Nearly six decades ago, the American government could not tolerate Russian nuclear weapons so close to the American shores at the height of the old Cold War. It was rightfully deemed too dangerous. By the same token, in the realities of the new Cold War 2.0 that is even more perilous than its predecessor,[3] the Russian state will not accept American missile systems (or anything that could lead to this scenario, such as a NATO base in Ukraine) in close proximity to Russia’s own borders. That is why Mr. Putin issued his “red lines” warning to the U.S. and its allies at his annual address to the Federal Assembly in April.[4] And why he followed up his warning with a list of Russian demands for security guarantees, including no further eastward expansion by NATO,[5] presented to Mr. Biden in late December.
The U.S. has until mid-January to respond to the Russian ultimatum, which could be construed as “the very last effort by Russia to settle the problem diplomatically.”[6] Fundamentally, as observed by Dmitry Orlov, “The choice…is between facing an increasing risk of a nuclear exchange between two nuclear superpowers…and reducing that risk as much as possible.”[7]
As Americans, of course, all we have to remember is how the Kennedy Administration felt about Russia’s nuclear weapons in Cuba, or how our government would feel now about Russian nukes in Mexico or in Canada, to understand that Mr. Putin is not bluffing.
Barely a year into Mr. Biden’s presidency, the growing threat of nuclear annihilation, whether deliberate or accidental, is met with a near-total media blackout. None of the sporadic reports in the Western media about NATO’s Defender Europe exercises last year, one of its largest along the border with Russia, or Ukraine’s irredentist saber-rattling towards Donbas and Crimea, or the highly publicized news of Russia’s troop movements near the border in response, make any mention of it.[8]
And while the Russian media may stumble into the topic of our nuclear roulette occasionally,[9]
it is nowhere near enough for people to wake up and actually do something about it.
This latest episode of human hubris and insanity, if we can survive it, comes at a time when capabilities of the human mind are advancing exponentially, mediated as they are by the achievements of scientific and technological progress and by the availability of a colossal amount of information about ourselves and the world accumulated over thousands of years.
At the same time, we are witnessing a global escalation of reactionary processes that deliberately limit access to this ever increasing flow of information. In a recent article on the current American situation, Philip Giraldi, an 18-year veteran of the CIA and an astute commentator, speaks about “a deliberate and all-encompassing media driven propaganda campaign designed to deliver bread and circuses while also reducing the choices that people are able to make in many of the aspects of their daily lives.”[10]
It is certainly true that multitudes of people in too many countries consume as entertainment the harmful diet of paralogisms, myths, and propaganda fed to them by the mass media instead of the truly vital information. The powerful of this world, whether in Russia, China, the West, or anywhere else for that matter, do not shy away from exploiting man’s subconscious instincts to compromise the sovereignty of his mind for their own selfish interests, often to the detriment of his life and environment.
One book written in the last century by the Polish psychologist Andrzej Łobaczewski offers an opportunity to understand the causes and dynamics of this process and find appropriate ways to control it in the interests of every society and humanity as a whole.
Political Ponerology
Łobaczewski borrowed the title of his book – Political Ponerology[11]
– from theology, where ponerology is the discipline that studies the nature of evil. The book is subtitled A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.
In Łobaczewski’s adaptation, ponerology becomes a new interdisciplinary “branch of science born out of historical need and the most recent accomplishments of medicine and psychology.” It applies them to study the nature of evil in human behavior, its causes and general laws, at the individual and collective (including macrosocial) levels. The name itself comes from the Greek poneros, “evil,” and logos, “word, reason.”
Evil in this case is defined as human behavior that harms others (and oneself).
Łobaczewski makes an important distinction in his book between moral and biological evil.
Moral evil, as distinguished by St. Augustine, means “the evil humans do, by choice, knowing that they are doing wrong.”[12]
The notions of sin and guilt are connected with this type of evil.
Biological, or biopsychological, evil, on the other hand, is conditioned by one’s genetics and upbringing under the influence of all the people and circumstances that have impacted the development of one’s organism and personality. It is this biopsychological evil that is the focus of Łobaczewski’s ponerology science.
Furthermore, he considers the “moral interpretation of the origins of evil to be wrong and immoral at all times,” because it forces human beings to embrace emotionalism (along with moral condemnation, vengeful militarism, religion, or mysticism) over reason and misdiagnose the various psychopathologies plaguing humanity. It also causes them to suppress a self-critical assessment of their own behavior and its motives.
Therefore, political ponerology envisioned by Łobaczewski involves an objective, scientific study of the causes and laws of biopsychological evil.
Pathological Behavior and Its MO
Based on his secret research as a clinical psychologist in Poland during the Soviet period and the work of many other medical professionals, Łobaczewski concludes that every instance of behavior seriously hurting someone else is to some extent a pathology (“contains within its psychological genesis the influence of some pathological factors, among other things, of course.”)
Every one of us in the course of our lives, especially during childhood and adolescence, absorbs psychological material from other people through identification, imitation, mental resonance, and other means. Our own personality and world view are transformed as a result.
“If such material is contaminated by pathological factors and deformities, personality development shall also be deformed. The product will be a person unable to understand correctly either himself… [or] others, normal human relations and morals; he develops into a person who commits evil acts with a poor feeling of being faulty. Is he really at fault?”[13]
Each society contains such individuals whose natural psychological world view, moral reasoning, and basic intelligence have developed improperly. They typically recognize and attract each other, for they are quite aware of how fundamentally different they are from normal people, whom they consider simpleminded, naïve, and inferior, almost a different species.
Moreover, pathological individuals feel inhibited and suppressed by “the systems of normal man,” as Łobaczewski calls them, which are characterized by peace, equality, stability, and cooperation. They strive to supplant them instead with their own power-based value system relying on domination, division, exploitation, and violence.
Such people’s awareness of their own difference affords them a significant psychological advantage over normal people, who simply cannot fathom an abnormal pathological world view outside of their normal categories of thinking and tend to adopt a moralistic interpretation of sinister behavior.
Pathological individuals take advantage of this, using their psychological knowledge and such methods as “the projection of one’s own qualities and intention onto other persons, social groups, or nations, paramoral indignation,” and “false flag operations” to manipulate, dominate, and exploit the society of normal people. These individuals are a destructive factor in the development of every society, for they “easily interpenetrate the social structure with a ramified network of mutual pathological conspiracies poorly connected to the main social structure. These people and their networks participate in the genesis of that evil which spares no nation.”[14]
Path to Liberation
Whether we like it or not, we are all part of the collective consciousness, which has thousands of years of experience, knowledge, and resources acquired by countless generations of our ancestors. This collective consciousness, our noosphere, has even deeper subconscious layers that inexorably affect the course of human history.
Today, this collective consciousness, polluted by various pathologies and manipulations of subconscious instincts, works against itself and its carriers.
Elite fractions of this consciousness, endowed with an overwhelming superiority of privileges and resources, along with pathological deviations, inherited or acquired, use their superiority in order to limit the possibilities of cognition by the less privileged contemporaries, selfishly manipulating their perceptions. Limited cognition leads to constricted and often (self-)destructive behavior options. We can observe this process at play all over the world.
As a result, both the elite and non-elite constituents of humanity are deprived of the opportunity to realize their own true interests untainted by psychopathology. That is, creating a safe, stable, happy, and prosperous world for themselves, their children, and descendants. Furthermore, the very mother system of planet Earth, in which we all exist, is in serious danger as a result of our collective activities aimed at incessant warfare with each other for her resources.
The sorely needed liberation of the collective consciousness from the shackles of pathologies, other people’s or our own, consists in drawing the attention of society and individuals, spontaneously occurring and consciously coordinated via access to crucial information, to the awareness, development, and usage of our own psychological resources, common sense, and essential knowledge, in all their natural laws and cause-and-effect relationships, to defend and protect our own life and our loved ones’.
The spontaneous, instinctive aspect of this ongoing process is manifested to some extent in the “Great Awakening” phenomenon described by the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin. The name comes from the growing, “largely unconscious, intuitive and blind” resistance to globalism and liberalism occurring at the heart of both in the United States and reverberating across the planet. “It is a spontaneous reaction of the masses, hardly competent in philosophy, who have suddenly realized, like cattle before the slaughterhouse, that their fate has already been decided by their rulers…”[15]
(Dugin often represents the views of the Russian military elite, which has a fair share of psychopathologies of its own, so his thesis about Russia’s awakening as an “imperial renaissance,” its “rebirth as an Empire” in the new multipolar world, “the beginning of an era of many Empires,” has to be viewed through that lens and on its own rather poor historical merits. Certainly, there is just as much of a need for an awakening of people in Russia to the psychological manipulation by the elites, as in the United States.)
Role of Psychology and New Science
This underscores the importance of reliable and responsible scientific data as an indispensable pathway for the much-needed deliberate facilitation of global psychological healing and liberation by societies and individuals.
Łobaczewski essentially advocated this, speaking of the critical need for a new science of political ponerology about the nature of biopsychological evil, which should become part of the training and occupation of all psychotherapists.
He also considered individual socio-professional adaptation of each individual, corresponding to his abilities and talents, as the primary unique opportunity, interest, and responsibility of society.
He understood such adjustment as “the development of an adult human’s gifts, skills, realistic thought, and natural psychological world view” in order to optimize the level and quality of education and the requirements of professional activity in accordance with the individual talents of each person.
Qualitatively improper adaptation wastes the talent pool of any society, which leads to growing discontent and conflict among individuals and social groups. “In the final analysis, it also determines whether there will be evolution or revolution.”
Łobaczewski proposes an index – that he calls the “social order indicator” – to evaluate [using proper data such as polling results] “the correlations between individual talents and social adjustment in a given country…The closer the figure to +1.0, the more likely the country in question would be to fulfill that basic precondition for social order…A low correlation would be an indication that social reform is needed. A near-zero or even negative correlation should be interpreted as a danger-sign that revolution is imminent.” This would allow societies to monitor these conditions dynamically over time “in the best interests of all countries.”[16]
In addition to the “social order indicator” as a measure of the level of social adaptation in any country, Łobaczewski proposes a system for studying and diagnosing psychological causes and ponerogenic factors that affect and limit its development, as well as a method for their therapy, employing the full arsenal of modern science.
Diagnosing the Problem
While the overwhelming majority of the population, in the conclusion of Łobaczewski and his sources, are normal people, “every society contains a certain percentage of people carrying psychological deviations caused by various inherited or acquired factors which produce anomalies in perception, thought, and character. Many such people attempt to impart meaning to their deviant lives by means of social hyperactivity.”
Individuals with psychological pathologies comprise no more than one-tenth of the population, but they tend to have an impact on society far outweighing their numbers and natural capabilities. “Their way of life is always some form of predation upon society’s economic creativity…”[17]
It is these psychological anomalies that play a leading role in the process of ponerogenesis of individual and mass character throughout the entire history of human society, according to Łobaczewski.
Types of Psychological Pathologies
He acquaints his readers with the most common types and forms of such deviations, which are actively involved in ponerogenesis. These deviations can be either acquired or inherited.
Among the former are various forms of characteropathy, which afflicted historical figures as diverse as the German Emperor Wilhelm II and Soviet Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Stalin, often due to childhood trauma or brain damage.
Psychopathy of various kinds is described at length in Political Ponerology as an example of inherited deviations that plays a critical role in ponerogenesis. Many Soviet state-security officials, including Dzerzhinsky and Beria, and quite a few leaders in Nazi Germany, starting with Adolf Hitler himself, manifested symptoms of essential psychopathy, in the diagnosis of Łobaczewski and his sources.
This group of mental pathologies affects only about 4 percent of the population; “they can be doctors, lawyers, judges, policemen, congressmen, presidents of corporations that rob from the poor to give to the rich, and even presidents.” Psychopaths have a devastating impact on humanity due to their inability to feel other people’s emotions (emotional Daltonism of sorts) and their lack of conscience. After all, “The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender.”
Schizoidia, or schizoidal psychopathy, also receives considerable attention in Łobaczewski’s book as an inherited deviation with extensive ponerogenic footprint. Schizoid characters can have a profound impact on the world of ideas with their “disturbingly divisive works,” poisoning the consciousness of society on a massive scale for a very long time.
In Łobaczewski’s analysis, Karl Marx in particular and the father of neoconservatism, Leo Strauss, exhibited clear symptoms of schizoidia in their works. The typical “schizoid declaration” envisions “a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea”[18]
and justifies the need for such power to maintain order in human society by questionable means (“noble lies”) with a highly pessimistic view of the human nature.
An interesting perspective on psychopathy is offered by Laurent Guyénot’s argument in his book From Yahweh to Zion[19] that the psychopathic traits of the “jealous God,” as portrayed in many parts of the Old Testament, were influenced and to some extent begotten by the same of the Jewish elites that produced the Torah and were trying to dominate and control the society of normal Jewish people. These traits have also been imprinted on subsequent generations of Jewish elites, profoundly influencing both the Jewish experience and the history of mankind. Significantly, psychopathy is overwhelmingly a male pathology.
We can still see the vengeful face of that “jealous God” in the unending cycle of violence that Palestinians and Israelis are caught in almost 74 years after the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic), when some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land. Guyénot quotes Jewish publisher Samuel Roth, who wrote in 1934, years before the forced Palestinian exodus: “The evils of Israel are the evils of leadership.”[20]
One could say the same thing in a sense about most nations on our planet.
“Great Historical Diseases”
According to Łobaczewski, “In ponerogenic processes, moral deficiencies, intellectual failings, and pathological factors intersect in a time-space causative network giving rise to individual and national suffering.”
This suffering permeates all levels of society and can lead to a macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon. The latter has emerged in different forms at various points in human history. It develops “When a ponerogenic process encompasses a society’s entire ruling class, or nation, or when opposition from normal people is stifled – as a result of the mass character of the phenomenon, or by using spellbinding means and physical compulsion, including censorship…” Hitler’s Germany, the Soviet Union throughout most of its history, and modern North Korea are some of the most prominent examples of such macrosocial phenomena.
Łobaczewski distinguishes between two stages of these “great historical diseases.”[21]
Social Hysterization
The first stage is associated with a period of spiritual crisis in society. This phase is referred to as “social hysterization” or “the hysteroidal cycle” in Political Ponerology.
This stage arises during the “good times,” when “the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient facts.”
“During “happy times” of peace dependent upon social injustice, children of the privileged classes learn to repress from their field of consciousness the uncomfortable ideas suggesting that they and their parents are benefitting from injustice against others…Young minds thus ingest habits of subconscious selection and substitution of data…
Unconscious elimination of data which are, or appear to be, inexpedient gradually turns into habit, and then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. The problem is that any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusion…
In such times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until everything reverts to “bad” times.”[22]
A society at this first stage of a macrosocial ponerogenic phenomenon is governed by three “egos” – “egoism, egotism, and egocentrism.” For the person living in it, one’s own personality, one’s opinions, and interests become the center of the universe. The bonds of moral duty and social ties are weakened; society disintegrates into factions and groups, increasingly at odds with each other.
Selfish people and nations get stuck in their development, mistaking their instinctive reflexes and their vision of the world for the absolute truth. They are unable to understand and accept the values and differences of others and try to force others to accept their black-and-white version of the truth, which often leads to disputes, conflicts, and wars.
“Egotist nations start wasting money and effort in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reasoning and overly emotional reactions…Excessive egotism is a constant property of the hysterical personality…That is why the increase in a nation’s egotism should be attributed to the above described hysterical cycle before anything else.”[23]
The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary (quoted by the editor of Political Ponerology) defines hysterical personality as a “disorder marked by immaturity, dependence, self-centeredness, and vanity, with a craving for attention, activity, or excitement, and behavior that is markedly unstable or manipulative.”
According to Łobaczewski, hysteria is almost never a purely individual occurence, because it spreads through mental resonance, identification, and imitation.
Such a phase of social hysterization characterized Germany in particular and Europe in general on the eve of the First World War. “That era of hysterical regression gave birth to the great war and the great revolution which extended into Fascism, Hitlerism, and the tragedy of the Second World War.”
Another, more modern parallel noted by Łobaczewski is the United States in recent decades.
Łobaczewski’s words, written at the end of the last century and first published in 2006, sound even more relevant in our time:
“America…has reached a nadir for the first time in its short history. Grey-haired Europeans living in the U.S. today are struck by the similarity between these phenomena and the ones dominating Europe at the times of their youth. The emotionalism dominating individual, collective and political life, as well as the subconscious selection and substitution of data in reasoning, are impoverishing the development of a psychological world view and leading to individual and national egotism. The mania for taking offense at the drop of a hat provokes constant retaliation, taking advantage of hyper-irritability and hypo-criticality on the part of others. This can be considered analogous to the European dueling mania of those times.
America’s psychological recession drags in its wake an impaired socio-professional adaptation of this country’s people, leading to a waste of human talent and an involution of societal structure. If we were to calculate this country’s adaptation correlation index,…it would probably be lower than the great majority of the free and civilized nations of this world, and possibly lower than some countries which have lost their freedom.”[24]
“Hysterical anti-culture of mendacity”
Pathological egotism, hypo-criticism of others, and hysteria always involve suppressing a self-critical assessment of one’s own behavior and its internal reasons. No wonder that in societies affected by these “great historical diseases” hypocrisy becomes the order of the day.
Falsehood, the culture of lies, and fake news dominate their public discourse. This “hysterical anti-culture of mendacity, within which telling the truth becomes ‘immoral,’”[25]
reveals itself when whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and John Kiriakou are hounded and jailed (or sought after for imprisonment, as in Snowden’s case). While people like former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran herself, trying to speak the truth about the horrendous consequences of the militaristic U.S. foreign policy, pushing the world to the very brink of nuclear war, are vilified in much of the media as “Russian assets” and “Assad-apologists”.
Public consciousness in a country in the grip of hysteria is contaminated by “conversive thinking,” which, according to Łobaczewski, is a common pitfall of the subconscious selection and substitution of data. With mental hygiene compromised, “peacefulness” becomes “appeasement,” “aggression” morphs into the “right to self-defense,” “dissent” turns “unpatriotic,” and “truth-tellers” are branded “apologists” and “traitors.”
Not by accident, this “hysterical anti-culture of mendacity” is also a hallmark of the modern cancel culture, which ostracizes and “disappears” from social media anyone who questions the official narrative.[26]
Ponerogenic Associations
In societies immersed in such phenomena, politicians are rendered incapable of telling the truth, while people largely lose the ability to differentiate between normal and pathological leaders. In Łobaczewski’s assessment, this constitutes the first sign of a pathocracy and the first criterion of ponerogenesis:
“One phenomenon all ponerogenic groups and associations have in common is the fact that their members lose (or have already lost) the capacity to perceive pathological individuals as such, interpreting their behavior in a fascinated, heroic, or melodramatic way.
“The atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic.”[27]
These ponerogenic associations, within which the carriers of various psychopathologies act as inspirers and spellbinders, can spread their influence throughout societies and become a nucleus of macrosocial ponerologic phenomena.
Neoconservatives (obsessed as the schizoid doctrines of their founder with noble lies and perpetual war to rule “the vulgar” masses[28]), the Israeli Lobby more broadly, and the military-industrial complex in general – are all prime examples of such convergent ponerogenic associations in the present-day USA. These are the people whose unquenchable, psychopathic thirst for power, dominance, and control, coupled with a fallacious belief in “nuclear primacy”[29], which has supplanted the strategic framework of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) in their deviant minds at least since 2006,[30] are pushing the country to the brink of nuclear war with Russia and China.
Militarism and aggressive foreign policy not only manifest the pathological egotism spreading like fire across the nation, spurred on by massive psychological manipulations of the American consciousness by these and other ponerogenic associations, but also serve to sustain the economic order, with its fundamental inequity, that makes such manipulations possible.
Militarism and expansionism also play an important role internally as a distraction for normal population dreaming of a return to a system of normal man. They serve as a symbolic cause to justify the mounting sacrifices and suffering and as an excuse for growing repression against domestic enemies.
All this, in turn, has serious implications for the future of the public’s trust and respect for the institution of government itself, as well as its laws, with profound consequences for the state of morality and social order in the nation.
Russian Experience
My own experience growing up in Russia (back then it was the Soviet Union) in the 1970s and 80s offers many uncomfortable parallels.
As a child, I remember believing in the government, in the fact that it was doing what was in the best interests of me, my parents, our relatives, and our neighbors. My father was in the military, so my life and world view were fairly insulated and limited at that point. Many of our neighbors had apparently learnt to distrust their government long before my parents and I did.
Then came the years of Perestroika and the near-universal disillusionment in the virtues of government and its good intentions; there was a whole lot that my parents and I and the rest of the country were not told during the Soviet years. In 1991, the USSR itself, the country that I grew up in, disappeared from the map.
Mass disillusionment, combined with a dire economic collapse, had a devastating effect on the population’s morality and respect (or rather lack thereof) for law and order. The 90s were hard years in Russia, worse in many ways than the Great Depression in the United States[31]
, and their echoes are heard in the nation’s psyche to this day, plaguing the country with corruption and record socio-economic inequality.
I’m afraid we are heading for a similar tragic experience in the U.S. The American public’s virtues and economic successes have been largely sustained by trust in the republic and its government. This trust itself is carefully managed and manipulated by the social and mass media to manufacture consent around government policies, many of which are causing serious harm to the overwhelming majority of the population. A historic high in economic inequality, the unending series of post-9/11 wars, and the growing conflict both within the community and with the outside world speak for itself.
The illusion of consent is coming apart at the seams, as more and more lives get affected by the sins and inequities of the system and are in effect thrown overboard. Once the majority of them no longer believe in the government and are struggling for their lives, there will be long-term consequences for the stability and survivability of the society-state system. The fate of the USSR serves as a stark example.
Pathocracy
Łobaczewski’s words also sound an ominous warning:
“If a given society does not manage to overcome the state of hysterization under its ethnological and political circumstances, a huge bloody tragedy can be the result.
One variation of such a tragedy can be pathocracy…”
Pathocracy thus forms the second, tragic stage of the “great historical diseases” described by Łobaczewski, which “corrodes the entire social organism, wasting its skills and power.”
Pathocracy in his definition is “a system of government…wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society…” This second phase of the macrosocial disease phenomena is “marked by bloody tragedies, revolutions, wars, and the fall of empires.”
Łobaczewski’s most important advice to a society in the grip of such a disease is “to avail itself of the assistance of modern science, taking particular advantage of data remaining from the last great increase of hysteria in Europe.”[32]
Navigational Map
We are standing at a crossroads in the United States between the first, hysterical stage of the macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon and its second, much more dire phase of a full-blown pathocracy. This coming pathocracy, combined with a globalist, transhumanist system of control being imposed by force or coercion on the entire humanity under the pretext of fighting the coronavirus pandemic[33]
, is also threatening to destroy all life on the planet in a tripwire nuclear conflagration.
The ongoing push for the Patriot Act 2.0 legislation, directed at internal terrorism, could be the harbinger of a dramatic transition to the pathocratic stage. At this point, our consent is still needed to sustain such policies, so we still have a chance to thwart the pathocracy. As Catherine Austin Fitts, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H.W. Bush, explained in an interview about the construction of this transhumanist techno-slavery system (similar to the posthumanist paradigm described by Dugin[34]): “We have the power to change this, but we will have to come clean because almost all of us are complicit in implementing this. It’s not ‘them’; it’s us… The first thing that you have to do is get a good map. In other words, you can’t navigate this unless you can see the transhumanist system and who is building it.”[35]
Her interview – tellingly banned by Facebook and YouTube, but that you can still watch here – outlines the key pillars of this system. While Łobaczewski’s book and the natural science of ponerology that he advocates provide a framework for understanding the people behind this system and offer an invaluable navigational map for directing our individual and collective efforts.
“Therapy for the World”
Psychological hygiene and capacity for proper thought are of primary importance, and Łobaczewski is optimistic that the scientific method in general, and psychology and ponerology in particular, can help us achieve them in our lifetime and offer a type of “therapy for the world”, “psychotherapy for individuals and nations as psychological immunization against pathocracy.”
Such immunity develops naturally in societies that have been under a pathocratic rule for many years. The Russian people, who endured a pathocracy in the XX century longer that any other nation on the planet, fully display this immunization, “with the characteristic detachment from the phenomenon and sardonic humor.”[36]
As Andrei Martyanov writes in Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse, “the Russians get it. They, unlike any other people in the world, can relate to what the United States is going through right now. Russians can read the signs extremely well, while the U.S. elite not only has no experience with it, but is completely insulated from understanding it. This is America’s tragedy unfolding before our very eyes. Not only is America’s crisis systemic, but its elites are uncultured, badly educated and mesmerized by decades of their own propaganda, which in the end, they accept as a reality.”[37]
The Saker explains in his review of Martyanov’s book that “those Russians who write books and articles desperately trying to warn the people of the US of real catastrophe taking place do that not because they are hostile to the United States, but precisely because they are sympathetic to the people of the US.”[38]
This empathy and understanding are a natural corollary to the horrendous pathocratic experience that the Russian people have lived through and an integral part of their immunization to it.
Moreover, the horrendous suffering caused by WWII is seared into the public consciousness and memory in Russia, where nearly every family lost someone in that ordeal. No sane Russian wants another war.
Absent such experience, the American people simply have no reference point to understand the nature of the phenomenon they are dealing with, and the best hope for them and for the rest of the world, in Łobaczewski’s view, lies in science.
“If the ponerogenic activity of pathological factors – deviant individuals and their activities – is subjected to conscious controls of a scientific, individual, and societal nature, we can counteract evil as effectively as by means of persistent calls to respect moral values.”[39]
The reconstruction of the whole science of psychology and investment into research in all spheres of social life, where it plays a role, can teach people in general and Americans in particular proper mental hygiene and the skills of conscious monitoring and courageous acceptance of disintegrative states, which are crucial for one’s emotional progress and development.
The system of education has a vital role to play in this process. We can and should teach our kids “both proper thought and skillful detection of errors in thought…for the purpose of raising people who can easily detect any paralogism.”
This would eventually allow our society to evolve beyond the “good times”-“bad times” paradigm and provide a tremendous boon to the long-term economic and employment prospects in the country. It would also allow us to develop “a just social structure woven of individually adjusted persons, i.e. creative and dynamic as a whole,” governed by its natural laws rather than by prejudice and greed. Another important point is that “Ponerology also leads to the possibilities of prophylactic behavior at the levels of individual, societal, and macrosocial evil.”
Łobaczewski acknowledges that this process of global psychological healing will unavoidably traumatize the pathocrats themselves by undermining their delusional world view. He also warns of their lashing out in response and “the risk of their uncontrolled reaction, which could bring about a world catastrophe.” To minimize this risk, “the good of society” and “the interests of peace on earth”[40]
must guide our efforts above all else.
Understanding as Forgiveness
One of the most profound insights offered by Łobaczewski is that “the problem of biological determination of the behavior of deviants” means that we will never be in a position to ascertain the degree of free choice with which an individual has been endowed and, accordingly, establish how much a person is truly at fault. Therefore, we must renounce “any morally or emotionally charged interpretation of…psychological deviations.” Our only hope is to understand pathological behavior outside of moral categories by applying true scientific rigor to its causes and manifestations, as in the case of all other illness. This would allow us to protect our own minds from overly emotional reactions and vindictive reflexes. “[W]e must not abandon our psychotherapeutic attitude and refrain from punishing those whose guilt we are unable to evaluate,” or risk the world catastrophe. “Forgiveness is only one step beyond understanding…‘To understand all is to forgive all.’”[41]
Forgiveness, which forms a cornerstone precept in world religions, is also a key component of Łobaczewski’s theory and practice of ponerology.
New Legal System and “the Nuremberg Error”
Łobaczewski speaks of the evolution of legal concepts away from punitive repression and towards a more humanitarian system based on the comprehension of man and objective understanding of the processes of ponerogenesis to protect individuals and societies. This new legal system “will counteract such processes in a causative manner and supersede the former ‘penal’ law.” The creation of such law is not just “a psychotherapeutic promise; it must be scientifically prepared” and then carefully enacted.
This law would also apply forgiveness to pathocrats themselves by limiting their responsibility only to those cases “(usually of a criminal sadistic nature) in which it is hard to accept the inability to discern the meaning of such an act.” It would use instead “forced psychotherapy, supervision, prevention, and care” with regard to all individuals with serious psychopathological deviations to monitor and neutralize their destructive behavior and protect society from its effects. “Nothing else could enable the societies of normal people to take over power” and solve “the problem of societies’ genetic burden with a view to the future.”
In a similar vein, Łobaczewski speaks of “the Nuremberg error,” which, in his view, was a loss of the perfect opportunity to reveal to the world for healing and preventative purposes the functioning of pathological factors on a macrosocial scale and the entire psychopathology of the Nazi system. Instead, this opportunity and much of the data was simply lost as several individuals with obvious psychopathic characteristics and other deviations were hanged for their crimes, without revealing the true nature of the phenomenon. “We can thus easily understand why pathocrats [Stalin and others] were so eager to achieve this precise result.”[42]
Perhaps this last point also explains why Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter and a grandmaster in the geopolitics of America’s imperial primacy[43], made sure in his time, according to Łobaczewski, that Political Ponerology did not see the light of day. Thankfully, some things in life cannot be stopped, and after several unsuccessful attempts since the 1980’s, the book was finally published in 2006.
International Relations
The renaissance of psychology and the evolution of legal concepts would also have a profound impact on the state of international relations. Just as pathocracies can spread their poisonous influence to normal countries, so too does a society of normal people provide an example and inevitable encouragement for the majority of normal people living under a pathocratic rule. After all, explains Łobaczewski, normal people can never fully adjust to a pathological system without persistent trauma and neurosis. Russians, Americans, Israelis, and everyone else are the same in this regard, and they can all help each other diagnose and control the pathologies of their elites to save and protect us all.
This spreading effect of psychological knowledge would thus prove a boon to resolving all international conflicts and disputes, eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation that has haunted us for over three quarters of a century and ensuring productive livelihoods and economic prosperity for all humanity in balance and harmony with Mother Earth and our cosmos.
“Maybe the most important book you will ever read”
The editor of Łobaczewski’s work in the Preface to the book calls it “maybe the most important book you will ever read.” It is by no means an easy read, but it certainly is one of those books that has the potential to transform your life.
It resonates with some of the most insightful ideas of the past and of the emerging new science. Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner comes to mind. And “the social organism” of Herbert Spencer.[44] And the more recent revelations of psychogenealogy, or transgenerational psychology.[45]
It adds considerable context and ammunition to the etiology of inverted totalitarianism formulated by Sheldon Wolin, and the phenomenon of State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADs) identified by Lance deHaven-Smith[46]. One may also recognize a theoretical embodiment of Łobaczewski’s “systems of normal man” in the concept of the spheral structure of humanity advocated by Leo Semashko and the Gandhian Global Harmony Association.[47]
Of course, the reconstruction of psychology would simply not be possible without a general scientific revival and the emergence of a much more humble, ethical, and holistic science that doesn’t objectify and mechanize consciousness and spirit, but embraces and respects them.
As a veteran journalist Jonathan Cook writes in a recent article, “Science and technology can be wonderful things. They can advance our knowledge of ourselves and the world we inhabit. But they need to be conducted with a sense of humility we increasingly seem incapable of. We are not conquerors of our bodies, or the planet, or the universe – and if we imagine we are, we will soon find out that the battle we are waging is one we can never hope to win.”[48]
Role of Women
Łobaczewski’s ponerology offers us a chance to understand and adjust ourselves and our history of incessant warfare. The latter has been written predominately by men and influenced heavily by men’s pathologies. The domination of the male principle throughout human history has resulted in all the wars, antagonism, and violence and has led to the current global strife. It is about time the female voice and narrative take over, or at least play an equal role in shaping the human experience.
We can start by listening to the story of Setsuko Thurlow, one of the last remaining Hibakusha, the survivors of the nuclear bombing of Japan more than three quarters of a century ago. In 2017, Setsuko accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for making the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons a reality. Her acceptance speech should be a mandatory read for all high-school students in the U.S. and the rest of the world.[49]
Setsuko speaks about the “processions of ghostly figures” she encountered shortly after the nuclear explosion in the morning of August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima. “Grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out.”[50]
As we listen to Setsuko’s graphic testimony, let us contemplate the fact that the buttons of the Doomsday Machine, created as a horrible Frankenstein by the primarily male minds last century, are distributed among hundreds, if not thousands, of human hands around the planet. Some of these hands are connected to brains afflicted with serious pathologies. Scarier still, some of those buttons no longer require human intervention at all, as in the case of the Russian Perimeter (a.k.a., Dead Hand) system, and are prone to accidents and malfunctions. We MUST secure and eliminate nuclear arsenals,[51] and women play a pivotal role in this process and in writing this history.[52]
Again Setsuko: “To the officials of nuclear-armed nations – and to their accomplices under the so-called “nuclear umbrella” – I say this: Listen to our testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential. You are each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering humankind. Let us all be alert to the banality of evil.”[53]
Łobaczewski’s book helps us to stay alert to the psychopathology of such evil as immunotherapy and ammunition against it. If Zbigniew Brzezinski wanted to keep the book out of our hands, it must be worth our time. And so is our collective future free from the constant specter of nuclear holocaust…[54]
Anna Tolstoyevskaya grew up in the Soviet Union and came to the U.S. as a student of Philology and Foreign Service in the mid-1990s. She is an analyst by trade and an Austinite at heart, having spent a third of her life in that beautiful city.
Notes
[1] Stephen Cohen: This is Most Dangerous Moment in U.S.-Russian Relations Since Cuban Missile Crisis, Democracy Now!, April 13, 2017. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/13/stephen_cohen_this_is_most_dangerous
[2] Edward Lozansky, How to avoid WWIII, The Washington Times, April 20, 2021.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/20/crosstalk-how-to-avoid-wwiii/
[3] See: Conversation on Russia, U.S., Peace, and War, with Vladimir Kozin and Ray McGovern. This video discussion by two foremost experts on the U.S. and Russia relations and national security issues took place on May 6, 2021, and was sponsored by World BEYOND War and the Center for Citizen Initiatives. https://worldbeyondwar.org/video-conversation-on-russia-u-s-peace-and-war-with-vladimir-kozin-and-ray-mcgovern/
[4] Pepe Escobar, Putin Rewrites the Law of the Geopolitical Jungle, The Unz Review, April 23, 2021. https://www.unz.com/pescobar/putin-rewrites-the-law-of-the-geopolitical-jungle/
[5] Russia Publishes Its List of Demands for DC Empire, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Anti-Empire.com, December 13, 2021. https://anti-empire.com/russia-publishes-its-list-of-demands-for-dc-empire/
[6] The Saker, Clouds on the horizon, December 27, 2021. http://thesaker.is/clouds-on-the-horizon-open-thread/
[7] Dmitry Orlov, 2022: The Year the US achieves Collapse. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56954.htm
[8] See, e.g., this typical article in NY Times, written in the best traditions of the Soviet press:
In Russia, a Military Buildup That Can’t Be Missed, New York Times, April 16, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/world/europe/russia-ukraine-troops.html
It informs the reader about those pesky, paranoid Russians, “scowling” at the reporter, their “eyes narrowing with suspicion” (“Why hasn’t the F.S.B. caught you yet?”), and the “[n]otoriously sensitive to any slights” Mr. Putin, amassing troops on the border with Ukraine “to send a message…not to take Russia for granted.” There is exactly one small mention, buried deep inside the article, of Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine, “who in recent months has moved troops close to the border with the separatist regions,” as a possible provocation for Russian actions. NATO, bringing thousands of troops to Russia’s western border for its Defender 2021 exercises, is not mentioned at all, aside from one comment by Russia’s defense minister, Mr. Shoigu. And neither is the growing risk of a direct military clash between Russia and NATO as a result of all these maneuvers and the uncontrollable, catastrophic consequences for all humanity that it entails.
In this short segment (in Russian) on a conservative evening talk show, one of the more colorful characters in Russian politics, Mr. Vladimir Zhirinovsky (a leader of the ultranationalist LDPR) imitates a wolf howling at the moon to suggest what the three world leaders – Messrs. Putin, Biden, and Jinping – should do when it comes down to the last few minutes before they annihilate each other’s nations and the rest of the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IGD8NWle-U
[10] Philip Giraldi, The Totalitarian Moment, The Unz Review, December 21, 2021. https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-totalitarian-moment/
Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes). Red Pill Press. Kindle Edition. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1476637.Political_Ponerology
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Alexander Dugin, The Manifesto of Great Awakening. Against the Great Reset. Katehon, 2021. https://katehon.com/en/article/manifesto-great-awakening-against-great-reset
[16] Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Laurent Guyénot, From Yahweh to Zion: Three Thousand Years of Exile: Jealous God, Chosen People, Promised Land . . . Clash of Civilizations. Kindle Edition. Translated and edited by Kevin Barrett.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] See: Distinguished Scientist and Inventor of mRNA Removed from Twitter, Centre for Research on Globalization, December 31, 2021. https://www.globalresearch.ca/distinguished-scientist-inventor-mrna-removed-twitter/5765926
[27] Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology.
[28] Danny Postel, Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neo-cons, and Iraq. openDemocracy. http://www.mafhoum.com/press6/165C39.htm
[29] Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006 Issue. http://web.archive.org/web/20150727204719/https:/www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2006-03-01/rise-us-nuclear-primacy
[30] Eric Zuesse, Russia Increases Its Defense, While U.S. Backs Down from Provoking World War III, Centre for Research on Globalization, April 22, 2021. https://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-increases-defense-us-backs-down-provoking-wwiii/5743182
[31] See: Robert David English, Russia, Trump, and a New Détente: Fixing U.S.-Russian Relations, Foreign Affairs. March 10, 2017:
“Russia’s misery during the 1990s is difficult for outsiders to comprehend. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s economy entered a sharp slide that would continue for over eight years. Although this decline is rarely referred to as a depression in Western media, in fact it was much worse than the Great Depression in the United States—between 1929 and 1932, U.S. GDP fell by some 25 percent, whereas Russia’s fell by over 40 percent between 1990 and 1998. Compared with the Great Depression, Russia’s collapse of the 1990s was nearly twice as sharp, lasted three times as long, and caused far more severe health and mortality crises. The public health disaster reflected Russia’s prolonged agony: stress-aggravated pathologies (suicide, disease caused by increased alcohol and tobacco use) and economically induced woes (poor nutrition, violent crime, a crumbling public health system) combined to cause at least three million “excess deaths” in the 1990s.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2017-03-10/russia-trump-and-new-detente
[32] Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology.
[33] See: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset,” Centre for Research on Globalization, 2021.
[34] Alexander Dugin, The Manifesto of Great Awakening.
[35] Planet Lockdown Interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, December 22, 2020. https://home.solari.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/sr12220_Interview_Planet_lockdown.pdf
[36] Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology.
[37] The Saker, Book Review: “Disintegration” by Andrei Martyanov. Indicators of the Coming American Collapse, The Unz Review, 2021. https://www.unz.com/tsaker/book-review-disintegration-by-andrei-martyanov/
[38] Ibid.
[39] Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Bill Van Auken, Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the catastrophe in Afghanistan, dead at 89, World Socialist Web Site. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/29/zbig-m29.html
[44] Laurent Guyénot, Blood and Soul: An Essay in Metagenetics, The Unz Review, 2021. https://www.unz.com/article/blood-and-soul/
[45] Ibid.
[46] Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America. 2013, Austin: University of Texas Press. Kindle Edition.
[47] See: Anti-Nuclear Peace/Cyberspheronics Manifesto: The Noosphere Third Way XXI, dedicated to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki victims 75th anniversary by 44 coauthors from 25 countries, representing the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and Global Harmony Association. 2020, New York. https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=908
[48] Jonathan Cook, In Our Hurry to Conquer Nature and Death, We Have Made a New Religion of Science, CounterPunch, April 22, 2021. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/04/22/in-our-hurry-to-conquer-nature-and-death-we-have-made-a-new-religion-of-science/
[49] Setsuko Thurlow: Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 2017. https://www.wagingpeace.org/setsuko-thurlow-nobel-peace-prize-acceptance-speech/
[50] Ibid.
[51] See: Brian Toon, I’ve studied nuclear war for 35 years – you should be worried, TEDxMileHigh. https://youtu.be/M7hOpT0lPGI
[52] See: Saanjana Goldsmith, Beyond the conventional gender roles: The Role of Women in Anti-nuclear Movements, Modern Diplomacy, March 9, 2021. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/03/09/beyond-the-conventional-gender-roles-the-role-of-women-in-anti-nuclear-movements/
[53] Setsuko Thurlow: Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech .
[54] Peter Watkins’ award-winning docudrama The War Game ( https://archive.org/details/TheWarGame_201405 ) is one of the best films on the subject of a nuclear war and its aftermath. It was made in 1965 for BBC, which withdrew it from public screening before its release, as it was deemed “too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting.” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game ) The film was made before scientists even knew of the nuclear winter effect of a large-scale nuclear war. The late Roger Ebert, who gave The War Game a perfect score, ended his review ( https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-war-game-1967 ) with the following:
“They should string up bedsheets between the trees and show “The War Game” in every public park. It should be shown on television, perhaps right after one of those half-witted war series in which none of the stars ever gets killed.
And, somehow, it should be shown to the leaders of the world’s nuclear powers, the men who have their fingers on the doomsday button. If the button is ever pushed, the world’s nuclear arsenal contains the equivalent of 20,000,000 tons of TNT apiece for you, and for me, and for every blessed person on this earth. Will the survivors envy the dead?”