Pathocracy (from Greek pathos, "feeling, pain, suffering"; and kratos, "rule") is a totalitarian form of government in which absolute political power is held by a psychopathic elite, and their effect on the people is such that the entire society is ruled and motivated by pathological values.

A pathocracy can take many forms and can insinuate itself covertly into any seemingly just system or ideology. As such it can masquerade under the guise of a democracy or theocracy as well as more openly oppressive regimes.

The term pathocracy was coined by Polish psychologist Dr. Andrzej M. Łobaczewski as a result of his study of ponerology. The word reflects Lobaczewski's treatment of the phenomenon as something analogous to a disease or pathology, on a macrosocial level.

Characteristics

1. Suppression of individualism and creativity.
2. Impoverishment of artistic values.
3. Impoverishment of moral values; a social structure based on self-interest and one-upmanship, rather than altruism.
4. Fanatical ideology; often a corrupted form of a valid viable 'trojan' ideology which is perverted into a pathological form, bearing little resemblance to the substance of the original.
5. Intolerance and suspicion of anyone who is different, or who disagrees with the state.
6. Centralized control
7. Corruption
8. Secret activities within government, but surveillance of the general population. (In contrast, a healthy society would have transparent government processes, and respect for privacy of the individual citizen).
9. Paranoid and reactionary government.
10. Excessive, arbitrary, unfair and inflexible legislation; the power of decision making is reduced/removed from the citizens' everyday lives.
11. An attitude of hypocrisy and contempt demonstrated by the actions of the ruling class, towards the ideals they claim to follow, and towards the citizens they claim to represent.
12. Controlled media, dominated by propaganda.
13. Extreme inequality between the richest and poorest.
14. Endemic use of corrupted psychological reasoning such as paramoralisms, conversive thinking and doubletalk.
15. Rule by force and/or fear of force.
16. People are considered as a 'resource' to be exploited (hence the term "human resources"), rather than as individuals with intrinsic human worth.
17. Spiritual life is restricted to inflexible and indoctrinare schemes. Anyone attempting to go beyond these boundaries is considered a heretic or insane, and therefore dangerous.
18. Arbitrary divisions in the population (class, ethnicity, creed) are inflamed into conflict with one another.
19. Suppression of free speech - public debate, demonstration, protest.
20. Violation of basic human rights, for example: restriction or denial of basic life necessities such as food, water, shelter; detainment without charge; torture and abuse; slave labour.

Life cycle
Birth
Studies have demonstrated that the human population contains a percentage (approximately 5%) of essential psychopaths, that is, people without a conscience. Certain types of psychopaths instinctively gravitate towards positions of power over others - left to operate unchecked, they will always make choices that empower them to further manipulate the people around them. And so the seeds of a pathocracy exists within these psychological deviants.

Lobaczewski describes the process, as part of the hysteroidal cycle, in which during long periods of 'good times', ignorance and complacency develop within society, to the point that those psychopaths who naturally gravitate towards positions of power are actually able to gain a foothold in society, undetected. ("All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" - Edmund Burke)

Growth
The strength of a fledgling pathocracy grows via a process analogous to an infection (ponerization) – this is facilitated by the hystericization of society, a process analogous to breaking down of one's immune system, causing an increase in vulnerability to such infection. Gradually the behaviour of a growing percentage of the population sucumbs to pathological egotism via psychological induction. This is a process whereby the hysterical and pathological behaviour of one person inhibits the normal psychological processes of the people he interacts with, and so any one person is subjected to an increasing pressure of pathological behaviour which reduce his cognitive ability to function properly. This process is enabled via many propaganda techniques, especially those aimed at the psychological weaknesses (from the psychopath's point of view) of normal humans, such as susceptibility to emotional manipulation via appeals to conscience: moralizing interpretations, paramoralisms, reversive blockade, information selection and substitution.

As this process gathers pace, a progressive negative selection takes place in society – ie. the people most suited to any given role are gradually replaced by those with more advanced pathological behaviour. This can be clearly seen in Western Capitalism where, to 'get ahead', it is almost obligatory to be ruthless and amoral.

Death
Due to its incremental suppression of all forms of creativity, a pathocracy is inherently unsustainable, and at some point it has to collapse under its own weight. However it is possible for a pathocracy to gain enormous power and destructive potential before this happens, due to the progressive centralization of resources and control. Therefore, if a pathocracy is left to burn out under its own steam, it may destroy much of the surrounding world at the same time.

A pathocracy is often destroyed from within, due to the characteristic lack of 'creative foresight' by the rulers. "Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing." - Political Ponerology; p199

Prevention and Cure
The primary curative measure suggested by Lobaczewski is for a much more widespread and comprehensive psychological education especially regarding the behaviours that hold a pathocracy together. When the general level of awareness of such manouvres as the reversive blockade is raised, then they fail to have the same potency because their audience can 'see through the trick'.

As for long-term prevention, Lobaczewski suggests that we look to more primitive societies, such as the Australian Aborigines that have survived for millenia largely unchanged and on a very different basis to western civilization. Two key ingredients that mark this difference are:

• Decentralised authority and decision making.
• A 'psychological immunization' process as part of a rite of passage, whereby some hardship or ordeal is endured, with the purpose of enabling the participant to have a richer understanding of life (for example, the Aboriginal walkabout).

Examples in fiction
Classic fiction contains various examples of pathocracy in action. Fiction can often be used to illustrate a valuable concept or social observation that would be too personally dangerous for the author to present on a purely factual basis. The cold war era produced these examples of dystopian vision:

Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451, first published 1953
Joseph Heller – Catch-22, first published 1961
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World, first published 1932
George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-Four, first published 1948
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Examples in history
Ancient Egypt
Roman Empire
Mongol Empire
British Empire
Nazi Germany
Israel
United States of America


Excerpt from Casswiki "Pathocracy" 12-14-2017

​Those within a pathocracy live under the constant threat of – if not amidst actually constant – psychological, as well as often physical, warfare.

We have seen how desperate pathocrats are to avoid returning to a system of normal man and the extreme lengths to which they are willing to go to maintain their power. And we have explored the fact that, since they view normals as foolish members of a likely inferior class of being – a view that they consider only further validated by their own rise to power – they have few qualms about inflicting great mental, emotional and physical harm upon them. So it should come as no surprise that pathocrats, when they believe it serves them, may engage in activities as brutal as condemning their own people to hardship and poverty in order to render them more submissive or, as previously discussed, employing violent measures, up to and including torture and murder, on a vast scale. And, since they are hypersensitive to anything that they perceive – or misperceive – as a threat to their control, pathocrats are prone to impulsively and aggressively cracking down through such measures at the slightest hint of potential subversion.

In addition, the pathological often harbor a strong desire to change these apparently misguided creatures that we call normals into people like themselves. They may try ardently to accomplish this through means ranging from disinformation to terrorism. But these efforts inevitably fail because normals are simply fundamentally different from them.

The pathological, however, cannot grasp the solidity of this fundamental difference and, thus, become quite upset when their transformational efforts fall short. Unwilling or unable to accept the basic futility of their quest, they may try to silence anyone who dares to point it out or allude to the biological nature of normals as the actual impediment and to scapegoat anyone or anything that they can falsely blame for the predictable failure.

Lobaczewski cleverly compares this absurd situation to a hypothetical one in which color blind people, having taken over a system, outlaw the act of accurately seeing colors and patrol the land, enforcing the prohibition by moving against anyone observed successfully selecting objects based on color – all while simultaneously outlawing acknowledgement of or discussion about the fact that any of this is taking place.

Given pathocrats’ harshness, as well as their incompetence, normals may wish to simply avoid any interaction with them. However, pathocrats control so many of the resources within a pathocracy that those within it are forced to “walk on eggshells,” engaging and communicating with – and even assisting - the pathological so as to get their needs met while taking delicate care not to upset them. Every day, therefore, is an exercise in, as Lobaczewski describes it, “instructing deviants while avoiding their wrath.”

Ultimately, the stresses of negotiating conditions like this wear on most of the population. Lobaczewski describes the psychophysiological shock, neurosis and immense suffering experienced by normals, and even by some of the pathological, struggling to survive within such a corrupt, delinquent, dangerous and absurd system whether in their family, business, community, nation or in several of these overlapping levels at once. Since most normals cannot become pathological or even easily adapt to the influence of those who are, contact with so much “pathological material” can damage them and they may require special forms of therapy to heal.

This damage can be even more severe in the face of extreme levels of unconsciousness and/or consciousness about what is really happening. For instance, on one hand, harm can be exacerbated when, as is so common during much of the pathocracy’s life cycle, many people within the system lack comprehension, or harbor misunderstandings, about what is being experienced. On the other hand, the consequences can be profoundly tragic for the gifted and talented, who, due to their exceptional sensitivity, are more likely to have some level of intuition about the reality of what is taking place, even as they are surrounded by others who deny or invalidate their perception or even blame the events on them. This leads many such people to back away from most others and attempt to spend time only with those who share their understanding.

Meanwhile, none of this is even to mention the devastation experienced by nonhumans and the rest of our ecosystem under the influence of pathocracy.

Excerpt from "PATHOCRACY" by Howard Ditkoff
​Image courtesy Pixabay