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by Harrison Koehli
October 27, 2023
from
Ponerology Website
Jack Nicholson
in The Shining (1980).
When you act like a
psychopath, you clear the way for actual
psychopaths.
Too many people believe in a cookie-cutter account of human nature,
that everyone is basically the same, basically good underneath it
all, and that we all have an equal capacity for evil.
While this is
untrue, there is a decent percentage of the population that has the
capacity to act like a psychopath, if only for brief moments, or in
certain contexts.
Unlike a psychopath, however, they may come to
feel some degree of remorse about it.
If you open your newsfeed tomorrow to read some story about a murder
in which the victim was found mutilated, castrated, his skin flayed
and limbs dissected, your first thought might be that some new
Jeffrey Dahmer or
Richard Ramirez is on the loose.
But it's also
possible the murder victim is the new Dahmer/Ramirez, responsible
for a string of child kidnappings, rapes, and mutilations, and a
local posse of vengeful locals finally caught up with him.
Cruel and
unusual punishments are not always out of the norm when we think the
person really deserved it.
An eye for an eye, and all that...
But that's an extreme example. There are subtler ones.
Public
relations, for example, is an exercise in functional psychopathy.
The goal of PR is literally to create a publicly acceptable persona
or cover story, a mask of sanity for public consumption.
The bigger
the discrepancy between image and reality, the bigger the lie, and
the closer one comes to psychopathic levels of manipulation and
impression management.
Don't say anything that'll make you/us look bad.
Never admit fault.
Deny everything.
Repeat a list of your carefully curated good deeds.
Spin everything in the most decent-sounding way possible.
Simply
ignore whatever you can get away with not answering.
And if the
fault is minor enough and not technically criminal, draft a canned
apology according to the socially accepted script.
There, now you
look like the type of person or organization that takes
'responsibility' for its mistakes.
Political campaigning and operating is another exercise in
functional psychopathy.
You tell people what they want to hear with
no real intention of following through on it.
You publicly decry
corruption and immorality while doing those very things behind the
scenes, and hiring PR agencies to maintain the illusory image of
yourself as a decent person.
Practically every corporation, politician, government and military
spokesman follows the above script, and everyone knows it (but might
forget when it's convenient to do so).
Some might not have to lie as
much as others, because they have less to lie about, but lie they
do, and with aplomb.
Relatively normal people can and do engage in this type of conning.
It's simply a part of political and corporate culture.
The problem
is that this type of culture creates an opening for the type of
person for whom this type of thing comes naturally.
If your posse
continues hunting down violent pedophiles and murdering them in a
fashion not dissimilar to that employed by sadistic serial killers,
you might just start attracting some actual sadistic serial killers.
If your PR firm or department is working overtime on slathering the
figurative lipstick on some pig of a client, you might just attract
more and more psychopaths with long and intimate experience doing
just that.
And if your political culture is founded on blatant
deception of the voting public, well, you get what you asked for...
Ponerization is,
the process by which any given group becomes more
and more pathological, both in its membership (sick individuals
join, and healthy ones leave, get kicked out, or are refused entry),
its mode of operation, and its ideological content.
And the only reason ponerization occurs is because the moral
failings of ordinary people open the door.
Modes of
Pathocracy
Reading 'Political Ponerology' may give the impression that
Lobaczewski made a hard distinction between what he called
pathocracy and "systems of normal man."
It's clear from the
context that he is describing the communist nations as pathocracies
and Western democracies as normal systems.
However, as
I pointed out in "The
Varieties of Pathocratic Experience":
Lobaczewski
describes some variations based on their mode of
genesis (PP,
pp. 218-219):
1)
prototypic (i.e. the result of a relatively homegrown,
revolutionary circulation of elites, e.g. the USSR)
2) imposed
by force (i.e. overtly imposed by an existing foreign
pathocracy, e.g. the Eastern Bloc)
3)
artificially infected (i.e. covertly imposed through
revolutionary and political warfare, e.g. various
socialist/communist revolutions in Asia, Africa, and the
Americas - today these would be called "color revolutions")
All other
governments he classifies as "systems of normal man," which he
defines as,
"social systems wherein the links, structure, and
customs of normal people dominate in any way..." (p. 196).
However, in
an interview with Henry See for Sott.net, he points out that
no country can be considered truly healthy, because all
contain psychopaths....
I take from this an implicit
acknowledgment that there must be degrees of pathocracy
even within countries considered "normal" by Lobaczewski - both
those recovering from pathocracy, and those either keeping it in
check or undergoing a ponerization process that could lead to
its emergence.
I imagine a scale from an imaginary and
impractical "zero psychopaths in leadership positions" to a
full-blown pathocracy where 100% of psychopaths integrate into
the leadership hierarchy.
The big question I
was left with after reading Ponerology was:
well, what
role, if any, do psychopaths play in these "systems of normal man"...?
Reading
Logocracy cleared this point up for me.
It turns
out he did address it.
Here's what he had to say:
Since the
introduction of universal political rights, American democracy,
like everywhere else,
has become a façade system, behind which other forces hide in
order to exercise power.
Democracy
impedes the formation of a healthy and active
socio-psychological structure of societies.
Instead, it encourages the
organization of elites that have an internal oligarchic
structure and are led by individuals with less than ideal
aptitudes and character traits.
This fosters a
degeneration of the psychological worldview of citizens, which
results in the already known negative moral consequences in
individual and social life.
In every
country, there are individuals who wish to achieve importance
and prosperity through their awareness of the existence of those
less critical people, whom they secretly despise.
What societies
and sociologists do not realize is that
these leaders often possess the specific psychological knowledge
that we find in psychopathic individuals.
Democracy too easily
allows activities that pose a permanent threat to itself and to
the future of the country.
Democracy is often
little more than pathocracy-by-proxy,
a political system led by a
clique of pathocratic individuals while retaining a mostly normal
social structure.
(Pathocracy, by contrast, is a macrosocial
phenomenon in which the entire political and social structure is
pathocratic, replicating itself on every level like a social
fractal...)
Lobaczewski's
criticisms of democracy are similar to some of his fellow
countrymen, and pope,
John Paul II.
Summarizing the encyclical
Centesimus annus, Thomas Storck writes:
After
discussing the flaws of Communist and other dictatorial states,
the pope next turns his attention to democratic regimes.
He... speaks of
a "crisis within democracies themselves, which seem at times to
have lost the ability to make decisions aimed at the common
good"...
He is referring to
the tendency of democratic
governments to be captives to special interest groups
of democratic politicians to support policies only to help
themselves get reelected.
"With time, such distortions of
political conduct create distrust and apathy, with a subsequent
decline in the political participation and civic spirit of the
general population, which feels abused and disillusioned"...
An
Economics of Charity and Justice, p. 78
If pathocracies
imposed by force more resemble criminal gangs, and prototypical
pathocracies resemble one-party totalitarian "dictatorships" or
"people's democracies," democratic pathocracy-by-proxy is the
snake-in-suit with a carefully crafted PR image.
We all know the
type:
reasonable-sounding, well-manicured, "presidential," and
totally fake...!
The rebellion
did not discriminate by age or sex and the rebels killed White
men, women, and children.
Nat Turner confessed to killing only
one person, Margaret Whitehead, whom he killed with a blow from
a fence post.
As Finkelstein
points out, the leading abolitionists of the time did not condemn
the rebellion.
Their response was more along the lines of,
"What did
you expect? We warned you this would happen..."
Whites were naturally
horrified; militias and mobs formed in response, killing around 120
blacks, most of whom were not involved in the rebellion.
In the end,
Turner's rebellion was put down, Turner himself sentenced to death,
hanged, and his body dissected and flayed - some of his skin
reportedly used to make purses.
With the distance
of time, it's easy enough to see the motivations of both the slaves
and the militias.
The slaves, reacting to the injustice of their
station and under the influence of a charismatic leader, went on an
indiscriminate spree of vengeance.
The whites, shocked by the
terroristic brutality of this revolt, banded together to avenge the
deaths, just as indiscriminately.
Turner strikes me
as a kind of 19th-century Thomas Müntzer, of 16th-century
peasant-rebellion fame.
Müntzer, too, was an apocalyptic fanatic
whose followers engaged in wanton acts of brutality.
Lobaczewski
discusses such paranoid preachers in Chapter 8 of Ponerology.
And as he discusses
in the context of ponerogenic associations in general, there is
always a reason behind them. It's understandable that the peasants
would revolt, just as it's understandable that the slaves would two
hundred years later and on another continent.
The just needed a
suitably energetic figure to rally behind.
Ponerology fills in the
picture by describing the dynamics and features:
why events occur
in the manner they do...
See the excerpts
included in my recent article, "Oppression,
Ponerization and Rabid Dogs", for example:
Revolutionary
and radical ideas find fertile soil among... people in downward
socio-occupational adjustments [e.g. many peasants and slaves].
(Political Ponerology, p. 43)
Spiced by
deviance, [pathological] visions and doctrines may influence
naive rebels and people who have suffered actual injustice.
Existing social injustice may then look like a justification for
a radicalized worldview and becomes a vehicle for the
assimilation of such visions. (p. 119)
The ideology of
associations affected by such [pathological] degeneration has
certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity,
or scope of action, namely, the
motivations of an aggrieved group, radical redress of the
grievance, and the higher value of the individuals who have
joined the organization. (p. 159)
According to
Lobaczewski, the early stages of ponerogenesis and pathocracy are
characterized primarily by the activities of people on the more
normal end of the pathology spectrum, which he calls
characteropaths (i.e. not psychopaths).
It might seem somewhat
paradoxical, but that usually includes the most violent periods,
like the Russian Revolution and Civil War.
Mass violence usually
requires strong emotion as a motivating force, something psychopaths
lack, and a reasonably large number of activists.
The reason such
movements come to be dominated by psychopaths is that the violent
frenzy whipped up by the paranoiacs, borderlines, and sociopaths
creates perfect conditions for psychopathic operators.
They may lack
strong motivating emotions, but they are aren't squeamish, and
they're perfectly at home in environments of chaos and destruction.
In such situations they have no qualms about killing, torture,
terror, civilian casualties, etc.
They earn their reputations and
gain influence in the group, until they end up running it.
As Lobaczewski says,
one type of evil opens the door to another...
It has been
interesting to watch the dynamics of pro-Palestine and pro-Israel
partisans online these past weeks with all this in mind.
Not finding
myself on either "team" (as Joe Biden apparently
thinks of them), I can't help but find some justification in the
moral intuitions on both sides, similar to the slave and peasant
rebellions mentioned above.
Where each go wrong, however, is the
lack of balance that would be provided from a more detached, ponerological perspective.
From the Israeli
perspective, two obvious motivations for the
current assault on the
Gaza Strip are revenge and prevention (not to mention longstanding
geopolitical considerations and aims - such as the reclaiming of
what is seen as land that should be Israel's, and which was part of
the Jewish state in antiquity).
"For every one of us killed, we will
kill ten or a hundred." (Some would prefer it go further than that...)
Witnessing the
terroristic elements of Hamas's breakout into Israel naturally leads
to feelings of incomprehension at the seeming inhumanity of the
enemy, and the strong desire to see them removed permanently from
the equation, thus preventing future attacks of this nature.
Lobaczewski calls this the "moralizing interpretation," and you can
read his thoughts on it in pages 137-138 of
his book.
From the
Palestinian perspective, two obvious motivations for October 7 were
revenge and escalation (not to mention longstanding geopolitical
considerations and aims - such as the reclaiming of what is seen as
occupied Palestinian land that was theirs 75 years ago, and which
has progressively
dwindled since then).
A history of conflict that has seen
something like 20 Palestinians killed for every 1 Israeli
over the past
15 years, many of them
children, naturally leads to feelings of incomprehension at the
seeming inhumanity of the enemy, and the strong desire to "even the
score."
"If you terrorize us with bombs and
snipers, we will terrorize you."
Hamas will have known that
Israeli would respond disproportionately, and are probably banking
on the sympathy this response will continue to provide and the
potential sparking of a wider war that they hope will see Israel
suffer even greater losses.
One might say that
it is unrealistic to expect detachment in such circumstances.
Vengeance and the righteous execution of justice are some of the
most basic human impulses.
Another person's barbarism justifies
one's own. (Though, of course, it's not barbarism when we do it.)
And when one's group has just been attacked, or has been attacked
and degraded repeatedly over the decades, there will always be a
strong segment of the population clamoring for blood.
Detachment is a
skill, and it's in short supply.
That's why in a bar altercation, we
rely on our friends to hold us back before doing something stupid,
or to restrain us from taking the fight too far if violence was
judged appropriate.
Either way, there are limits, and we have
trouble seeing them when our emotions have hijacked our ability for
self-control.
It's also easier to
see the moral faults in another than in ourselves. This is just a
fact of the
common psychological worldview and the core beliefs that
comprise it and underlie our cognitive biases.
We tend to ascribe
our enemies' attacks to pure malice and our own to more noble
motives. All of which acts as the first opening for ponerogenesis.
At most, moralizing
should be reserved for normal people misbehaving, letting their
emotions get the better of them, and rationalizing their own
descents into functional psychopathy.
At best, for those capable, it
should probably be reserved for oneself.
When our
moralizing is applied to situations involving pathological factors,
it ceases to be effective or useful.
We just end up inspiring new
cycles of ponerogenesis (witness
Afghanistan and Iraq).
Or at least,
its usefulness is limited to the most basic level, which is
essentially pure Machiavellianism and left-brain war strategy -
useful in a rough sense, but only in the short term, and with a
large margin of error.
Just assassinated
the ruling prince? Then you'd better kill his entire bloodline and
all his close supporters, or else you will be next, tomorrow or ten
years from now.
Besieging a city with an entrenched enemy skilled at
guerrilla warfare? Level the town, killing everything in it.
There
is no threat when everyone is dead.
Rebuild the city later if you
want to claim it as your own, or just leave it a ruin.
These are perfectly
"rational" strategies.
They are also widely considered barbaric
today - when others do them.
Thus, at the very least, they are also
impractical.
If you engage in them, you will make even more enemies,
both among the survivors of your extermination campaigns and the
supporters or your enemies, as well as the moralists who see your
actions as barbaric and inhuman.
Those moralists who besieged and
slaughtered the "human animals" then become the new barbarians, and
the new moralists will then feel justified in slaughtering the new
barbarians.
Additionally,
acting like a barbarian is to adopt the mindset and behavioral
patterns of functional psychopathy, bringing us back to the
beginning.
The more you act like a psychopath, the easier it is for
an actual psychopath to operate within the conditions you have
created.
And if you happen not to be a psychopath, you'll be next on
the chopping block.
Summing up the
progression of ponerological concepts as they play out in human
events: due to our only roughly accurate common psychological
worldview, we overstate our own goodness and that of the members of
our group, thus blinding ourselves to the pathological members of
our group (the first criterion of ponerogenesis). 2
This blindness leaves us open to schizoid ideologies, like,
Marxism,
or various strains of Islamism, Zionism, and some Muslim and Jewish
sects,
...and the spellbinding effect of their paranoid preachers and
propagandists, like,
Müntzer or Turner's apocalypticism, the current
strains of Gog-Magog apocalypticism that you mind in all three major
monotheisms.
The progressive deterioration of
values, thinking, and
decent behavior opens the door to psychopathy, and the ultimate
result is a dissimulative
pathocracy.
Applying this to
current events, the Middle East (Israel included) is largely one big
ponerogenic factory.
Gaza is a ponerogenic ghetto controlled
internally by a pathological
network
and externally by a foreign military power and all that comes along
with that:
-
poverty
-
malnutrition
-
joblessness
-
socio-occupational maladaptation
-
daily
violence
-
pathocratic ideology designed to
exploit conditions of misery and stoke vengeful emotions,
...all create ponerogenic conditions fostering the creation of multiple mental
illnesses and psychopathologies, from PTSD to antisociality.
Israel is a
democracy, in Lobaczewski's sense, i.e.,
a dissimulative
pathocracy-by-proxy,
lacking an obvious pathocratic macro-structure, but replicating its
pathological features at various scales, e.g.
in
settlements, where pathological ideology runs rampant, or
the IDF, where even normies experience some degree of
transpersonification...
Combine that with a
siege mentality and you get similar conditions fostering the
creation of multiple mental illnesses and psychopathologies, from
PTSD to antisociality...
Hawkish or dovish
tendencies both are insufficient to deal with such a problem.
But a
third option will require cool heads, which are unfortunately
lacking...
References
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