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

order to open the door to questions presented in later chapters.

~~~

Throughout the ages and in various cultures, the best peda-

gogues have understood the importance, regarding the forma-

tion of a culture and a person’s character, of the scope of con-

cepts describing psychological phenomena. The quality and

richness of concepts and terminology20 mastered by an individ-

20 !obaczewski’s emphasis on language is very important. Semiotics is the

study of language or any other symbol system that conveys meaning. One of

the great philosophical discussions that has continued for centuries relates to

that of the alphabet giver and “namer” of things. In the monotheistic world,

Adam is, of course, the one we think of when we think of the “giving of

names” to things. In terms of the study of Semiotics, the question is: did he

name things based on what they were, in essence, or did he simply create a

convention, and arbitrarily name them whatever appealed to him?

The theories of Semiotics propose that there are two levels, or “planes of

articulation”. At the level of any given language, such as Greek, English,

Chinese, or whatever, there is what they call the “Expression plane” that

consists of a lexicon, a phonology and syntax. In other words, the Expression

Plane is the selection of words that belong to that language, the sounds that

the selection of words produce, and the way they are arranged to convey

meaning. That is the first plane. The second plane is called the Content Plane.

This is the array of concepts that the language is capable of expressing. This

last is rather important because, as we have all heard at least once in our

lives, Eskimos have many words for snow while people who do not live in an

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

73

ual and society, as well as the degree to which they approxi-

mate an objective world view, condition the development of

our moral and social attitudes. The correctness of our under-

standing of self and others characterizes the components condi-

tioning our decisions and choices, be they mundane or impor-

tant, in our private lives and social activities.

The level and quality of a given society’s psychological

worldview is also a condition of realization of the full socio-

psychological structure present as a potential in the psycho-

logical variety within our species. Only when we can under-

stand a person in relation to his actual internal contents, not

some substituted external label, can we help him along his path

to proper adjustment to social life, which would be to his ad-

vantage and would also assist in the creation of a stable and

creative structure of society.

Supported by a proper feel for, and understanding of, psy-

chological qualities, such a structure would impart high social

office to individuals possessing both full psychological normal-

ity, sufficient talent and specific preparation. The basic collec-

tive intelligence of the masses of people would then respect

and support them.

And so, in such a society, the only pending problems to be

resolved would be those matters so difficult as to overwhelm

the natural language of concepts, however enriched and quali-

tatively ennobled.

However, there have always been “society pedagogues”,

less outstanding but more numerous, who have become fasci-

nated by their own great ideas, which might, sometimes, even

environment where snow and ice are the dominant features may only have

one or two words for these phenomena.

So it is that the “Content Plane” of a language becomes crucial to what can be

discussed in that language. In order for the sounds of speech to be meaning-

ful, the words formed out of these sounds must have a meaning associated

with them. In other words, the sounds relate to the Content. The Content

Continuum represents the Universe or reality to which our words relate as we

are capable of conceiving it.

!obaczewski is rightly pointing out that the normal person (not to mention

psychology as a whole, though to a lesser extent) has an extremely psycho-

logical vocabulary of limited understanding because the content continuum of

understanding has been artificially truncated, repressed, or otherwise dimin-

ished. [Editor’s note.]

74

SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS

be true, but are more often constricted or contain the taint of

some hidden pathological thought processes. Such people have

always striven to impose pedagogical methods which would

impoverish and deform the development of individuals’ and

societies’ psychological world view; they inflict permanent

harm upon societies, depriving them of universally useful val-

ues. By claiming to act in the name of a more valuable idea,

such pedagogues actually undermine the values they claim and

open the door for destructive ideologies.

At the same time, as we have already mentioned, each soci-

ety contains a small but active minority of persons with various