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

the activity of pathological factors is a ponerological indica-

tion. This is a crucial factor for prevention of tragedy during a

society’s periods of moral crisis.

For centuries, individuals exhibiting various psychological

anomalies have had the tendency to participate in the activities

of human unions. This is made possible on the one hand by

such group’s weaknesses, i.e. failure in adequate psychological

knowledge; on the other hand, it deepens the moral failings and

stifles the possibilities of utilizing healthy common sense and

understanding matters objectively. In spite of the resulting

tragedies and unhappiness, humanity has shown a certain pro-

gress, especially in the cognitive area; therefore, a ponerologist

may be cautiously optimistic. After all, by detecting and de-

scribing these aspects of the ponerization process of human

groups, which could not be understood until recently, we shall

be able to counteract such processes earlier and more effec-

tively. Again, depth and breadth of knowledge of human psy-

chological variations is crucial.

Any human group affected by the process described herein

is characterized by its increasing regression from natural com-

mon sense and the ability to perceive psychological reality.

Someone considering this in terms of traditional categories

might consider it an instance of “turning into half-wits” or the

development of intellectual deficiencies and moral failings. A

ponerological analysis of this process, however, indicates that

pressure is being applied to the more normal part of the asso-

ciation by pathological factors present in certain individuals

who have been allowed to participate in the group because the

lack of good psychological knowledge has not madated their

exclusion.

Thus, whenever we observe some group member being

treated with no critical distance, although he betrays one of the

psychological anomalies familiar to us, and his opinions being

treated as at least equal to those of normal people, although

they are based on a characteristically different view of human

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matters, we must derive the conclusion that this human group is

affected by a ponerogenic process and if measures are not

taken the process shall continue to its logical conclusion. We

shall treat this in accordance with the above described first

criterion of ponerology, which retains its validity regardless of

the qualitative and quantitative features of such a union: the

atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathologi-

cal individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at

the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in

concern as ponerogenic.

Such a state of affairs simultaneously consists as a liminal

(watershed) situation, whereupon further damage to people’s

healthy common sense and critical moral faculties becomes

ever easier. Once a group has inhaled a sufficient dose of

pathological material to give birth to the conviction that these

not-quite-normal people are unique geniuses, it starts subject-

ing its more normal members to pressure characterized by cor-

responding paralogical and paramoral elements.

For many people, such pressure of collective opinion takes

on attributes of a moral criterion; for others, it represents a kind

of psychological terror ever more difficult to endure. The phe-

nomenon of counter-selection thus occurs in this phase of pon-

erization: individuals with a more normal sense of psychologi-

cal reality leave after entering into conflict with the newly

modified group; simultaneously, individuals with various psy-

chological anomalies join the group and easily find a way of

life there. The former feel “pushed into counter-revolutionary

positions”, and the latter can afford to remove their masks of

sanity ever more often.

People who have been thus thrown out of a ponerogenic as-

sociation because they were too normal suffer bitterly; they are

unable to understand their specific state. Their ideal, the reason

they joined the group, which constituted a part of the meaning

of life for them, has now been degraded, although they cannot

find a rational basis for this fact. They feel wronged; they

“fight against demons” they are not in a position to identify.

The fact is their personalities have already been modified to a

certain extent due to saturation by abnormal psychological

material, especially psychopathic material. They easily fall into

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the opposite extreme in such cases, because unhealthy emo-