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Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes)
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Product Description
The first manuscript of this book went into the fire five minutes before the arrival of the secret police in Communist Poland. The second copy, reassembled painfully by scientists working under impossible conditions of repression, was sent via a courier to the Vatican. Its receipt was never acknowledged, no word was ever heard from the courier - the manuscript and all the valuable data was lost. The third copy was produced after one of the scientists working on the project escaped to America in the 1980s. Zbigniew Brzezinski suppressed it. Political Ponerology: The scientific study of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes was forged in the crucible of the very subject it studies. Scientists living under an oppressive regime decide to study it clinically, to study the founders and supporters of an evil regime to determine what common factor is at play in the rise and propagation of man's inhumanity to man. Shocking in its clinically spare descriptions of the true nature of evil, poignant in the more literary passages where the author reveals the suffering experienced by the researchers who were contaminated or destroyed by the disease they were studying, this is a book that should be required reading by every citizen of every country that claims a moral or humanistic foundation. For it is a certainty that morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of Evil. Knowledge of its nature, how it creates its networks and spreads, how insidious is its guileful approach, is the only antidote.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #12230 in Books
- Published on: 2007
- Binding: Paperback
- 239 pages
Customer Reviews
a unique and courageous contribution to the field
As I understand, the odds of this extensively researched book being published were slim to none. It attacks the system -- whatever name or ideology it may go by, be it "communism" or "democracy = free market reign [yeah, right]" -- at its very core.
The book exposes the true perpetrators of evil and deviance on the planet -- psychopaths -- and the psychological mechanisms via which the control over the population is instituted and maintained. AFAIK, it is the only book out there that puts all the available information into a coherent whole which has far-reaching implications. No wonder such knowledge would be considered dangerous and would be suppressed by all means available.
The author, Andrzej M. Lobaczewski, had been through hell and beyond, and I applaud his determination and wisdom. The publisher, RPP press, is no less deserving of praise: editing this book, supplementing it with comments on recent research and bringing it to us readers is truly an act of service to humanity.
The book is written in an academic style, appropriate for the complex ideas that it conveys. It is not a light read; prepare to dedicate time to it and come back to the important passages. It will surely be a time well spent.
Evil under a Microscope
Political Ponerology is not one of the easiest books to read, yet it contains concepts that are absolutely essential for any person struggling to understand exactly what is happening today to the governments, corporations and societies of this planet.
Andrew Lobaczewski spares few words in outlining the core problems facing the contemporary study of psychology and the humanistic "natural world view" that tends to gloss over the facts when confronted with the conscienceless manipulation that is the hallmark of the psychopath. Rationalisation and pseudo-moralising are two of the biggest tools that the psychological predator has in its toolkit, and Lobaczewski explains in somewhat technical terms how they proceed to carve a trail of emotional and psychic destruction in the lives of those they come into contact with.
Less of the book is devoted to the nature and behaviour of the psychopath and "characteropath" (a psychopath by nurture rather than nature), than the process of what Lobaczewski describes as "ponerogenesis", or the creation of complex social networks inside otherwise normal organizations which then attain complete control in order to use the organization to exclusively fulfil the self-serving goals of the psychopaths. Lobaczewski uses observations of the Nazi German and Communist Soviet regimes to demonstrate how whole governments can become infected by these networks to the point that nations begin to display pathological behaviour (aggression, expansionist agendas, social policy decay, suppression of civil liberties and terrorising the population, and eventually large-scale murder and genocide). Advanced cases of ponerization result in what Lobaczewski calls a "Pathocracy" - government by the pathological.
He also describes the way that normal citizens in a developing pathocracy begin to display increasingly hysterical behaviour and this in turn abets the rise and formation of an advanced pathocracy as the masses lose their "common sense". His references to the phenomenon as being similar to a virulent disease that can kill an otherwise healthy organism are disturbingly apt when one considers the collapse of Germany after WWII, and Russia after the fall of Communism.
The proposed solution for immunizing oneself from the effect of both individual predators and pathological systems is to learn the psychological knowledge required, and put it into practice by becoming a keen observer of human behaviour. Not an easy task, but one that may eventually become essential to one's survival in these troubled times.
I would class this book as mandatory reading for anybody who wants to learn how to protect themselves from abuse by psychological predators and how bureaucracy, corporate, and government systems can become propagators of similar abusive values.
Most important!
As written on the book , this is the most important book , is a must read to whoever feels the drive for understanding the reality today , the ponerization of the world as described by lobaczewsky is something that , in his words, shouldn't try to cure if not understood and that book is an amazing step towards understanding , and truth and again as the author points out "truth is a healer", really the most important book to read today
