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

IX. THERAPY FOR THE WORLD ..............................................278

TRUTH IS A HEALER.........................................................................281

FORGIVENESS...................................................................................289

IDEOLOGIES......................................................................................296

IMMUNIZATION ................................................................................299

X. A VISION OF THE FUTURE ...................................................303

BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................311

INDEX.................................................................................................317

EDITOR’S PREFACE

“Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid

foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and

so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem in-

significant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as

high as Mt Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see

all the forces that shape events; not just the things happening

near to you.”

Miyamoto Musashi

The book you hold in your hand may be the most important

book you will ever read; in fact, it will be. No matter who you

are, what your status in life, what your age or sex or nationality

or ethnic background, you will, at some point in your life, feel

the touch or relentless grip of the cold hand of Evil. Bad things

happen to good people, that’s a fact.

What is evil? Historically, the question of evil has been a

theological one. Generations of theological apologists have

written entire libraries of books in an attempt to certify the

existence of a Good God that created an imperfect world. Saint

Augustine distinguished between two forms of evil: “moral

evil”, the evil humans do, by choice, knowing that they are

doing wrong; and “natural evil”, the bad things that just happen

- the storm, the flood, volcanic eruptions, fatal disease.

And then, there is what Andrew !obaczewski calls Macro-

social Evil: large scale evil that overtakes whole societies and

nations, and has done so again and again since time immemo-

rial. The history of mankind, when considered objectively, is a

terrible thing.

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

Death and destruction come to all, both rich and poor, free

and slave, young and old, good and evil, with an arbitrariness

and insouciance that, when contemplated even momentarily,

can destroy a normal person’s ability to function.

Over and over again, man has seen his fields and cattle laid

waste by drought and disease, his loved ones tormented and

decimated by illness or human cruelty, his life’s work reduced

to nothing in an instant by events over which he has no control

at all.

The study of history through its various disciplines offers a

view of mankind that is almost insupportable. The rapacious

movements of hungry tribes, invading and conquering and

destroying in the darkness of prehistory; the barbarian invaders

of the civilized world during medieval times, the bloodbaths of

the crusades of Catholic Europe against the infidels of the

Middle East and then the “infidels” who were their own broth-

ers: the stalking noonday terror of the Inquisition where mar-

tyrs quenched the flames with their blood. Then, there is the

raging holocaust of modern genocide; wars, famine, and pesti-

lence striding across the globe in hundred league boots; and

never more frightening than today.

All of these things produce an intolerable sense of indefen-

sibility against what Mircea Eliade calls the Terror of History.

There are those who will say that now this is all past; man-

kind has entered a new phase; science and technology have

brought us to the brink of ending all this suffering. Many peo-

ple believe that man is evolving; society is evolving; and that

we now have control over the arbitrary evil of our environ-

ment; or at least we will have it after George Bush and his

Neocons have about 25 years to fight the Endless War against

Terror. Anything that does not support this idea is reinterpreted

or ignored.

Science has given us many wonderful gifts: the space pro-

gram, laser, television, penicillin, sulfa-drugs, and a host of

other useful developments which should make our lives more

tolerable and fruitful. However, we can easily see that this is

not the case. It it could be said that never before has man been

so precariously poised on the brink of such total destruction.

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

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