Oppression, Ponerization and Rabid Dogs

Why rebels and revolutionaries are often such disreputable characters

How do you turn a potentially good dog bad? You abuse it. What about a human? Same answer. It may not work on all dogs, or all humans, but there’s a significant percentage of both populations who are susceptible and will grow into “sociopaths” as a result. (See here for my use of that word.)

Pavlov identified certain temperaments in the dogs he studied and experimented upon, which closely matched the traditional four temperaments: choleric, sanguine, melancholic, and phlegmatic. Different temperaments respond differently to stressors. Some will become more inhibited or passive; others more aggressive and active. (But with enough abuse or terrorization, any dog can be broken.)

Wondering if the link between abuse and canine aggression is perhaps exaggerated, however, I did a little search and found this:

… abused dogs were reported as displaying significantly higher rates of aggression and fear directed toward unfamiliar humans and dogs, excitability, hyperactivity, attachment and attention-seeking behaviors, persistent barking, and miscellaneous strange or repetitive behaviors.¹

It makes sense, and matches the common-sense view of things. Abused dogs act out or react neurotically. And the same goes for humans. Some kids are resilient. Others may end up presenting with any or many of the above symptoms (including the barking). Lobaczewski called the resulting character disturbances “sociopathy” or “characteropathy,” depending on whether the stronger causal factor was primarily social or organic in nature. But childhood deprivation and abuse—even if it’s “just” emotional—damage the brain, so the distinction may not be that important.

The basic point is simple: abuse produces various forms of psychopathology and criminality. Children of psychopaths, narcissists, borderlines, anankasts, schizoids, paranoids, etc., don’t necessarily just suffer as children. They are also often scarred for life, with character transformations curiously similar to the dogs mentioned above, ranging from aggressive criminals to neurotic wrecks. It may not be fair, but it’s how things tend to work—a kind of psychological Matthew effect.

In the world of dogs, the aggressive and fearful (read: sociopathic and paranoid) are often put down. We don’t do that so much anymore to their human parallels, but we did in medieval times, executing up to 1% of the male population each generation. Frost and Harpending write:

Through its monopoly on violence, the State tends to pacify social relations. Such pacification proceeded slowly in Western Europe between the 5th and 11th centuries, being hindered by the rudimentary nature of law enforcement, the belief in a man’s right to settle personal disputes as he saw fit, and the Church’s opposition to the death penalty. These hindrances began to dissolve in the 11th century with a consensus by Church and State that the wicked should be punished so that the good may live in peace. Courts imposed the death penalty more and more often and, by the late Middle Ages, were condemning to death between 0.5 and 1.0% of all men of each generation, with perhaps just as many offenders dying at the scene of the crime or in prison while awaiting trial. Meanwhile, the homicide rate plummeted from the 14th century to the 20th. The pool of violent men dried up until most murders occurred under conditions of jealousy, intoxication, or extreme stress. The decline in personal violence is usually attributed to harsher punishment and the longer-term effects of cultural conditioning. It may also be, however, that this new cultural environment selected against propensities for violence.

One of Lobaczewski’s central ideas is that the dynamics of evil apply at scale. The dynamic with a pathological parent or spouse is replicated at the macrosocial level between a pathocracy and the majority of normal people. Given the above about dogs, I suppose that the dynamics also apply across species. Pathology induces pathology in our children, and it does the same in our pets. (Plus there’s a link between animal cruelty and antisocial behavior, especially psychopathy.) But scale is what I want to focus on here.

If the dynamics of evil scale, what would we expect to see in the victims of macrosocial dynamics, like war, genocide, military occupation, poverty, and constant petty harassment? Potentially higher rates of ponerogenic factors (i.e. psychopathology and criminality) among groups or nations abused or terrorized physically, emotionally, or economically; and among the very poor. Just as the child victim of an adult psychopath suffers twice, war, sanctions, poverty, and crime create a feedback loop of suffering and pathology.²

Most people can sympathize with the underdog, but with a certain mindset, it can become a dogma. The victims of oppression are idolized to the extent that those victims’ own oppressive pathological traits and behaviors are excused or ignored. (The first criterion of ponerogenesis in action.) This can reach stratospheric levels of braindead absurdity. Maybe it’s the multiple murderer and rapist who deserves our sympathy because he “just had a bad childhood” or was born into a “historically marginalized group.” Or the mass murdering rebels/revolutionaries who “suffered so much under the [insert foreign or domestic oppressor here].” There’s no crime too reprehensible to defend when it is committed by a victim, or one’s chosen team. (And there isn’t a deranged revolutionary leader that a hardened “anti-imperialist” won’t idolize.)

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to understand the background factors contributing to someone’s sins and crimes without morally justifying or approving of them. It’s also possible to sympathize with a cause without supporting the crazies acting in the name of that cause. Because “causes” tend to attract the crazies.

Lobaczewski had some important things to say on the topic:

Revolutionary and radical ideas find fertile soil among … people in downward socio-occupational adjustments. (Political Ponerology, p. 43)

Ruin a nation’s economy, enslave a people, or otherwise interfere with the natural sorting process that produces a socioeconomic structure and rewards talent, and you will place plenty of otherwise competent young men in this category.

Spiced by deviance, [asthenics’] visions and doctrines may influence naive rebels and people who have suffered actual injustice. Existing social injustice may then look like a justification for a radicalized worldview and becomes a vehicle for the assimilation of such visions. (p. 119)

In other words, people who have suffered actual oppression are susceptible to pathocratic ideologies.

The ideology of associations affected by such [pathological] degeneration has certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity, or scope of action, namely, the motivations of an aggrieved group, radical redress of the grievance, and the higher value of the individuals who have joined the organization. (p. 159)

Does your “group” have a grievance, historical or contemporary? Would you like to radically redress that grievance? Are you convinced your lives are of “infinite value,” and those who aren’t part of your group are thus expendable? Well, have I got the cause for you.

In any revolutionary or resistance-type situation, normal people will resonate with and support the crazies’ vision, because the enemy is obviously evil, and my people are obviously not (because “I’m a decent person, they are just like me, and I make pretty good assessments”). Others will lose their minds in the bloodlust.³ And the crazies will just take a vacation from pretending to be normal by engaging in a little rape and slaughter. The chaos of war and revolution removes the ordinarily obtaining rules of decency, and psychopaths and sadists thrive in such degradation.

This is perhaps the third insult, on top of a ruined childhood and adulthood marred by PTSD or a personality disorder. When you’re desperate and you do the only thing that seems like it will work, you only end up creating an opening for the very type of person that made you the way you are. And the cycle repeats.

Lobaczewski stressed two bits of advice in his work: 1) foster in oneself a sense of one’s own ignorance or nescience (this helps in combatting dissociative thinking and cognitive biases), and 2) avoid moralizing when dealing with the reality of evil. The second is particularly on my mind at the moment.

Given the timing of this post, you may think I’m talking about the Palestinians or the Israelis. I actually had both in mind, and more. We don’t have to like it, but the dynamics are the same everywhere, and it doesn’t matter which side you’re on.

The reactions to the recent Gazan assault on Israel aren’t surprising, but they’re still remarkable. On the one hand you have people like Dr. Mennah Elwan posting bits of conversive thinking like this:

She wrote: “Israel kills Palestinians everyday, didn’t see anyone caring,” again ending the statement with a smiley face emoji. Dr. Elwan went on to add: “Also, there are no civilians in Israel.”

And that’s on the light end. Alex Gutentag and Michael Shellenberger wrote on this phenomenon here:

Why The Radical Left Supports Terrorism

But as they point out, some conservative voices are just as unhinged:

Meanwhile, some on the political Right have expressed extreme sentiments. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham told Israel, “We’re in a religious war here… Level the place.” Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called Hamas’ terrorist acts “an attack on America” and advised Prime Minister Netanyahu, “Finish them. Finish them.”⁴

Among those keeping their heads: Mike Cernovich, Matt Walsh, and Tucker Carlson, and Naomi Wolf and Isaac Saul.

Wolf describes the state of mind which promotes the type of moralizing that inspires the terrorist-sympathizers and the genocidal calls for turning Gaza into a lifeless ruin:

… you need, as a consumer of stories and images that all represent themselves as “news”, right now especially, to try to strengthen the activity of your prefrontal cortex. Images of savagery, especially against the innocent — especially against women and children and the elderly — hijack our brain’s processing. They activate (perhaps differently in men and in women) the amygdala, … which is concerned with flight or fight. As a result, when you see images or hear stories of terrorized or raped or abused Israeli innocents, many of you will feel momentarily better … at the thought of “liquidating Gaza.” The same will be the case for supporters of Palestine when the innocent women and children victims of the “hammering” — as CNN puts it — of Gaza, surface, as they surely will soon.

I warn that that a tribalist response to these images is a temporary amygdala rush only, and there is an argument to be made that this impulse, when materialized, does little to actually help or mourn or honor the current Israeli injured and dead or the future Palestinian injured and dead.

In “liquidating Gaza,” which many have called for online — which, my friends, is not a video game — there will be more atrocities generated, many more civilian deaths, and thus also many more scenes and realities and generational memories of abused or broken or dead women and children and elderly, these ones wearing slightly different clothing with somewhat different architecture behind them, or with rubble all around them.

Martha Stout called it the “paranoia switch.” (See an old article of mine on it here). Daniel Goleman called it an “amygdala hijack.”

So while hardcore anti-imperialists will excuse just about anything in the name of fighting oppression, those on the other side of the equation will pretty much justify the exact same things as long as they are done to the “barbaric terrorists.” Both sides will engage in extreme forms of conversive thinking to justify themselves and their tribe, engage in moralistic and paramoralistic thinking, and generally manage to avoid the crux of the matter completely. Meanwhile, the “barbaric terrorist” types on both sides win at the expense of the majority of normal people.

It seems to me that the only hope to avoid the total destruction of Israel, Palestine, or both at this point, is to adopt a ponerological mindset. (I know, that’s exactly what I’d say!) Israel-Palestine is a petri dish of ponerization, conversive thinking, character disturbance, and PTSD. Until more people learn to see the world in this way, we’ll just get more of the same black-and-white thinking, the same justifications for barbaric attacks, retaliations, and counter-retaliations. And people thinking the best solution is just to kill them all (because they’re all totally evil, naturally).

1. As for whether or not certain breeds are inherently more aggressive than others, here’s some food for thought: “Some breeds scored higher than average for aggression directed toward both humans and dogs (e.g., Chihuahuas and Dachshunds) while other breeds scored high only for specific targets (e.g., dog-directed aggression among Akitas and Pit Bull Terriers). In general, aggression was most severe when directed toward other dogs followed by unfamiliar people and household members. Breeds with the greatest percentage of dogs exhibiting serious aggression (bites or bite attempts) toward humans included Dachshunds, Chihuahuas and Jack Russell Terriers (toward strangers and owners); Australian Cattle Dogs (toward strangers); and American Cocker Spaniels and Beagles (toward owners). More than 20% of Akitas, Jack Russell Terriers and Pit Bull Terriers were reported as displaying serious aggression toward unfamiliar dogs. Golden Retrievers, Labradors Retrievers, Bernese Mountain Dogs, Brittany Spaniels, Greyhounds and Whippets were the least aggressive toward both humans and dogs.”

2. I included this footnote in Political Ponerology: “Personality disorders—among other mental health problems—are much more prevalent among the homeless (estimated at 23.1%, with individual studies ranging from 2.2% to 71.0%) and in prisons (up to 65%, including 47% antisocial personality disorder). See Fazel et al., ‘The Prevalence of Mental Disorders among the Homeless in Western Countries: Systematic Review and Meta-Regression Analysis’ (2008), and ‘Serious Mental Disorder in 23,000 Prisoners: A Systematic Review of 62 Surveys’ (2002). Poverty, when combined with biological risk factors, also greatly increases the risk of developmental problems and crime, potentially creating a vicious cycle of characteropathy (see Raine, Anatomy, pp. 249–250, 263).”

As for low SES: “Residence in higher-risk neighbourhoods was associated with more PD symptoms and lower levels of functioning and social adjustment. … In sum, evidence suggests that lower socioeconomic-status is generally associated with higher rates of psychopathology, and more specifically with the development and expression of externalizing disorders such as ASPD and psychopathy.”

And war: “Prevalence rates of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were two- to three-fold higher amongst people exposed to armed conflict compared to those who had not been exposed, with women and children being the most vulnerable to the outcome of armed conflicts.”

3. Psychopaths are more into cold-blooded, instrumental murder. “Crimes of passion” are the province of relatively normal people and sociopaths.

4. Jordan Peterson regrettably appears to fall in this category, tweeting:

Give 'em hell

@netanyahu

Enough is enough

Well, hell is currently raining down on Gaza. The Strip is cut off from food, water, and electricity. The death toll has surpassed the number of Israelis killed in the Hamas attacks. Is that enough?