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

upon by public opinion and many individuals. Rather, we use

categories which are as objective as we can possibly achieve.

Psychologists utilize conceptual language with descriptions of

phenomena that are independent of any common imaginings,

and this is an indispensable tool of practical activity. In prac-

tice, however, it usually turns into clinical slang rather than the

distinguished scientific language it would behoove us to foster.

An analogy can be drawn between this conceptual language of

psychology and mathematical symbols. Very often, a single

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

51

Greek letter stands for many pages of mathematical operations

which is instantly recognized by the mathematician.

Objective language

In the categories of psychological objectivity, cognition and

thought are based on the same logical and methodological prin-

ciples shown to be the best tool in many other areas of natural-

istic studies. Exceptions to these rules have become a tradition

for ourselves and for creatures similar to us, but they turn out to

engender more error than usefulness. At the same time, how-

ever, consistent adherence to these principles, and rejection of

additional scientific limitations, lead us toward the wide hori-

zon from which it is possible to glimpse supernatural causal-

ity. Accepting the existence of such phenomena within the

human personality becomes a necessity if our language of psy-

chological concepts is to remain an objective structure.

In affirming his own personality, man has the tendency to

repress from the field of his consciousness any associations

indicating an external causative conditioning of his world view

and behavior. Young people in particular want to believe they

freely chose their intentions and decisions; at the same time,

however, an experienced psychological analyst can track the

causative conditions of these choices without much difficulty.

Much of this conditioning is hidden within our childhood; the

memories may be receding into the distance, but we carry the

results of our early experiences around with us throughout our

lives.

The better our understanding of the causality of the human

personality, the stronger the impression that humanity is a part

of nature and society, subject to dependencies we are ever bet-

ter able to understand. Overcome by human nostalgia, we then

wonder if there is really no room for a scope of freedom, for a

Purusha9? The more progress we make in our art of under-

9 Sanskrit. A word literally meaning “man”; but bearing the mystical signifi-

cance of the “Ideal Man”, the Higher Self within. The term Purusha is often

used in the Esoteric philosophy to express the Spirit or the everlasting entita-

tive individual of a Universe, a Solar System, or of a man. Purusha comes

from the verb-root pri – to fill, to make complete, to bestow. One of the two

52

SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS

standing human causation, the better we are able to liberate the

person who trusts us from the toxic effects of conditioning,

which has unnecessarily constricted his freedom of proper

comprehension and decision making. We are thus in a position

to close ranks with our patient in a search for the best way out

of his problems. If we succumb to the temptation of using the

natural structure of psychological concepts for this purpose, our

advice to him would sound similar to the many non-productive

pronouncements he has already heard and that never quite

manage to really help him to become free of his problem.

The everyday, ordinary, psychological, societal, and moral

world view is a product of man’s developmental process within

a society, under the constant influence of innate traits. Among

these innate traits are mankind’s phylogenetically determined

instinctive foundation, and the upbringing furnished by the

family and the environment. No person can develop without

being influenced by other people and their personalities, or by

the values imbued by his civilization and his moral and relig-

ious traditions. That is why his natural world view of humans

can be neither sufficiently universal nor completely true. Dif-

ferences among individuals and nations are the product of both

inherited dispositions and the ontogenesis10 of personalities.

It is thus significant that the main values of this human

world view of nature indicate basic similarities in spite of great

divergences in time, race, and civilization. This world view

quite obviously derives from the nature of our species and the

natural experience of human societies which have achieved a

certain necessary level of civilization. Refinements based on

literary values or philosophical and moral reflections do show

differences, but, generally speaking, they tend to bring together

the natural conceptual languages of various civilizations and