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

turned to his own kind for this purpose, in part depriving other

humans of their humanity simply because he was more power-

ful.

Dreams of a happy and peaceful life thus gave rise to force

over others, a force which depraves the mind of its user. That is

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

85

why man’s dreams of happiness have not come true throughout

history. This hedonistic view of “happiness” contains the seeds

of misery and feed the eternal cycle whereby good times give

birth to bad times, which in turn cause the suffering and mental

effort which produce experience, good sense, moderation, and

a certain amount of psychological knowledge, all virtues which

serve to rebuild more felicitous conditions of existence.

During good times, people progressively lose sight of the

need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of oth-

ers, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws. Is it worth

pondering the properties of human nature and man’s flawed

personality, whether one’s own or someone else’s? Can we

understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not un-

dergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and

blaming the victim? Any excess mental effort seems like point-

less labor if life’s joys appear to be available for the taking. A

clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more

farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket

killjoy.

Perception of the truth about the real environment, espe-

cially an understanding of the human personality and its values,

ceases to be a virtue during the so-called “happy” times;

thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave

well enough alone. This, in turn, leads to an impoverishment of

psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the

properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to

mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those

mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by

peaceful means. A nation’s enrichment or involution regarding

its psychological world view could be considered an indicator

of whether its future will be good or bad.

During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncom-

fortable because it reveals inconvenient facts. It is better to

think about easier and more pleasant things. Unconscious

elimination of data which are, or appear to be, inexpedient

gradually turns into habit, and then becomes a custom accepted

by society at large. The problem is that any thought process

based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise

to correct conclusions; it further leads to subconscious substitu-

86

THE HYSTEROIDAL CYCLE

tion of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones,

thereby approaching the boundaries of psychopathology.

Such contented periods for one group of people - often

rooted in some injustice to other people or nations - start to

strangle the capacity for individual and societal consciousness;

subconscious factors take over a decisive role in life. Such a

society, already infected by the hysteroidal23 state, considers

any perception of uncomfortable truth to be a sign of “ill-

breeding”. J. G. Herder’s24 iceberg is drowned in a sea of falsi-

fied unconsciousness; only the tip of the iceberg is visible

above the waves of life. Catastrophe waits in the wings. In such

times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of

necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When commu-

nities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral

criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified

at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until

everything reverts to “bad” times.

We already know that every society contains a certain per-

centage of people carrying psychological deviations caused by

various inherited or acquired factors which produce anomalies

in perception, thought, and character. Many such people at-

tempt to impart meaning to their deviant lives by means of

social hyperactivity. They create their own myths and ideolo-

gies of overcompensation and have the tendency to egotisti-

cally insinuate to others that their own deviant perceptions and

the resulting goals and ideas are superior.

When a few generations’ worth of “good-time” insouciance

results in societal deficit regarding psychological skill and

moral criticism, this paves the way for pathological plotters,

23 Hysteria is a diagnostic label applied to a state of mind, one of unmanage-

able fear or emotional excesses. Here it is being used to describe “fear of

truth” or fear of thinking about unpleasant things so as to not “rock the boat”

of current contentment. [Editor’s note.]

24 Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), a theologian by training and profes-

sion, greatly influenced German letters with his literary criticism and his