principles
should permit the definitive decisions to mature. The intellectual effort
involved in cutting the links to a natural comprehending of the problems of
evil and a confrontation thereof with moral precepts shall bear fruit in
many products of human thought.
People who have lost their ability to adapt to sensible work for hire will
have to be guaranteed tolerable living conditions and assistance in their
efforts to readapt. The costs incurred by society with regard thereto will
probably be less than those involved with any other solution.
All this will
require appropriate organizational efforts based on this manner of
understanding such matters, which will be far removed from traditional legal
practice. The promises should be made to the pathocrats, and then kept with
the honesty worthy of a society of normal people. Such an act and its
execution should therefore be prepared ahead of time from the moral, legal
and organizational points of view.
Just as the idea adduced herein finds a lively response among people
familiar with the above-described macrosocial phenomenon from experience, it
insults the vengeful feelings of numerous political émigrés who retain the
old experiential methods regarding social and moral problems. We should thus
expect more opposition from this quarter, justified by moral indignation.
Persuasive efforts should therefore be made in that direction.
It would also be advantageous if the solution to this problem could be
prepared with a view to the contemporary heritage of the bio-humanistic
sciences, a heritage which aims at a similar evolution of law even though it
continues to hide in the academic world, too immature for practical
realization.
The value of scientific studies in this area tends to be
underrated by conservative-minded societies. The work may be facilitated by
means of using such information with a view toward the need for rapid
preparation or updating of the law.
Our civilization’s legislations arose first from the tradition of Roman law,
then from the rights of sovereigns ruling by “divine right”, a system which
predictably defended their position, and though they were commanding the law
of grace, they proved almost completely soulless and vengeful within today’s
conception of codified regulations. Such a state of affairs abetted rather
than prevented the emergence of pathological systems of force.
This explains the actual need to effect an essential breakthrough and
formulation of new principles derived from an understanding of man,
including enemies and evildoers.
Having emerged from great suffering and a comprehension of its causes, such
legislation will be more modern and humanitarian as well as more effective
in the area of protecting societies from the products of ponerogenesis. The
great decision to forgive similarly derives from the most credible precepts
of eternal moral teachings, something also in accordance with contemporary
evolution in societal thought.
It expresses practical concerns as well as a
naturalistic comprehension of the genesis of evil. Only such an act of
mercy, unprecedented in history, can break the age-old chain of the
ponerogenic cycles and open the door both to new solutions for perennial
problems and to a new legislative method based on an understanding of the
causes of evil.
Such a difficult decisions therefore appear in keeping with the signs of the
times.
The author believes that this precise kind of breakthrough in the
methodology of thought and action is within the Divine Plan for this
generation.
Ideologies
Just as a psychiatrist is mainly interested in disease, paying less
attention to the patient’s delusional system deforming whatever individual
reality he has, the object of global therapy should be the world’s diseases.
The deformed ideological systems which grew from historical conditions and a
given civilization’s weaknesses should be understood insofar as they are a
disguise, operational instrument, or Trojan horse for pathocratic infection.
Societal consciousness should first separate these two heterogeneous layers
of the phenomenon by means of analysis and scientific evaluation effected
upon them. Such a correct and selective understanding should become part and
parcel of all nations’ consciousness in some appropriately accessible form.
This would correspondingly reinforce their capacity for independent
orientation within today’s complicated reality by means of discriminating
such phenomena in keeping with its nature. This will bring about a
correction in moral and world view attitudes. Concentrating our efforts upon
the pathological phenomenon shall then produce proper understanding and
sufficiently complete results.
The absence of this basic discrimination in political operations is an error
leading to wasted effort. We may not agree with ideologies, since all
nineteenth-century political ideologies oversimplified social reality to the
point of crippling it, even in their original form, not to mention their
pathologically deformed versions.
The foreground should nevertheless be
occupied by an identification of their role within the macrosocial
phenomenon; analysis, criticism, and even, more particularly, combating them
can be placed in the background.
Any discussions regarding directions needed to
change social structures may be held concurrently as long as they take this
basic separation of phenomena into account. Thus corrected, social
consciousness can effect a solution to these problems more easily, and
social groups which are intransigent today will become more amenable to
compromise.
Once a mentally ill person has been successfully cured of his illness, we
often try to restore the former patient to the world of his more real
convictions. The psychotherapist then searches the delusionally
caricaturized world for the primeval and always more sensible contents,
thereupon building a bridge right over the period of madness to a now
healthy reality. Such an operation of course requires the necessary skills
in the domain of psychopathology, since every disease has its own style of
deforming the patient’s original world of experiences and convictions.
The deformed ideological system created by
pathocracy should be subjected to analogous analysis, fishing out the
primeval and certainly more sensible values. This must utilize knowledge of
the specific style whereby a pathocracy caricaturizes the ideology of a
movement upon which it feeds parasitically.
This great disease of Pathocracy accommodates various social ideologies to
its own properties and the pathocrats’ intentions, thereby depriving them of
any possibility of natural development and maturation in the light of man’s
healthy common sense and scientific reflection. This process also transforms
these ideologies into destructive factors, preventing them from
participating in the constructive evolution of social structures and
condemning their adherents to frustration.
Along with its degenerate growth, such an
ideology is rejected by all those social groups governed by healthy common
sense. The activities of such an ideology thus induce nations to stick to
their old tried-and-true basics in terms of structural forms, providing
hard-line conservatives with the best weapon possible. This causes
stagnation of the evolutionary processes, which is contrary to the overall
laws of social life, and brings about a polarization of attitudes among
various social groups, resulting in revolutionary moods.
The operations of
the pathologically altered ideology thus facilitate the pathocracy’s
penetration and expansion.
Only by means of retrospective psychological analysis upon the ideology,
reverting to the time which preceded ponerogenic infection, and taking into
account the pathological quality and the causes for its deformation, can the
original creative values be discovered and bridges built right over the time
frame of morbid phenomena.
Such skillful unhusking of the original ideology, including some reasonable
elements which emerged after the ponerogenic infection appeared, may be
enriched by values elaborated in the meantime and become capable of further
creative evolution. It will thus be in the position to activate
transformations in accordance with the evolutionary nature of social
structures, which will in turn render these societies more resistant to
penetration by pathocratic influences.
Such analysis presents us with problems which must be skillfully overcome,
namely finding the proper semantic designates. Thanks to characteristic
creativity in this area, pathocracy produces a mass of suggestive names
prepared in such a way as to divert attention from a phenomenon’s essential
qualities.
Whoever has been ensnared in this semantic trap even once loses
not only the capacity for objective analysis of that type of phenomenon; he
also partially loses his ability to use his common sense. Producing such
effects within human minds is the specific purpose of this pathosemantics;
one must first protect one’s own person against them and then proceed to
protect social consciousness.
The only names we can accept are those with a historical tradition
contemporary to the facts and reaching back to pre-infection times. For
instance, if we call pre-Marxist socialism “Utopian socialism”, it will be
difficult for us to understand that it was much more realistic and socially
creative than the later movements already laced with pathological material.
However, such caution does not suffice when we are dealing with phenomena
which cannot be measured within the natural structure of concepts because
they were produced by a macrosocial pathological process. We must thus again
underscore that the light of natural healthy common sense is insufficient
for effecting such retrospective refinement of ideological values later
deformed by such a process.
Psychological objectivity, adequate knowledge in
the area of psychopathology, and the data contained in the prior chapters of
this book are indispensable for this purpose.
Thus equipped, we also become qualified to create indispensable new names
which would elucidate the actual properties of phenomena, providing we pay
sufficient attention to precepts of semantics with all the probity and
economy, as would demand William of Ockham. After all, these names will
spread throughout the earth and help many people correct their world view
and social attitude. Such activity, albeit legalistic, actually aims at
depriving pathocratic circles of their name controlling monopoly; their
predicable protests will merely prove that we are on the right track.
Ideology thus regenerated regains the natural life and evolutionary capacity
which pathologization has stifled. At the same time, however, it loses its
ability to fulfill imposed functions such as feeding a pathocracy and
cloaking it from both healthy common sense criticism and something even more
dangerous, namely a feel for psychological reality and its humorous aspects.
Condemning an ideology because of its errors, whether contained from the
outset or absorbed later, will never deprive it of this imputed function,
especially not in the minds of people who failed to condemn it for similar
reasons.
If we further attempt to analyze such a condemned ideology, we will
never achieve the effect which has a curative influence upon the human
personality; we will simply miss the truly important factors and be unable
to fill a certain space with contents. Our thoughts will then be forced to
evade whatever blocks their freedom, thereby erring among ostensible truths.
Once something succumbs to psychopathological
factors, it cannot be understood unless the proper categories are utilized.
Immunization
Many infectious diseases give an organism a natural immunity for a period
between a few years and many.
Medicine imitates this biological mechanism by
introducing vaccines which enable an organism to become immune without
passing through the disease. More and more frequently, psychotherapists
attempt to immunize a patient’s psyche to various traumatizing factors which
are too difficult to eliminate from his life.
In practice, we use this most often with people
subjected to the destructive influence of characteropathic individuals.
Immunizing someone against the destructive effects of psychopathic
personalities is somewhat more difficult; however, it represents a closer
analogy to the task which should be performed with regard to nations
succumbing to the influence of pathocratic psychological diversion.
Societies governed by a pathocratic system for many years develop the
above-described natural immunization, along with the characteristic
detachment from the phenomenon and sardonic humor. In combination with the
growth of practical knowledge, this state should be taken into account every
time we wish to evaluate a given country’s political situation.
We should also underscore that this immunity
refers to the pathological phenomenon per se, not its ideology, which
explains why it is also effective against any other pathocracy, no matter
the ideological mask. The psychological experience gained permits the same
phenomenon to be recognized according to its actual properties; the ideology
is treated in accordance with its true role.
Psychotherapy properly run upon an individual who succumbed to the
destructive influence of the life conditions under pathocratic rule, always
brings about a significant improvement in psychological immunization. In
making a patient conscious of the pathological qualities of such influences,
we facilitate his development of that critical detachment and spiritual
serenity which natural immunization could not have produced.
We thus do not
merely imitate nature; we actually achieve a better-than-natural quality of
immunity, which is more effective in protecting a patient from neurotic
tensions and reinforcing his practical everyday resourcefulness. An
awareness of the biological essence of the phenomenon provides them with a
preponderance both over the phenomenon and those people who lack such
awareness.
This type of psychological immunity also proves more permanent. If natural
immunity lasts the life of the generation wherein it was produced,
scientifically-based immunity can be transmitted further. Similarly, natural
immunity plus the practical knowledge upon which it is based may be very
difficult to transmit to nations which have not had such immediate
experience, but the kind which is based on generally accessible scientific
data can be transmitted to other nations without superhuman efforts.
We are faced with two related goals.
-
In countries affected by the
above-discussed phenomenon, we should attempt to transform the existing
natural immunity into that better-quality immunity, thus making it possible
to increase operative ease while lowering psychological tensions.
-
With
regard to those individuals and societies which indicate an obvious
immunodeficiency and are threatened by pathocratic expansion, we should
facilitate the development of artificial immunity.
This immunity is generated mainly as a natural result of understanding the
real contents of the macrosocial phenomenon.
This awareness causes a stormy experiential period not bereft of protest,
but this substitute disease process is short-lived.
Stripping the
naturalistic reality heretofore protected by an ideological mask is an
effective and necessary assistance for individuals and societies. Within a
short period of time, this begins to protect them from the ponerogenic
activities of pathological factors mobilized within the pathocracy’s
monolithic front. Appropriate indications of the practical means for
protecting one’s own mental hygiene will facilitate and accelerate the
creation of such valuable psychological immunity in a manner similar to the
results of a vaccine activity.
Such individual and collective psychological immunity, based on a
naturalistically objectified understanding of this other reality, is colored
by a feeling of proper knowledge, which thus creates a new human network;
achieving such immunity appears a necessary precondition for success
regarding any efforts and actions of a political nature which would aim at
having governments taken over by a society of normal people.
Without such
consciousness and immunization, it will always be difficult to achieve
cooperation between free countries and nations suffering under pathocratic
rule. No language of common communication can be guaranteed by any political
doctrines based on the natural imagination of people lacking both the
practical experience and a naturalistic understanding of the phenomenon.
The most modern and expensive weapons threatening humanity with global
catastrophe are presently obsolete the very day they are produced.
Why?
They are the weapons of a war which must never take place, and the nations
of the world pray that it never does.
The history of mankind has been a history of wars, which makes it lack
eternal meaning in our eyes. A new great war would represent the triumph of
madness over the nations’ will to live.
International reason must therefore prevail, reinforced by the newly
discovered moral values and naturalistic science concerning the causes and
genesis of evil.
The “new weapon” suggested herein kills no one; it is nevertheless capable
of stifling the process of the genesis of evil within a person and
activating his own curative powers. If societies are furnished an
understanding of the pathological nature of evil, they will be able to
effect concerted action based on moral and naturalistic criteria.
This new method of solving eternal problems will be the most humanitarian
weapon ever used in human history, as well as the only one which can be used
safely and effectively.
We may also hope that using such a weapon will
help end centuries of warfare among nations.