Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

mon sense and scientific reflection. This process also trans-

forms these ideologies into destructive factors, preventing them

from participating in the constructive evolution of social struc-

tures and condemning their adherents to frustration. Along with

its degenerate growth, such an ideology is rejected by all those

social groups governed by healthy common sense. The activi-

ties of such an ideology thus induce nations to stick to their old

tried-and-true basics in terms of structural forms, providing

hard-line conservatives with the best weapon possible. This

causes stagnation of the evolutionary processes, which is con-

trary to the overall laws of social life, and brings about a po-

larization of attitudes among various social groups, resulting in

revolutionary moods. The operations of the pathologically al-

tered ideology thus facilitate the pathocracy’s penetration and

expansion.

Only by means of retrospective psychological analysis upon

the ideology, reverting to the time which preceded ponerogenic

infection, and taking into account the pathological quality and

298

THERAPY OF THE WORLD

the causes for its deformation, can the original creative values

be discovered and bridges built right over the time frame of

morbid phenomena.

Such skillful unhusking of the original ideology, including

some reasonable elements which emerged after the ponero-

genic infection appeared, may be enriched by values elaborated

in the meantime and become capable of further creative evolu-

tion. It will thus be in the position to activate transformations in

accordance with the evolutionary nature of social structures,

which will in turn render these societies more resistant to pene-

tration by pathocratic influences.

Such analysis presents us with problems which must be

skillfully overcome, namely finding the proper semantic desig-

nates. Thanks to characteristic creativity in this area, pathoc-

racy produces a mass of suggestive names prepared in such a

way as to divert attention from a phenomenon’s essential quali-

ties. Whoever has been ensnared in this semantic trap even

once loses not only the capacity for objective analysis of that

type of phenomenon; he also partially loses his ability to use

his common sense. Producing such effects within human minds

is the specific purpose of this patho-semantics; one must first

protect one’s own person against them and then proceed to

protect social consciousness.

The only names we can accept are those with a historical

tradition contemporary to the facts and reaching back to pre-

infection times. For instance, if we call pre-Marxist socialism

“Utopian socialism”, it will be difficult for us to understand

that it was much more realistic and socially creative than the

later movements already laced with pathological material.

However, such caution does not suffice when we are deal-

ing with phenomena which cannot be measured within the

natural structure of concepts because they were produced by a

macrosocial pathological process. We must thus again under-

score that the light of natural healthy common sense is insuffi-

cient for effecting such retrospective refinement of ideological

values later deformed by such a process. Psychological objec-

tivity, adequate knowledge in the area of psychopathology, and

the data contained in the prior chapters of this book are indis-

pensable for this purpose.

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

299

Thus equipped, we also become qualified to create indis-

pensable new names which would elucidate the actual proper-

ties of phenomena, providing we pay sufficient attention to

precepts of semantics with all the probity and economy, as

would demand William of Ockham. After all, these names will

spread throughout the earth and help many people correct their

world view and social attitude. Such activity, albeit legalistic,

actually aims at depriving pathocratic circles of their name

controlling monopoly; their predicable protests will merely

prove that we are on the right track.

Ideology thus regenerated regains the natural life and evolu-

tionary capacity which pathologization has stifled. At the same

time, however, it loses its ability to fulfill imposed functions

such as feeding a pathocracy and cloaking it from both healthy

common sense criticism and something even more dangerous,

namely a feel for psychological reality and its humorous as-

pects.

Condemning an ideology because of its errors, whether con-

tained from the outset or absorbed later, will never deprive it of

this imputed function, especially not in the minds of people

who failed to condemn it for similar reasons. If we further at-

tempt to analyze such a condemned ideology, we will never

achieve the effect which has a curative influence upon the hu-