ence in Austria by a “friendly” physician who then was re-
vealed to be an agent of Communist Secret Services. All the
Red nodes and networks in New York were mobilized to orga-
nize a counteraction against the information contained in this
book being made publicly and widely available. It was terrible
to learn that the overt system of suppression I had so recently
escaped was just as prevalent, though more covert, in the
United States. It was demoralizing to see how the system of
conscious and unconscious pawns worked; to watch people
who trusted their conscious “friends” – unknown to them as
Communist agents - and performed the insinuated activities
against me with such patriotic zeal. As a result of these activi-
ties, I was refused any assistance, and to survive, I had to take
work as a labourer when already of an age to retire. My health
collapsed and two years were lost.
I learned also that I was not the first such emissary who had
come to America bringing similar knowledge; I was rather the
third one; the other two had been similarly dealt with.
In spite of all these circumstances, I persevered and the
book was finally written in 1984 and carefully translated into
English. It was esteemed by those who read it as being “very
informative”, but it was not published. For the psychological
editors it was “too political”; for political editors, it contained
too much psychology and psychopathology. In some cases, the
“editorial deadline was already closed”. Gradually, it became
clear that the book did not pass the “insider’s” inspections.
The time for this book’s major political value is not over;
it’s scientific essence remains permanently valuable and inspi-
rational. It may serve a great purpose in coming times, when
properly adjusted and expanded. Further investigations in these
areas may yield a new understanding of human problems that
32
PREFACE
have plagued humanity for millennia. Ponerology may buttress
the centuries old moral sciencea by a modern natural approach.
Thus this work may contribute to progress toward a universal
peace.
That is the reason that I laboured to retype on my computer
the whole already fading manuscript after twenty years. No
essential changes have been introduced, and it is presented as it
was written in New York all those many years ago. So let it
remain as a document of a very dangerous work of eminent
scientists and myself, undertaken in dark and tragic times under
impossible conditions; still a piece of good science.
The author’s desire is to place this work in the hands of
those who are capable of taking this burden over and progress-
ing with the theoretical research in ponerology, enrich it with
detailed data to replace that which has been lost, and put it in
praxis for various valuable purposes it may serve – for the good
of individual people and for all nations.
I am thankful to Madame Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Profes-
sor Arkadiusz Jadczyk, and their Friends for their heartfelt
encouragement, understanding, and their labour in bringing my
old work to be published.
Andrew M. !obaczewski.
Rzeszów – Poland, December 2005
CHAPTER IV
PONEROLOGY
Ever since ancient times, philosophers and religious think-
ers representing various attitudes in different cultures have
been searching for the truth regarding moral values, attempting
to find criteria for what is right, and what constitutes good ad-
vice. They have described the virtues of human character at
length and suggested these be acquired. They have created a
heritage containing centuries of experience and reflection. In
spite of the obvious differences of originating cultures and
attitudes, even though they worked in widely divergent times
and places, the similarity, or complementary nature, of the
conclusions reached by famous ancient philosophers are strik-
ing. It demonstrates that whatever is valuable is conditioned
and caused by the laws of nature acting upon the personalities
of both individual human beings and collective societies.
It is equally thought-provoking to see how relatively little
has been said about the opposite side of the coin; the nature,
causes, and genesis of evil. These matters are usually cloaked
behind the above generalized conclusions with a certain
amount of secrecy. Such a state of affairs can be partially as-
cribed to the social conditions and historical circumstances
under which these thinkers worked; their modus operandi may
have been dictated at least in part by personal fate, inherited
traditions, or even prudishness. After all, justice and virtue are
the opposites of force and perversity; the same applies to truth-
fulness vs. mendacity, similarly like health is the opposite of an
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
97
illness. It is also possible that whatever they thought or said
about the true nature of evil was later expunged and hidden by
those very forces they sought to expose.
The character and genesis of evil thus remained hidden in
discreet shadows, leaving it to literature to deal with the subject
in highly expressive language. But, expressive though the liter-
ary language might be, it has never reached the primeval source
of the phenomena. A certain cognitive space remained as an
uninvestigated thicket of moral questions which resist under-
standing and philosophical generalizations.
Present-day philosophers developing meta-ethics are trying
to push on along the elastic space leading to an analysis of the
language of ethics, contributing bits and pieces toward elimi-
nating the imperfections and habits of natural conceptual lan-
guage. Penetrating this ever-mysterious nucleus is highly
tempting to a scientist.
At the same time, active practitioners in social life and nor-
mal people searching for their way are significantly condi-
tioned by their trust in certain authorities. Eternal temptations
such as trivializing insufficiently-proven moral values or dis-
loyally taking advantage of naive human respect for them, find
no adequate counterweight within a rational understanding of
reality.
If physicians behaved like ethicists, i.e. relegated to the
shadow of their personal experience relatively un-esthetic dis-
ease phenomena because they were primarily interested in
studying questions of physical and mental hygiene, there would
be no such thing as modern medicine. Even the roots of this
health-maintenance science would be hidden in similar shad-
ows. In spite of the fact that the theory of hygiene has been
linked to medicine since its ancient beginnings, physicians
were correct in their emphasis upon studying disease above all.
They risked their own health and made sacrifices in order to
discover the causes and biological properties of illnesses and,
afterwards, to understand the patho-dynamics of the courses of