A little while ago I introduced you to Andrzej Łobaczewski (1921-2007), a Polish psychologist who spent much of his adult life under communism before emigrating to the USA in 1977.
I thought you might like to explore with me the observations and ideas that Łobaczewski formulated under oppressive circumstances and at the hand of evil men. This exploration would be in the spirit of gleaning wisdom for our own struggle with oppressive circumstances (as opposed to a mere fascination for a dark time of history) and to understand what Łobaczewski terms political ponerology - the study of evil in the political realm. I don't always agree with Łobaczewski on some aspects of the neurological/psychological side of psychopathology1 that leads to evil, but I have almost 40 years of new data and insight on the brain that Łobaczewski didn't have in 1984 and before. Nevertheless, he had the lived experience - something of immense value for the purposes of insight.
These are strange and dark days. During the height of the so called pandemic media was saturated with lies, but you could, with some effort of discernment and no small amount of personal research, work out who was lying and why (maybe the 'why' was fuzzy, but the lies became obvious). But since the beginning of the Ukraine/Russian war the propaganda from every side has been pushed into overdrive. Multiple and wildly differing perspectives, all convinced that they alone see the truth, are spewed out in a free-for-all cacophony over the airwaves. Just when you think you've put together the bits of information that amount to some semblance of truth, along comes another revelation that makes you doubt your mosaic-like version of reality. We intuit that the world has gone completely bonkers but putting your finger on exactly who's crazy and why is complex. Time, for me at least, to go to those who have been in these circumstances before and to see what they can offer.
PONEROLOGY: (poneros = evil) the study of evil
PONEROGENESIS: the genesis of evil
In efforts to understand the nature of evil2 Łobaczewski performed psychological testing on 384 adults (out of a pool of 5,000 psychotic, neurotic and healthy patients) who had seriously hurt someone, as well as their detailed case histories. 14-16% of this cohort did not exhibit any psychopathology, at least as far as could be discerned with the information given. Unsurprisingly then, pathological features play a significant role in the ponerogenic process (i.e. you're crazy if you are seriously and willingly hurting people). It should be noted that some of the greatest ponerogenic activity, like that seen by totalitarian leaders, may not be considered pathological in that social environment. However, from a moralistic interpretation of the acts of such leaders, free from the propaganda facade (and usually separated by time), the acts of evil and the underlying psychopathology become obvious.
We all develop, as children, in certain psychological atmospheres that shape our personalities and perceptions of the world. There can be a complexity of pathological factors, moral weaknesses, misunderstandings, lies, hurts and fears that distort an individuals psychological development. I might also add genetic factors whereby injuries of past generations can influence subsequent ones. Throw in the fact that we are complex non-linear systems, and you have a myriad of causal factors that could lead to ponerogenesis.
The first deviation from healthy psychological development Łobaczewski highlights is that of brain lesions (damage to some part of the brain) in childhood by either trauma or infection. Such damage to the developing brain can cause epilepsy, personality changes, and all manner of cognitive, emotional, or motor abnormalities. Characteropathies, negative deformation of character, stand out to Łobaczewski as representing pathological ponerogenic factors. To illustrate such a characteropath, Łobaczewski points to the German emperor Wilhelm II, who was subject to brain trauma at birth. Wilhelm suffered physical and psychological handicaps including left sided deformity, learning difficulties and a lace of emotional control.3
In the three decades of his reign, Wilhelm II repeatedly found himself at the centre of political scandals, caused by impulsiveness, erratic politics, inflammatory speeches and ham-fisted appearances on the international stage. Together with his personal eccentricities, the Kaiser's political blunders caused many contemporaries to wonder what was going on in the mind of the head of the German state.4The rule of the Kaiser had an overall negative effect on the psychological, moral, and political realities for the general public at a time when a wave of hysteria was growing throughout Europe, according to Łobaczewski. In this histrionic5 atmosphere Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo and Europe deteriorated into war and as they say, the rest is history.
Łobaczewski doesn't attribute WWI to the Kaiser alone and his mental ineptitude as an emperor. But he does suggest a people under such a mind made a significant social shift toward such collective madness. Similarly, in hindsight, people wonder how a psychopath like Hitler could have held so many in his sway.
I acknowledge that certain organic brain injuries may produce mental conditions conducive to the propagation of evil. Especially in the case of right hemisphere damage leaving the left hemisphere to have dominance (I introduce this topic here). But I think such circumstances are small, and an even smaller chance that such people would find themselves in places of great political power. The next deviation that Łobaczewski cites is that of paranoid character disorders6.
It is characteristic of paranoid behavior for people to be capable of relatively correct reasoning and discussion as long as the conversation involves minor differences of opinion. This stops abruptly when the partner's arguments begin to undermine their overvalued ideas, crush their long-held stereotypes of reasoning, or forces them to accept a conclusion they had subconsciously rejected before. Such a stimulus unleashes upon the partner a torrent of pseudo-logical, largely paramoralistic, often insulting utterances which always contain some degree of suggestion.Łobaczewski posits that this paranoid character comes from either a brain lesion or, more commonly, being brought up by people with paranoid characteristics and psychological terror during childhood7. Today we have good evidence that early childhood trauma and genetic predispositions can lead to paranoid traits in an individual.
Utterances like these inspire aversion among cultivated and logical people, who then tend to avoid the paranoid types. However, the power of the paranoid lies in the fact that they easily enslave less critical minds, e.g. people with other kinds of psychological deficiencies, who have been victims of the egotistical influence of individuals with character disorders, and, in particular, a large segment of young people. (Łobaczewski, p. 76)
Lenin is showcased by Łobaczewski as the premier kind of paranoid personality type. Vassily Grosman8 describes Lenin in these terms...
Lenin was always tactful, gentle, and polite, but simultaneously characterised by an excessively sharp, ruthless, and brutal attitude to political opponents. He never allowed any possibility that they might be even minimally right, nor that he might be even minimally wrong. He would often call his opponents hucksters, lackeys, servant-boys, mercenaries, agents, or Judases bribed for thirty pieces of silver. He made no attempt to persuade his opponents during a dispute. He communicated not with them, but rather with those witnessing the dispute, in order to ridicule and compromise his adversaries. Sometimes such witnesses were just a few people, sometimes thousands of delegates to a congress, sometimes millions worth throngs of newspaper readers.The next possible deviation from mental health into a psychopathology, according to Łobaczewski, is frontal characteropathy. By this he means damage to the very front of the brain, or what we call the prefrontal cortex. I won't expound on this very much as I don't find the arguments at all convincing (that evil men in high places have suffered prefrontal cortical trauma). But the gist of this deviation is that damage to the frontal part of the brain cause the non-damaged parts to overdevelop, and produce people who are "belligerent, risk-happy, and brutal in both word and deed." This gives them a spellbinding influence over others while bypassing common sense and feeding an overinflated ego.
What I think Łobaczewski might be getting at here is a sociopath (although he does address this type of personality disorder later on) but the neurological underpinnings (damage to the prefrontal cortex) do not necessarily correlate. As I've been explaining in posts about the lateralisation of the brain, the damage to a particular hemisphere makes critical differences to the sorts of symptoms one might suffer. Łobaczewski throws Stalin into this category and suggests his personality characteristics are a result of "perinatal damage to his brain's prefrontal fields." Some of these characteristics included being "brutal, charismatic, snake-charming; issuing of irrevocable decisions; inhuman ruthlessness, pathological revengefulness directed at anyone who got in his way; and egotistical belief in his own genius on the part of a person whose mind was, in fact, only average."
There is no doubt that Stalin was a sociopath/psychopath of the highest degree, but it's uncertain how much of his personality was due to early brain trauma. A troubled upbringing, the onset of depression, bouts of paranoia, and alcohol abuse are also strong variables that may have contributed9 to what may have been paranoid personality disorder and even antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy).
Łobaczewski then suggests that drug-induced characteropathies are also responsible for ponerogenesis. Indeed pharmaceuticals with serious side effects can have detrimental effects on the nervous system as can recreational drugs. If you've ever seen a "before and after" brain scan of a meth addict you can appreciate the devastating effects drugs can have on a brain. Methamphetamines can literally put holes in your brain! But I've been with some of these people and there is no way they would, or could, be in any position of leadership to influence the masses.
Łobaczewski also cites various virus and bacterial assaults on the nervous system as contributing to brain disorders that could lead to evil leadership. But again, I wonder just how many evil leaders are so because of a viral induced injury as the primary causal factor? One interesting, and now compelling, argument for mass psychological divergence is that of vaccine injury and the correlation with ASD, ADHD, and autoimmune disorders. I find there is a much more convincing argument that broad spread, multi-generational vaccine injuries to our central nervous systems have shifted our IQ down, our right brain functions down (and all that it implies) among massive numbers of people. And so statistically these sorts of wide spread psychological deviations are going to find themselves in places of political power.
Moving onto "inherited deviations" Łobaczewski considers genetic factors that could contribute to the origins of evil in people. I'll skip much of what he says (he introduces some basic concepts of genetic inheritance) and cut to the chase - many mental illnesses (including the types of personality pathologies most commonly associated with evil) have hereditary correlations. We also know that there are many 'propensities' that increase the likelihood of certain genetic expressions, given the right (or the unfortunate) environmental conditions for those traits to be 'expressed'. This is the whole field of epigenetics (epi=above). So it may be that someone could carry the potential to develop in a sociopathic trajectory, but for that potential to be realised certain environmental conditions would have to be met. Maybe its early childhood trauma, or being brought up by a sociopathic parent, it could be environmental toxins, or any number of events that could cause the activation or deactivation of certain traits locked away in the genome. Such epigenetic traits might involve neural migration in the early developing brain to deviate in a certain direction to form a neural network that is more adaptive for the world the child is expecting (genetically of course, not consciously).
Łobaczewski concerns himself primarily with psychopathy, and rightly so, as a primary disorder of personality that can lead to evil motivations. (As we explore more in future posts I'll attempt to fill in the contemporary understanding of such psychopathologies) What he emphasises is that there are only a very small minority of people who manifest such pathological phenomena within society, but can work their way into hierarchies of influence, and network in such a way that they can have a dangerous influence over the masses. Thus the frustrating observation of "How did so many crazy people get into places of authority?" Structures within culture, like the "winner/loser" paradigm of political and corporate worlds, nurture and reward psychopathic traits while crushing the empathic.
One of the most disturbing things about psychopaths that normal people must deal with is the fact that they very early learn how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of those normal people, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of reaching their goals. This dichotomy of worlds is permanent and does not disappear even if they succeed in realizing their youthful dream of gaining power over the society of normal people. This strongly suggests that the separation is biologically conditioned.Written during the mid 20th Century, you'd be mistaken for thinking Łobaczewski was profiling some of today's corporate, political and social leaders. I bet a few faces popped into your mind as you read this description above!
In the psychopath, a dream emerges like some Utopia of a "happy" world and a social system which does not reject them or force them to submit to laws and customs whose meaning is incomprehensible to them. They dream of a world in which their simple and radical way of experiencing and perceiving reality would dominate; where they would, of course, be assured safety and prosperity. In this Utopian dream, they imagine that those "others", different, but also more technically skillful than they are, should be put to work to achieve this goal for the psychopaths and others of their kin. "We", they say, "after all, will create a new government, one of justice." They are prepared to fight and to suffer for the sake of such a brave new world, and also, of course, to inflict suffering upon others. Such a vision justifies killing people, whose suffering does not move them to compassion because "they" are not quite conspecific. They do not realize that they will consequently meet with opposition which can last for generations. (Łobaczewski, 2013, p. 95-96)
Stay tuned - I'll continue this journey with Łobaczewski in future posts and hopefully make a little more sense about much of the nonsense that is going on today.
Andrzej Łobaczewski (2013). Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes (2nd Ed.), Quantum Future Group, Inc. Originally published in Poland as Ponerologia Polityczna (1984)
- 1 Where I don't agree, or Łobaczewski is just wrong given the past 40 or so years of neuroscience research since his writing, I will either make a comment, footnote, or just skip that part of his narrative. Like many psychologists in the 20th Century, strong assertions were made on flimsy evidence that just do not hold up in light of recent research.
- 2 Łobaczewski was highly motivated to understand the origins of evil given his circumstances under communist rule. But he had little former research to use as an early psychology ponerologist - a field rather ignored by psychology as it had been primarily the domain of theology. So he did much of the groundwork himself, but unfortunately the early work was lost - 2 early drafts with much statistical data was lost and the current manuscript is by memory. "I threw the first manuscript into a central-heating furnace, having been warned just in time about an official search, which took place minutes later. I sent the second draft to a Church dignitary at the Vatican by means of an American tourist and was absolutely unable to obtain any kind of information about the fate of the parcel once it was left with him."
- 3 It is said that Wilhelm II had a traumatic birth, was delivered with forceps, and his left arm was damaged. He probably also suffered from hypoxia during the difficult birth which may have damaged his brain, but without CT scans at the time it's impossible to know. In an attempt to fix Wilhelm he was subject to all kinds of painful devices, shocked with electricity, given weekly "animal baths" (which involved putting his damaged arm inside a freshly-killed rabbit), any one of which could have severely disturbed the young boy.
- 4 Freis D. (2018). Diagnosing the Kaiser: Psychiatry, Wilhelm II and the Question of German War Guilt The William Bynum Prize Essay 2016. Medical history, 62(3), 273-294. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2018.22. The final word from this particular study is thus... "The historical diagnoses of Wilhelm II may serve as another cautionary tale. At a time when European and German politics were highly personalized, polarized and in upheaval, diagnosing the Kaiser as mentally ill appeared to be a powerful and popular argument. Psychiatry offered a conceptual framework that made it possible to make sense of seemingly irrational dynamics in politics without the need for an in-depth analysis, and could be used to ward off, shift and re-allocate the political responsibility for the catastrophe of the First World War. However, psychiatric diagnoses were a rather unwieldy weapon in wartime and post-war political debates. The idea that Wilhelm was mentally ill could be used to support almost any political agenda; it could be directed against the exiled emperor, or used in his defense. As the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Arthur Kronfeld (1886-1941) reminded his colleagues in 1921, psychiatry was a normative science, but its norms were not the same as those of politics and society. Adopting psychiatric concepts of illness and health to make political arguments about the situation and the future of the German nation after the First World War was compelling, but these concepts came with a momentum of their own."
- 5 Personality disorder characterized by excessive emotionality and attention-seeking
- 6 I can only assume that he is making reference to what we would now call PPD (Paranoid Personality Disorder): This is a DSM-5 diagnosis assigned to individuals who have a pervasive, persistent, and enduring mistrust of others, and a profoundly cynical view of others and the world. Paranoid Personality Disorder is referred to as a Cluster A personality disorder, which involve "odd or eccentric" behavior patterns. Persons with PPD are hyper-vigilant to physical, verbal or social attacks, and do not trust others, and therefore tend to have few if any close or intimate associates. They tend to be aloof, cold, distant, argumentative, and frequently complain. They may appear guarded and secretive, very rational, logical, and unemotional, but at times will be sarcastic, hostile, and rigid. Generally they have a difficult time getting along with others. People with Paranoid Personality Disorder tend to do poorly with group activities and collaborative projects. They will be highly critical of others, but will respond to criticism of themselves with hostility or defensiveness. Paranoid Personality Disorder is a non-psychotic disorder, in that it is a discrete diagnosis involving one's dysfunctional and maladaptive personality characteristics, rather then a thought or mood disorder. Persons with Paranoid Personality Disorder may develop brief psychotic reactions under stress, but by definition, a brief psychotic episode is discrete and does not endure. Paranoid Personality Disorder is not amenable to anti-psychotic medications as there are not typically gross deficits in reality testing, and the paranoid thought content and beliefs are typically-non bizarre. PPD is also not regarded as a result of trauma, as the perception of being unsafe in the world which is typical of persons with PTSD (Post -traumatic Stress Disorder) is of a different quality and etiology.
- 7 We don't know the exact cause of PPD, but like so many of these sorts of disorders it probably involves a combination of biological and psychological factors. PPD is more common in people who have close relatives with schizophrenia, so this suggests a genetic link between the two. Early childhood experiences, including physical or emotional trauma, are also suspected to play a role in the development of PPD and multiple other associated disorders/symptoms. Organic brain injury like a trauma or lesion, as Łobaczewski talks about, is probably very rare and trauma and genetic factors are more likely causal attributes.
- 8 Vassily Grossman was a Ukrainian Jew, a Soviet citizen who became a war correspondent and saw first hand the front lines of Stalingrad and Berlin. He published the first accounts of the death camp Treblinka.
- 9 Stal, M. (2013). Psychopathology of Joseph Stalin. Psychology, 04, 1-4.
PONEROGENIC PHENOMENA AND PROCESSES
Egotism: We call egotism the attitude, subconsciously conditioned as a rule, to which we attribute excessive value to our instinctive reflexes, early acquired imaginings and habits, and individual world view. (Łobaczewski, 2013, p.100)In the vernacular we'd say "He's full of himself!"
Egotistical people believe their concepts and experience as the yardstick to measure others. They see themselves as the standard and would like others to bring themselves up to his or her standard or at least submit. This can happen on a national level as well, where the egotistical nation feels superior to teach or force another nation to think and act in a way that aligns with the egotists value and culture.
An interesting dynamic happens in the West (and probably most places but I only have experience of the West), whereby parents, psychologists, educators and the culture in general, both inflate a child's ego (self-esteem) and punish egotism. This psychological push-pull to think of oneself highly, but to remain humble, can be confusing to say the least. Mostly it happens without conscious awareness as it's so much part of the culture. Łobaczewski maintains that a certain measure of egotism is useful to gain mastery in life and yet too much hampers empathy and the capacity to understand others. He attributes the development of the excessively egotistical personality to psychological induction by others who are themselves egotistical, hysterical, or otherwise psychopathological. This either shapes the developing child along lines of increasing egotism or the older person to relapse into a childhood state of egotism. Excessive egotism is problematic.
The kind of excessive egotism which hampers the development of human values and leads to misjudgment and terrorising of others well deserves the title of "king of human faults". Difficulties, disputes, serious problems, and neurotic reactions sprout up in everyone around such an egotist like mushrooms after a rainfall. Egotist nations start wasting money and effort in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reasoning and overly emotional reactions. Their inability to acknowledge other nations' values and dissimilarities, derived from other cultural traditions, leads to conflict and war. (Łobaczewski, 2013, pp.100-101)I believe what Łobaczewski is describing here is narcissism. Here's a snapshot of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5):
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and with lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood, as indicated by at least five of the following:Like so many of these personality disorders the origins are not clear. It looks like a combination of genetic predispositions toward the disorder and environmental factors. Developmental experiences of rejection as a child with a fragile ego, or maybe excessive praise of a child with a strong ego, could play a part. We simply don't have a definitive answer yet, and maybe it's different genetics and circumstances for each case.
- Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements, expects to be recognized as superior without actually completing the achievements)
- Is preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, beauty, or perfect love.
- Believes that they are "special" and can only be understood by or should only associate with other special people (or institutions).
- Requires excessive admiration.
- Has a sense of entitlement, such as an unreasonable expectation of favorable treatment or compliance with his or her expectations).
- Is exploitative and takes advantage of others to achieve their own ends.
- Lacks empathy and is unwilling to identify with the needs of others.
- Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of them.
- Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors and attitudes
Prevalence of NPD range from 0.5% to 5% of the US population according to various studies1. Other personality disorders such as antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder are also common in people with NPD2. It is the antisocial-narcissistic personality with high IQ and social status that we commonly associate with tyrannical and genocidal leaders of the past.
When considering the evil behavior of certain people with these personality disorders, Łobaczewski warns us not take a moralistic view of human behavior. He suggests that such moralizing is usually overly emotional and causes us to miss the 'real' causal factors - underlying neural deviations from the norm (brain damage). I have to disagree with him on this point as I feel moral imperatives such as "you shall not murder" (from the Torah) provide a healthy benchmark for society that for most people is validated by their consciences. I think I can hold such moral imperatives and yet still appreciate that a genocidal antisocial personality might have a few screws loose in the old noggin (if you don't mind me using such technical terms). Łobaczewski, if I'm understanding him correctly, doesn't want moralizing to cloud scientific discovery and reasoning and to distort reality. I tend to think that having a moral foundation (and a tendency to make moral judgments) from which to explore the nature of humanity with scientific methods is the way to go.
SPELLBINDERS
Spellbinders are generally the carriers of various pathological factors, some characteropathies, and some inherited anomalies. Individuals with malformations of their personalities frequently play similar roles, although the social scale of influence remains small (family or neighbourhood) and does not cross certain boundaries of decency.Now before we go any further into the analysis of personalities that perpetrate evil from high places, let me say that I believe there is a parallel phenomenon going on - a Marxist's subversion of the West most notably today through a post-modern deconstructionist system of wokeness and all it's myriad forms. A subversion that has been going on for a century (or more) in its pervasive demoralizing of anything decent in (often successful) attempts to rouse the necessary revolution required for a new social order to dominate. For this multigenerational subversion to continue it has to give advantage to the psychopathic personality to rise to places that assure the continuation of the 'revolution'. Like an emergent quality out of a complex system, it is the system that causes the 'right' people to rise to the top - now with so much momentum it appears on the surface to be a natural phenomenon.
Spellbinders are characterised by pathological egotism. Such a person is forced by some internal causes to make an early choice between two possibilites: the first is forcing other people to think and experience things in a manner similar to his own; the second is a feeling of being lonely and different, a pathological misfit in social life. Sometimes the choice is either snake-charming or suicide. (Łobaczewski, 2013, p.106)
Łobaczewski goes on to describe the spellbinder as not only one who is totally convinced of his or her exceptional, even messianic qualities, but able to attract and hypnotize others in the same delusion. Such magnetic personalities "fishes an environment or society for people amenable to his influence, deepening their psychological weakness until they finally join together in a ponerogenic union."
PONEROGENIC ASSOCIATIONS
"Ponerogenic associations" describe a group of influential, charismatic, yet pathological individuals that form a structure that ultimately hurt people. I would say that the individuals who form the web of Big Pharma, its promotion, protection, and enforcement could easily be categorized as a ponerogenic association. The psychopathology of the individuals involved in such an association have to do with deficits in conscience, empathy, morality, but not intelligence generally and the ability to scheme and manipulate. Actually the absence of a conscience opens a world of possibilities to manipulate without constraint (which most normal people with a conscience could not possibly pull off). Furthermore a collective of such people "with various psychological aberrations also complement each other's talents and characteristics."
Łobaczewski describes possible evolutions of these associations where leadership and talents jostle for places of influence. An influential narcissist may make way for a rising psychopath to take the helm - no different to the maturing organisation of any group of people. And then there is the glue that sticks the group together, the ideology.
It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies its activities and furnishes motivational propaganda. Even a small-time gang of hoodlums has its own melodramatic ideology and pathological romanticism. Human nature demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in order to silence one's own conscience and to deceive consciousness and critical faculties, whether one's own or those of others. (Łobaczewski, 2013, p.112)This reminds me of the recent whistleblower on Pfizer, Melissa McAtte, talking about the fact that workers in the production facilities noticing that the mRNA vaccines glowing in the dark. Never having seen such a thing before it nevertheless didn't phase them, they just shrugged their shoulders and said 'Well it must be OK or we wouldn't be producing it," in a silencing of conscience just as described above. But McAtte obviously didn't have a deceived consciousness or critical faculties and was alerted to 'something not right'.
The ideology always justifies the means, be it saving the world from a virus or from weapons of mass destruction, collateral damage becomes morally acceptable for the 'greater good'. According to Nazi thinking it was for the greater good, not only for Germany but for the world, that the Jews should be exterminated, to give but one example. The fact that such ideologies are construed out of a paranoid perception of the world or completely fabricated, seems to be quickly masked by propaganda and the frenzied acceptance by the masses. Pretenses become absolute truths that bind a revolutionary movement together - the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the vaccine industry against the deadly pestilence.
The ideology may start out as altogether wholesome and moral, at least on the surface, but over time and with continued influence and warping by pathological leadership, the ideology departs from those beginnings toward a utility for evil. Equality movements initially looked like completely moral, and overdue, ideological positions to support. But when biological men are supplanting biological women on the sports field and 'woman of the year' awards, when 'minorities' have more rights and privileges than the average person, one wonders where the 'equality' has gone. When killing thousands to save a few is ethically justified, one wonders if the ideology is serving the people or corporate bank balances.
I can't help but to also overlay the idea that we are increasingly becoming more left-hemisphere dominant - seeing things through a more paranoid, deconstructing, decontexualising lens. Devoid of the sense of the divine, the transcendent, the mystical, the flowing, living, organic nature of our humanity. The ideologies being formed by the psychopaths in positions of influence resemble the delusions of schizophrenics more than the voice of reason and wisdom. (But sometimes it's difficult to see, we are the proverbial frog in the heating water, the hypnotic effect has been over generations) When the left (near-communist if not outright) side of politics defend and praise neo-Nazi, black sun3 branded, decedents of the SS in Ukraine, we know we've entered into some weird schizoid alternate reality. But that's a whole other story that O'Brian and Ukraine experts are better at commenting than me.
Enough for now, I'll revisit Łobaczewski again soon.
Andrzej Łobaczewski (2013). Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes (2nd Ed.), Quantum Future Group, Inc. Originally published in Poland as Ponerologia Polityczna (1984)
- 1 Ronningstam E. An update on narcissistic personality disorder. Current Opinions in Psychiatry. 2013 Jan; 26(1):102-6.
- 2 Ronningstam E. Narcissistic personality disorder in DSM-V--in support of retaining a significant diagnosis. Journal of Personality Disorders. 2011 Apr; 25(2):248-59.
- 3 The Black Sun (German: Schwarze Sonne) is a Nazi symbol, a type of sun wheel (German: Sonnenrad) employed in a post-Nazi Germany context by neo-Nazis also in some strains of Satanism.
Pathocracy1 is born from parasitizing great social movements, then becoming a disease of entire societies, nations and empires. In the course of human history, it has affected social, political, and religious movements, distorting the accompanying ideologies, characteristic for the time and ethnological conditions, and turning them into caricatures of themselves. This occurs as a result of the activities of similar etiological factors in this phenomenon, namely the participation of pathological factors in a pathodynamically similar process. That explains why all the pathocracies of the world are and have been so similar in their essential properties. Contemporaneous ones easily find a common language, even if the ideologies nourishing them and protecting their pathological contents from identification differ widely. (Łobaczewski, 2022, p. 202)In a global hysterical crisis2 situation, bold visions of salvation can both inspire people to action and at the same time deprive them of common sense. The end does not always justify the means, but radical action and hysteria whipped up by well executed propaganda and psych ops, can blind people to the most obvious harms, rob them of their usual morality, and implicate them in the most terrible crimes. Great ideologies are the most dangerous to small minds and the most advantageous to the psychopaths lurking in the bureaucracy. Ultimately it's a crisis of upheaval that destroys the old order and ushers in the new.
The ideology driving the COVID management may have a veneer of social responsibility but its substance was void of moral criteria as it was always a power grab (politically and commercially). Nevertheless, in a state of panic, many minds were quickly indoctrinated to become servants of the ideology of safety at any cost. The culture at large transforms, can no longer evaluate the original motivation - like limiting death, pain and suffering - and rather becomes the handmaiden to a pathocratic system that perpetuates that very same death, pain and suffering. For the critical thinker and the simply observant it looks like a clown show, but it is anything but funny, with deeply evil undercurrents. The ideology that starts a movement (the safety movement, the culture wars, etc) only lasts for as long as it needs to gain the required momentum. When the crisis comes, the psychopaths rise to the top, the once reasonable ideology morphs into whatever utility is required to expand the pathocracy3.
Out of the crisis language is distorted, doublespeak arises and thought crime becomes a national security issue. A 'pandemic' becomes a mild local outbreak, experimental gene therapy becomes a vaccine, 'truths' are lies and lies are 'truth', a man can be a woman but no one can define a woman. Any criticism of State sanctioned medical intervention and you are an 'anti-vaxxer', 'selfish' or are 'killing grandma'. If you threaten the pathocratic rule you are seen as deeply immoral and will be paraded as such.
Whenever a nation experiences a "system crisis" or a hyperactivity of ponerogenic processes within, it becomes the object of pathocratic penetration whose purpose is to serve up the country as booty. It will then become easy to take advantage of its internal weaknesses and revolutionary movements in order to impose rule on the basis of a limited use of force. This will be an artificially infected pathocracy, which bears characteristics that are a fusion of both secondary and primary4 ponerogenic associations. (Łobaczewski, 2022, p. 218-219)We've seen something unique in this regard, on a global level, whereby an engineered 'crisis' and the hyperactivity of ponerogenic processes has penetrated all levels of government and the private sector. The world has become booty. Internal weaknesses across the board are taken advantage of as have the 'revolutionary' movements that have been harnessed to propagandize the masses. And all this to impose a new rule of law through a limited use of force5, in a fusion of elites, government, the private sector, and the every-day-pro-vax good citizen ready to dob in the neighbors for the slightest hint of vaccine hesitancy.
In classic enforced pathocracy those who pose the greatest risk are crushed or exterminated - military leaders for example, or moral and legal leaders who oppose the new order. Today it's the doctors and scientists who can see through the propaganda who are the most dangerous to the new regime and who are being systematically crushed, mostly by being cancelled and shut-down socially but some suddenly dying. Those who hold to the natural rights of a human being, of a nation, of a parent, are being criminalized under pathological ideals adopted by the controlling entities.
Decent people and patriots just yesterday, they now espouse the new ideology and behave contemptuously to anyone still adhering to the old values, faith in God, or patriotism. (Łobaczewski, 2022, p. 220)Once ripe, enforced pathocracy of this current technocratically driven medical/safety authoritarianism will impose its pathological mechanisms to every inch of society. Like a paranoid schizophrenic our world will be a continual experience of emergencies (primarily weather, medical, and terrorism) to which we must react in obedience to top-down 'safety and care' measures that constrict life and liberty out of every individual. You are weak, vulnerable, and the sun/rain/plague/terrorist is at the door and can kill you in an instant6, is actively pursuing you to kill you, and your only salvation is in obedience to those who know what to do. Individualism will be a crime against society. Complete mass obedience will be the ultimate virtue. Meanwhile the psychopaths at the top with their multi-billion dollar multinationals reap the worlds riches with a blood-soaked sickle.
OK so I've not followed the detailed and very formulaic pattern of pathocratic development described by Łobaczewski. I've picked bits and pieces, partly because our current situation is similar in some respects to nations of the past falling under totalitarian rule but also different in many ways because we are talking about a global phenomenon. Like any complex system a simple model will not do, and I see a thousand future history books analyzing the first half of the 21st century from a myriad perspectives. What I think is more simplistic and self-evident, however, is that a society shaped by insanity cannot last and it naturally forces parallel societies of those who have chosen not to partake in the insanity. Because of technology and its capacity to accelerate things, it's likely the insanity (the control, the paranoia, the objectification of everything, the departure from the real and embracing of the virtual, the departure from faith, the constant fear, chaos, and stupidity) will not last as long as it may have in the past. The same technology that can enslave us is also providing more opportunity for parallel societies to become organised and connect, and unless the internet is taken down completely (which the technocrats will not let happen because it's the conduit for their commerce) will help us forge stronger bonds, hope, and the seed for the counter-revolution back to sanity.
Łobaczewski, A. M. (2022). Political Ponerology: The science of evil, psychopathy, and the origins of totalitarianism. Otto, NC: Red Pill Press
- 1 Pathocracy: A macrosocial disease of mass social movements and ideologies (whether social, political, or religious) which infects entire societies, nations, and empires. Pathocracy is the result of ponerized (evil) secondary ponerogenic unions (ordinary people and their movements inspired by primary ponerogenic unions which are basically psychopaths getting together in an attempt to rule the world) which achieve political domination either through revolution from below or from above. Pathocracy can also come about through foreign influence, either imposed by force or through artificial infection (psychological warfare, subversion, infiltration). Pathocracy is a pathological inversion of a normal social hierarchy, in which social outcasts, criminals, and other psychological deviants rise to the top.
- 2 The crisis stage of a hysteroidal cycle. The hysteroidal cycle describes a society's hysterical condition (consisting of individual cases and mass social hysteria) rises and falls, with an average period of around two centuries (however Peter Turchin's structural-demographic theory has longer cycles of 200-300 years, but similar stages). The peak of mass hystericization may be followed by a crisis such as societal collapse, war revolution, and/or pathocracy. In the hysteroidal state before and during a societal crisis, radical ideologies take hold, especially among young people, intellectuals, and other "bourgeois elites". Symptoms of this state include: habitually ignoring actual problems and their real causes, focusing on pseudo-problems and convenient but ineffective solutions, the inability to reason and judge evidence soundly, silencing sound criticism and amplifying radical voices, giving overly charitable interpretations to trendy but unscientific ideas. In these conditions, it is very easy for overly simplistic, unscientific, illogical, and totalitarian ideologies to gain adherents. Such ideologies tend to identify the source of society's problem within some group category, whether based on religion, class, or race, e.g., the unvaxxed (in the case of COVID), climate change deniers (in the case of 'climate change'), or "whiteness" (in the case of critical race theory).
- 3 Thus the obvious disconnect between keeping people safe from a virus and digital passports, digital currency, excessive monitoring of every aspect of your life by the government. Even with the evidence now at hand about the ineffectiveness of masks, lockdowns, and the jabs, there's still a message from authorities that these things are good for us - because their utility is not about health but about control.
- 4 Once again the primary ponerogenic associations are the bad guys (criminals, mafias, cartels, cabals, the Fauci/Gates/Schwab types) working in tandem and the secondary association is the 'ordinary' bureaucrats, unions, and organisations that go along with the crazies and their propaganda.
- 5 Well in most places bar Melbourne, Germany/Austria, parts of Canada, and who know what goes on in China.
- 6 Oh and cows. Yes cows are going to kill us too apparently. But don't worry, Bill Gates is not only going to blot out the sun so we don't shrivel to a crisp but he's going to supply the world with synthetic meat so we don't have to have those pesky farting cows around the place causing severe weather events. Of course Bill will control the food, but that's because he's the expert who knows how to save us and you are not! Relax, what could go wrong?
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