Linda Kimball
The politics of Poneros, the sons of Belial, and Macrosocial evil, persecution, and martyrdom
By Linda Kimball
"Political Ponerology" is the name given by Polish psychiatrist Andrzej M. £obaczewski to an interdisciplinary study of the founders (i.e., Karl Marx) and supporters of 20th century totalitarian political regimes. His study utilizes data from psychology, sociology, philosophy, and history to account for the propagation of man's inhumanity to man through such phenomena as terrorism, aggressive war, ethnic cleansing, ostracism, genocide, and despotism:
"As many as 7 million Ukrainians were starved in Soviet Socialist dictator Joseph Stalin's artificial, forced famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. This is approximately the total population of Manitoba, Newfoundland, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island." (Inky Mark, M. P. Dauphin – Swan River House of Commons 2 June 1998, Famine-Genocide in Ukraine 1932-1933)
"Moscow employed the famine as a political weapon against the Ukrainians in the years 1932-1933. The famine was in its entirety artificially induced and organized." (ibid, Investigation of Communist Takeover and Occupation of the Non-Russian Nations of the U.S.S.R p. 35)
"... On one side, millions of starving peasants, their bodies often swollen from lack of food; on the other, soldiers, members of the GPU carrying out the instructions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts and taken away everything edible; they had shot or exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages; they had reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to a melancholy desert." (ibid, Malcolm Muggeridge, "War on the Peasants," Fortnightly Review, 1 May, 1933)
"Food is a weapon." (ibid, Maxim Litvinov – Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs)
According to the authors of "The Black Book of Communism," Communist and Socialist regimes did not just commit criminal acts but were criminal enterprises in their very essence:
"...all ruled lawlessly and without regard for human life (and) one particular feature of many Communist regimes (was) their use of famine as a weapon. The Bolsheviks had decided to eliminate...any challenge or resistance, even if passive, to their absolute power. This strategy applied not only to groups with opposing political views, but also to such social groups as the nobility, the middle class, the intelligentsia...the clergy...military officers and the police." (pp. xvii, 8-9)
A coalition of atheist pagan Jews (Bolsheviks) and atheist pagan Gentiles (Marxist Communists) systematically stole the personal property of Russians and sexually perverted their children and conditioned them to hate the Trinity, Jesus Christ God Incarnate in particular, as well as their own parents, the Christian church and their homeland. The sons of Belial undermined and destroyed the traditional family, unleashed a holocaust of abortion, homosexualized culture, desecrated and blasphemed churches, crucified thousands of nuns and priests and in general, committed monstrous crimes against humanity which took the lives of more than sixty-million men, women, and children. For example:
"About 200,000 clergy, many crucified, scalped and otherwise tortured, were killed during the approximately 60 years of communist rule in the former Soviet Union, a Russian commission reported this week. In addition, another 500,000 religious figures were persecuted and 40,000 churches destroyed in the period from 1922 to 1980, the report said. Half the country's mosques and more than half the synagogues were also destroyed" Clergymen were crucified on churches' holy gates, shot, scalped [and] strangled," said Alexander Yakovlev, head of the Commission for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression. The commission prepared the report for Russian President Boris Yeltsin. "I was especially shocked by accounts of priests turned into columns of ice in winter," Yakovlev said. "It was total cruelty." (paulbogdanor.com)
"Persecution and martyrdom of Christians under 20th century totalitarianism – mainly of Russian Orthodox Christians under Bolshevism – is by far the greatest crime in all of recorded history....Attempts at "killing the soul" started only months after the Revolution of 1917." Persecution and martyrdom was, "several times greater than the Holocaust in terms of innocent lives brutally destroyed. It has killed more Christians in a few decades than all other causes put together in all ages, with Islam a distant second as the cause of their death and suffering. And yet it still remains a largely unknown, often minimized, or scandalously glossed over crime." (New Martyrs of the East and Coming Trials in the West, Srdja Trifkovic, OrthodoxyToday.com)
In this light we can understand why Lobaczewskis' original manuscript quickly went into the furnace just minutes before a secret police raid. In 1984 the manuscript was reassembled, but according to Lobaczewski, its publication was blocked by technocratic globalist Zbigniew Brzezinski. After half a century of suppression it is finally available.
Though Lobaczewski's study is a clinically accurate description of the nature of human evil it falls into the error of attributing evil to biological causes rather than the sin nature of man. Despite this failing, Political Ponerology is a shocking account of large scale evil super-heated by hatred of the Holy God and burning with envy and will to power – or what Lobaczewski terms 'ponerogenic processes' that overtook modern Russia and have overtaken whole societies and nations since time immemorial.
When ponerogenic processes have finally saturated a society's entire ruling class and opposition from morally convicted people has been crushed, then we are dealing with what Lobaczewski calls Macrosocial Evil or a "macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon." (p. 121)
Ponerogenic processes are synonymous with the unfettered, vastly inflamed sin nature of man beginning with inflated pride issuing in covetousness, selfishness, ingratitude, jealousy, resentment and hate, all of which early Church Fathers combined into the cold-blooded vice known as envy. Thus when 'macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon' has saturated a nation's ruling class and most of its society it means that a tyranny of evil fueled by poneros has overtaken it.
Poneros is:
"The passion which causes evil, the father of death, the first entrance for sin, the root of wickedness, the birth of sorrow, the mother of misfortune, the basis of disobedience, the beginning of shame. Envy banishes us from paradise....Envy made Joseph a slave. Envy is the death-dealing sting, the hidden weapon, the sickness of nature, the bitter poison, the self-willed emaciation, the bitter dart, the nail of the soul, the fire in the heart, the flame burning on the inside..." (Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa, quoted in Death by Envy, Fr. George R.A. Aquaro, p. 74)
"Scripture combines envy with jealousy, covetousness and stinginess, into a single concept that is a manifestation of idolatry (narcissism) of self and belief that there is a limited supply of good..." (ibid)
Scripture attributes poneros to the Evil One, the leader of all forces of evil. The Evil One is the spirit of rebellion and negation, the father of lies, "the adversary" "the accuser," "calumniator" and undiluted essence of envy who works through the principle of negation and rebellion in the fallen souls of lawless natural men:
"The evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil (poneros) things" Matthew 12:35
Poneros has played a part in human dynamics ever since the Evil One persuaded the envy-bitten Cain to murder his brother Abel, Judas to betray Jesus Christ and the Pharisees to crucify Him, and Saul to suddenly throw his spear at David in a murderous attempt at pinning him to a wall. (1 Sam. 18:11) In fact, the envy-bitten Saul tried three times to kill David with a javelin (1 Sam. 18:10-11, 19: 9-10) and to bring about David's death by the Philistines. (1 Sam. 18:25)
Poneros is also the spirit animating British philosopher Adam Smith's sophistry, that is, his phony concern postured in sophisticated questions and 'evidence' such as,
"Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?" "Should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?"
"Evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don't – the difference in their life chances – is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don't." (Parents reading to kids blasted as 'unfair,' Joe Kovacs, WND, May, 2015)
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. captures the spirit of poneros in his brilliantly conceived short story, "Harrison Bergeron,"
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
As a tyranny of poneros had overtaken and led to the degradation and implosion of ancient Greek society, an exploration of Greek thought with regard to types of envy will prove enlightening.
The first type is 'zelos,' a kind of envy stirred up by any perceived superiority (inequality). In the poem, 'Work and Days,' Isocrates presents the spirit of zelos as "with grim face and screaming voice, who delights in evil" and causes Decency and Respect to flee. (1) The anonymous author "Michael Swift" warns of this very thing in a widely circulated article called "Gay Revolutionary." In prose that chills the spine Swift warns the envied straight community that the men of Sodom shall be victorious,
"....because we are filled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages...We too are capable of firing guns and manning barricades of the ultimate revolution....Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks." (Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America, Peter Jones, p. 255)
Empowered by spineless, accommodating jellies throughout our seminaries, pulpits, government and courts, the envy-bitten men and women of modern Sodom maliciously terrorize Christian bakers, florists, bed and breakfast owners and other decent, law-abiding straight males and females, forcing them to either submit or be crushed even as the men of Sodom openly rape the souls and bodies of their sons and daughters in churches, schools, and elsewhere. (Envy and the Greeks: A Study of Human Behavior, Peter Walcot, pp. 2-3 from Death by Envy, Fr. George R. A. Aquaro, p. 12)
As the Holy Triune God is the "moral monster" responsible for the poor choices, weaknesses, sin nature and failures of the self-pitying, self-absorbed and envy-bitten, zelos is also the spirit behind the 'murder' of the Christian God, the closing off of the supernatural dimension and the Way to Paradise with the requisite suppression of His Revelation to man, the miracle of Special Creation, Original Sin, Moral Law, immutable Truth, judgment, and hell. Thus zelos is the lying, hateful, intolerant spirit behind the elevation of evolutionary scientism above the inerrant Word of God.
Zelos animates back-stabbing gossip, slander, snooping, spying, tale-bearing, the politics of personal destruction as well as special rights and privileges for the so-called oppressed (envy-bitten). Zelos demands redistribution of wealth, egalitarian sameness issuing in loss of gender identity (i.e., mother, father, husband, wife) in favor of gender-neutral terms such as 'partner.' It demands same-sex marriage, absolute inclusion and tolerance, 'legalized' illegal immigration, the mandated sexualization and perversion of our youth by pan-sexual and omni-gendered sexologists, and a hob-nailed boot viciously crushing the faces of envied "oppressors."
Morally, zelos is the venom behind America's reigning Pharisaic legalism: political correctness, hate crime laws, speech codes, gender equality, economic equality, and sensitivity training. In 'political' terms, green-eyed zelos is the spirit of green multiculturalism, green ecology, green sustainability, green 'family planning,' green global warming/cooling/change, green socialism and green diversity.
In "Diversity': The Idol of Academia," Jack Kerwick describes diversity as a 'god' that is as educationally invidious as it is false:
"Diversity" is not just a good in the academic world. It is the supreme good, the one good before which all other considerations must yield...."cultural diversity" not only doesn't correspond to a rise in intellectual diversity; it invariably corresponds to a rise in political uniformity. This is crucial, for the promotion of "cultural diversity" is nothing more or less than the promotion of a left-wing ideological agenda." (June 26, 2014 Jack Kerwick, Front Page Magazine)
Zelos in its every malignant, sadistic permutation is the green-eyed spirit behind left-wing ideology and its' totalitarian fantasy:
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." (Winston Churchill, British orator, author and Prime Minister during World War II, 1874-1965)
"When I say that Marxism is based on envy, I mean that the glorious revolution of the proletariat...was really a promise to put a final end to all the conditions that make for envy." (Joseph Epstein, author and former editor of The American Scholar, from Truths about Socialism, Coral Ridge Ministries, p. 66)
After zelos come philotimia and hybris. In Greek mythology, philotimia is narcissism – love of self, love of attention, love of self-affirmation, love of self-gratification – while hybris is the arrogance, insolence, contempt, insult, shame, hatred and mistreatment of human objects of envy by a sadistic narcissist. In Greece, philotemia and hybris were on display when the gods and their earthly counterparts punished inferior 'subhumans' for usurping their authority as well as when they struggled amongst themselves for positions of primacy. In America, philotimia and hybris are visible when America's left-right 'ruling class' god-men try to destroy each other in their vicious power struggles among themselves. These two green-eyed monsters, philotemia/hybris are on display whenever the god-men's lapdog media engage in vicious psychological bullying and other malicious forms of mistreatment of stupid, unevolved hominids – the hard-working middle class, especially the Tea Party and God-fearing orthodox Christians and faithful Jews – the so-called oppressors. Philotimia/hybris is also the spirit animating the intolerant, hateful attitudes of evolutionary theologians toward defenders of the Revealed Word of God beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo.
Phthonos is the fourth type of envy/covetousness. Phthonos seeks to deprive envied 'other' of possessions, honor, status, spiritual gifts and virtues. Phthonos for example, is the diabolical Darwinian reductionism of man in his Creator's spiritual image to ape. It is the green-eyed totalitarian spirit of Agenda 21 together with save the earth and re-wilding schemes that elevate crocodiles, trash fish, and other creatures above the welfare of human beings. Phthonos animates carbon footprint schemes, population control plans, passive euthanasia (refusal of health care to targeted Obama care recipients), the attempted theft of Bundy's ranch and other private property and resources. Phthonos is driven not just to ostracize and confiscate but to use psychological manipulation (i.e., lies, false guilt, slander, propaganda, scape-goating) and other terroristic force to take or deprive 'other' of whatever is coveted/envied.
Phthonos will even drive a man (i.e., Cain) to murder his own brother, to "murder" the Holy God (i.e., Nimrod, Karl Marx) and Jesus Christ God Incarnate (Nietzsche).
After ancient Greece had been overtaken by the spirit of poneros, the egalitarian, collectivist, or leveling impulse served to help relieve an envy-torn culture by leveling all men down to the lowest common denominator. This was enforced by character destruction and the threat of ostracism.
"...one had to watch not only the malevolent actions of envious friends and enemies, but the very real threat of ostracism by the democratic community. Philanthropy had much less to do with (love of man) as it had with....avoiding other people's phthonos of one's success." (Death by Envy, p. 14)
The fifth type of envy is vaskonia or Evil Eye (ophthalmos poneros) and means something even more malignant than phthonos. Vaskonia bespeaks an evil spirit associated with demonic possession and the malign touch or glance of which leaves a soiled imprint and implies instant victimization and death. Vaskonia is inherently sudden, meaning one wrong word, one wrong expression, or the impulse of a moment is all it takes to become the victim of the Evil Eye.
As a whole, Scripture combines envy with hatred of the Holy God and one's brother, which means that there can be no love whatsoever where there is envy and hatred in one's heart.
Today increasing numbers of Americans at every level of society, on both left and right, Christian and secular, are controlled by their passions unfettered from the restraint of transcendent moral law. Adding to the problem are culturally relevant church models attended by thousands of Americans that cater to felt-needs and self-indulgent emotional feel-goodism (2 Tim. 4: 1-220). Thus America is "a nation ruled by its passions," said Reb Bradley, author of "Born Liberal Raised Right." This is why heinous acts,
"...of casual disregard for life, unheard of fifty years ago, have become a familiar item on the evening news; students killing classmates, children murdering their playmates....these gruesome crimes are merely symptomatic of a breakdown of moral fiber..." (ibid, pp. 2-3)
The most frightening aspect of America's descent into moral imbecility, narcissism, heresy, apostasy, pathological lying, and lawlessness is that our society is being overtaken by "ponerological processes." Through the White House, State Department and other federal agencies, legislatures, media, Hollywood, courts, academia, pentagon, seminaries and even pulpits, the spirit of poneros is encompassing our society, suppressing and demonizing orthodox Christians, faithful Jews and other morally informed people, and overspreading our nation with a "macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon." This will lead inevitably to a tyranny of evil, persecution and martyrdom:
"The New Martyrs' example and their legacy is precious, because in this, 21st century, it will be the turn of Western Christians to experience martyrdom. In Western Europe they will be persecuted by the unholy alliance between the postmodern, Christophobic velvet totalitarianism of the therapeutic hyper-state, and a resurgent Islam which already accounts for a quarter of all newborns in France. In the United States they will be persecuted for refusing to accept the destruction of the moral foundation of the society, currently epitomized by abortion, by "gay marriage," and by the ever-expanding speech and thought codes. Instead of being thrown to the lions or sent to Siberia, the resisters will be subjected – by some monstrous mechanism devised by an ever more activist judiciary – to the mandatory "sexual diversity orientation sessions," or feminist-led pro-abortionist "right-to-choose education workshops," or "immigrant rights sensitivity training," after which the continuing refusal to recant will lead to compulsory "therapy" and forced medication. This scenario is not farfetched on either side of the Atlantic. Western Christians should be prepared for martyrdom." (ibid, Srdja Trifkovic)
Judgment
In "Idols for Destruction" Herbert Schlossberg proposes that we use idolatry as a framework for comprehension of the evil and persecution sweeping over and through our post-Christian society. (p. 34) The biblical explanation for moral imbecility and narcissism in connection with the end of society resides in the concept of judgment upon an idolatrous people (Ro. 1:28-32):
"Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you...saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known..." (Deut. 13: 13; Judges 19: 22, 20:13; 1 Sam. 1:16, 2:12, 10:27, 25:17, 25:25, 30:22; 2 Sam. 16:7, 20:1, 23:6; 1 Kings 21:10, 21:13; 2 Chron. 6:15, 13:7)
Scripture depicts a societies' people as either having submitted themselves to the Triune God or else as idolaters (sons of Belial) who having rebelled against Him have been delivered by Him over to worthless, useless, hardened, loveless minds. This is how the Old Testament portrays Israel. Israel had become an evil nation of idolaters fully deserving the judgment the Lord brought against it. Its' rebellion was accompanied by a turning to idols (which can also be idols of mind such as scientism and evolutionary cosmogonies) and this idolatry brought the nation to it's' end.
The Decalogue shows that the beginning of idolatry is pride (preference for self over the Holy Trinity and neighbor). The will of the proud man is not in submission to the Trinity but self, thus having made an idol out of himself he assumes he possesses honor and rights. This is why pride leads to contempt for truth, law, wisdom, norms, authority, standards, rules, institutions and other people in combination with any or all of the following vices: pathological lying, treachery, murderous thoughts, gluttony, greed, covetousness, lust, hate, cheating, promiscuity, sadism, sodomy, pederasty, pedophilia, adultery, theft and the dehumanization of other people resulting in psychological and physical slavery, population control schemes, abortion, brutality, terror, mass-murder (genocide) and man-made famines
In the final analysis, malice and envy towards the Holy Trinity compels man to destroy creation and to annihilate his God-given soul/spirit by imagining himself as 'one' with the evolving universe of matter and energy. This is the definition of damnation, said Fr. Aquaro. Hell is not a punishment meted out by a hateful Holy God as some would think, but an absolute refusal of a pardon granted all mankind. It is impossible to receive good from a person one envies, and so it is that one cannot be saved if one resents the Holy Triune God. This is the message of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 when the elder brother refused to enter the house upon his brother's return. It is also the underlying meaning of CS Lewis's pointed observation that the door to hell will be slammed and locked from inside:
"The man wakes from the final struggle of death, in absolute loneliness...Not a hint, not a shadow of anything outside his consciousness reaches him...Soon misery will beget on his imagination a thousand shapes of woe, which he will not be able to rule, direct, or even distinguish from real presences." (C.S. Lewis: George MacDonald, an Anthology, p. 61)
2015@Linda Kimball
Linda writes on worldview and related subjects.
1. Death by Envy, Fr. George R.A. Aquaro
© Linda Kimball
May 8, 2015
"Political Ponerology" is the name given by Polish psychiatrist Andrzej M. £obaczewski to an interdisciplinary study of the founders (i.e., Karl Marx) and supporters of 20th century totalitarian political regimes. His study utilizes data from psychology, sociology, philosophy, and history to account for the propagation of man's inhumanity to man through such phenomena as terrorism, aggressive war, ethnic cleansing, ostracism, genocide, and despotism:
"As many as 7 million Ukrainians were starved in Soviet Socialist dictator Joseph Stalin's artificial, forced famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. This is approximately the total population of Manitoba, Newfoundland, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island." (Inky Mark, M. P. Dauphin – Swan River House of Commons 2 June 1998, Famine-Genocide in Ukraine 1932-1933)
"Moscow employed the famine as a political weapon against the Ukrainians in the years 1932-1933. The famine was in its entirety artificially induced and organized." (ibid, Investigation of Communist Takeover and Occupation of the Non-Russian Nations of the U.S.S.R p. 35)
"... On one side, millions of starving peasants, their bodies often swollen from lack of food; on the other, soldiers, members of the GPU carrying out the instructions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts and taken away everything edible; they had shot or exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages; they had reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to a melancholy desert." (ibid, Malcolm Muggeridge, "War on the Peasants," Fortnightly Review, 1 May, 1933)
"Food is a weapon." (ibid, Maxim Litvinov – Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs)
According to the authors of "The Black Book of Communism," Communist and Socialist regimes did not just commit criminal acts but were criminal enterprises in their very essence:
"...all ruled lawlessly and without regard for human life (and) one particular feature of many Communist regimes (was) their use of famine as a weapon. The Bolsheviks had decided to eliminate...any challenge or resistance, even if passive, to their absolute power. This strategy applied not only to groups with opposing political views, but also to such social groups as the nobility, the middle class, the intelligentsia...the clergy...military officers and the police." (pp. xvii, 8-9)
A coalition of atheist pagan Jews (Bolsheviks) and atheist pagan Gentiles (Marxist Communists) systematically stole the personal property of Russians and sexually perverted their children and conditioned them to hate the Trinity, Jesus Christ God Incarnate in particular, as well as their own parents, the Christian church and their homeland. The sons of Belial undermined and destroyed the traditional family, unleashed a holocaust of abortion, homosexualized culture, desecrated and blasphemed churches, crucified thousands of nuns and priests and in general, committed monstrous crimes against humanity which took the lives of more than sixty-million men, women, and children. For example:
"About 200,000 clergy, many crucified, scalped and otherwise tortured, were killed during the approximately 60 years of communist rule in the former Soviet Union, a Russian commission reported this week. In addition, another 500,000 religious figures were persecuted and 40,000 churches destroyed in the period from 1922 to 1980, the report said. Half the country's mosques and more than half the synagogues were also destroyed" Clergymen were crucified on churches' holy gates, shot, scalped [and] strangled," said Alexander Yakovlev, head of the Commission for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression. The commission prepared the report for Russian President Boris Yeltsin. "I was especially shocked by accounts of priests turned into columns of ice in winter," Yakovlev said. "It was total cruelty." (paulbogdanor.com)
"Persecution and martyrdom of Christians under 20th century totalitarianism – mainly of Russian Orthodox Christians under Bolshevism – is by far the greatest crime in all of recorded history....Attempts at "killing the soul" started only months after the Revolution of 1917." Persecution and martyrdom was, "several times greater than the Holocaust in terms of innocent lives brutally destroyed. It has killed more Christians in a few decades than all other causes put together in all ages, with Islam a distant second as the cause of their death and suffering. And yet it still remains a largely unknown, often minimized, or scandalously glossed over crime." (New Martyrs of the East and Coming Trials in the West, Srdja Trifkovic, OrthodoxyToday.com)
In this light we can understand why Lobaczewskis' original manuscript quickly went into the furnace just minutes before a secret police raid. In 1984 the manuscript was reassembled, but according to Lobaczewski, its publication was blocked by technocratic globalist Zbigniew Brzezinski. After half a century of suppression it is finally available.
Though Lobaczewski's study is a clinically accurate description of the nature of human evil it falls into the error of attributing evil to biological causes rather than the sin nature of man. Despite this failing, Political Ponerology is a shocking account of large scale evil super-heated by hatred of the Holy God and burning with envy and will to power – or what Lobaczewski terms 'ponerogenic processes' that overtook modern Russia and have overtaken whole societies and nations since time immemorial.
When ponerogenic processes have finally saturated a society's entire ruling class and opposition from morally convicted people has been crushed, then we are dealing with what Lobaczewski calls Macrosocial Evil or a "macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon." (p. 121)
Ponerogenic processes are synonymous with the unfettered, vastly inflamed sin nature of man beginning with inflated pride issuing in covetousness, selfishness, ingratitude, jealousy, resentment and hate, all of which early Church Fathers combined into the cold-blooded vice known as envy. Thus when 'macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon' has saturated a nation's ruling class and most of its society it means that a tyranny of evil fueled by poneros has overtaken it.
Poneros is:
"The passion which causes evil, the father of death, the first entrance for sin, the root of wickedness, the birth of sorrow, the mother of misfortune, the basis of disobedience, the beginning of shame. Envy banishes us from paradise....Envy made Joseph a slave. Envy is the death-dealing sting, the hidden weapon, the sickness of nature, the bitter poison, the self-willed emaciation, the bitter dart, the nail of the soul, the fire in the heart, the flame burning on the inside..." (Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa, quoted in Death by Envy, Fr. George R.A. Aquaro, p. 74)
"Scripture combines envy with jealousy, covetousness and stinginess, into a single concept that is a manifestation of idolatry (narcissism) of self and belief that there is a limited supply of good..." (ibid)
Scripture attributes poneros to the Evil One, the leader of all forces of evil. The Evil One is the spirit of rebellion and negation, the father of lies, "the adversary" "the accuser," "calumniator" and undiluted essence of envy who works through the principle of negation and rebellion in the fallen souls of lawless natural men:
"The evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil (poneros) things" Matthew 12:35
Poneros has played a part in human dynamics ever since the Evil One persuaded the envy-bitten Cain to murder his brother Abel, Judas to betray Jesus Christ and the Pharisees to crucify Him, and Saul to suddenly throw his spear at David in a murderous attempt at pinning him to a wall. (1 Sam. 18:11) In fact, the envy-bitten Saul tried three times to kill David with a javelin (1 Sam. 18:10-11, 19: 9-10) and to bring about David's death by the Philistines. (1 Sam. 18:25)
Poneros is also the spirit animating British philosopher Adam Smith's sophistry, that is, his phony concern postured in sophisticated questions and 'evidence' such as,
"Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?" "Should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?"
"Evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don't – the difference in their life chances – is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don't." (Parents reading to kids blasted as 'unfair,' Joe Kovacs, WND, May, 2015)
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. captures the spirit of poneros in his brilliantly conceived short story, "Harrison Bergeron,"
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
As a tyranny of poneros had overtaken and led to the degradation and implosion of ancient Greek society, an exploration of Greek thought with regard to types of envy will prove enlightening.
The first type is 'zelos,' a kind of envy stirred up by any perceived superiority (inequality). In the poem, 'Work and Days,' Isocrates presents the spirit of zelos as "with grim face and screaming voice, who delights in evil" and causes Decency and Respect to flee. (1) The anonymous author "Michael Swift" warns of this very thing in a widely circulated article called "Gay Revolutionary." In prose that chills the spine Swift warns the envied straight community that the men of Sodom shall be victorious,
"....because we are filled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages...We too are capable of firing guns and manning barricades of the ultimate revolution....Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks." (Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America, Peter Jones, p. 255)
Empowered by spineless, accommodating jellies throughout our seminaries, pulpits, government and courts, the envy-bitten men and women of modern Sodom maliciously terrorize Christian bakers, florists, bed and breakfast owners and other decent, law-abiding straight males and females, forcing them to either submit or be crushed even as the men of Sodom openly rape the souls and bodies of their sons and daughters in churches, schools, and elsewhere. (Envy and the Greeks: A Study of Human Behavior, Peter Walcot, pp. 2-3 from Death by Envy, Fr. George R. A. Aquaro, p. 12)
As the Holy Triune God is the "moral monster" responsible for the poor choices, weaknesses, sin nature and failures of the self-pitying, self-absorbed and envy-bitten, zelos is also the spirit behind the 'murder' of the Christian God, the closing off of the supernatural dimension and the Way to Paradise with the requisite suppression of His Revelation to man, the miracle of Special Creation, Original Sin, Moral Law, immutable Truth, judgment, and hell. Thus zelos is the lying, hateful, intolerant spirit behind the elevation of evolutionary scientism above the inerrant Word of God.
Zelos animates back-stabbing gossip, slander, snooping, spying, tale-bearing, the politics of personal destruction as well as special rights and privileges for the so-called oppressed (envy-bitten). Zelos demands redistribution of wealth, egalitarian sameness issuing in loss of gender identity (i.e., mother, father, husband, wife) in favor of gender-neutral terms such as 'partner.' It demands same-sex marriage, absolute inclusion and tolerance, 'legalized' illegal immigration, the mandated sexualization and perversion of our youth by pan-sexual and omni-gendered sexologists, and a hob-nailed boot viciously crushing the faces of envied "oppressors."
Morally, zelos is the venom behind America's reigning Pharisaic legalism: political correctness, hate crime laws, speech codes, gender equality, economic equality, and sensitivity training. In 'political' terms, green-eyed zelos is the spirit of green multiculturalism, green ecology, green sustainability, green 'family planning,' green global warming/cooling/change, green socialism and green diversity.
In "Diversity': The Idol of Academia," Jack Kerwick describes diversity as a 'god' that is as educationally invidious as it is false:
"Diversity" is not just a good in the academic world. It is the supreme good, the one good before which all other considerations must yield...."cultural diversity" not only doesn't correspond to a rise in intellectual diversity; it invariably corresponds to a rise in political uniformity. This is crucial, for the promotion of "cultural diversity" is nothing more or less than the promotion of a left-wing ideological agenda." (June 26, 2014 Jack Kerwick, Front Page Magazine)
Zelos in its every malignant, sadistic permutation is the green-eyed spirit behind left-wing ideology and its' totalitarian fantasy:
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." (Winston Churchill, British orator, author and Prime Minister during World War II, 1874-1965)
"When I say that Marxism is based on envy, I mean that the glorious revolution of the proletariat...was really a promise to put a final end to all the conditions that make for envy." (Joseph Epstein, author and former editor of The American Scholar, from Truths about Socialism, Coral Ridge Ministries, p. 66)
After zelos come philotimia and hybris. In Greek mythology, philotimia is narcissism – love of self, love of attention, love of self-affirmation, love of self-gratification – while hybris is the arrogance, insolence, contempt, insult, shame, hatred and mistreatment of human objects of envy by a sadistic narcissist. In Greece, philotemia and hybris were on display when the gods and their earthly counterparts punished inferior 'subhumans' for usurping their authority as well as when they struggled amongst themselves for positions of primacy. In America, philotimia and hybris are visible when America's left-right 'ruling class' god-men try to destroy each other in their vicious power struggles among themselves. These two green-eyed monsters, philotemia/hybris are on display whenever the god-men's lapdog media engage in vicious psychological bullying and other malicious forms of mistreatment of stupid, unevolved hominids – the hard-working middle class, especially the Tea Party and God-fearing orthodox Christians and faithful Jews – the so-called oppressors. Philotimia/hybris is also the spirit animating the intolerant, hateful attitudes of evolutionary theologians toward defenders of the Revealed Word of God beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo.
Phthonos is the fourth type of envy/covetousness. Phthonos seeks to deprive envied 'other' of possessions, honor, status, spiritual gifts and virtues. Phthonos for example, is the diabolical Darwinian reductionism of man in his Creator's spiritual image to ape. It is the green-eyed totalitarian spirit of Agenda 21 together with save the earth and re-wilding schemes that elevate crocodiles, trash fish, and other creatures above the welfare of human beings. Phthonos animates carbon footprint schemes, population control plans, passive euthanasia (refusal of health care to targeted Obama care recipients), the attempted theft of Bundy's ranch and other private property and resources. Phthonos is driven not just to ostracize and confiscate but to use psychological manipulation (i.e., lies, false guilt, slander, propaganda, scape-goating) and other terroristic force to take or deprive 'other' of whatever is coveted/envied.
Phthonos will even drive a man (i.e., Cain) to murder his own brother, to "murder" the Holy God (i.e., Nimrod, Karl Marx) and Jesus Christ God Incarnate (Nietzsche).
After ancient Greece had been overtaken by the spirit of poneros, the egalitarian, collectivist, or leveling impulse served to help relieve an envy-torn culture by leveling all men down to the lowest common denominator. This was enforced by character destruction and the threat of ostracism.
"...one had to watch not only the malevolent actions of envious friends and enemies, but the very real threat of ostracism by the democratic community. Philanthropy had much less to do with (love of man) as it had with....avoiding other people's phthonos of one's success." (Death by Envy, p. 14)
The fifth type of envy is vaskonia or Evil Eye (ophthalmos poneros) and means something even more malignant than phthonos. Vaskonia bespeaks an evil spirit associated with demonic possession and the malign touch or glance of which leaves a soiled imprint and implies instant victimization and death. Vaskonia is inherently sudden, meaning one wrong word, one wrong expression, or the impulse of a moment is all it takes to become the victim of the Evil Eye.
As a whole, Scripture combines envy with hatred of the Holy God and one's brother, which means that there can be no love whatsoever where there is envy and hatred in one's heart.
Today increasing numbers of Americans at every level of society, on both left and right, Christian and secular, are controlled by their passions unfettered from the restraint of transcendent moral law. Adding to the problem are culturally relevant church models attended by thousands of Americans that cater to felt-needs and self-indulgent emotional feel-goodism (2 Tim. 4: 1-220). Thus America is "a nation ruled by its passions," said Reb Bradley, author of "Born Liberal Raised Right." This is why heinous acts,
"...of casual disregard for life, unheard of fifty years ago, have become a familiar item on the evening news; students killing classmates, children murdering their playmates....these gruesome crimes are merely symptomatic of a breakdown of moral fiber..." (ibid, pp. 2-3)
The most frightening aspect of America's descent into moral imbecility, narcissism, heresy, apostasy, pathological lying, and lawlessness is that our society is being overtaken by "ponerological processes." Through the White House, State Department and other federal agencies, legislatures, media, Hollywood, courts, academia, pentagon, seminaries and even pulpits, the spirit of poneros is encompassing our society, suppressing and demonizing orthodox Christians, faithful Jews and other morally informed people, and overspreading our nation with a "macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon." This will lead inevitably to a tyranny of evil, persecution and martyrdom:
"The New Martyrs' example and their legacy is precious, because in this, 21st century, it will be the turn of Western Christians to experience martyrdom. In Western Europe they will be persecuted by the unholy alliance between the postmodern, Christophobic velvet totalitarianism of the therapeutic hyper-state, and a resurgent Islam which already accounts for a quarter of all newborns in France. In the United States they will be persecuted for refusing to accept the destruction of the moral foundation of the society, currently epitomized by abortion, by "gay marriage," and by the ever-expanding speech and thought codes. Instead of being thrown to the lions or sent to Siberia, the resisters will be subjected – by some monstrous mechanism devised by an ever more activist judiciary – to the mandatory "sexual diversity orientation sessions," or feminist-led pro-abortionist "right-to-choose education workshops," or "immigrant rights sensitivity training," after which the continuing refusal to recant will lead to compulsory "therapy" and forced medication. This scenario is not farfetched on either side of the Atlantic. Western Christians should be prepared for martyrdom." (ibid, Srdja Trifkovic)
Judgment
In "Idols for Destruction" Herbert Schlossberg proposes that we use idolatry as a framework for comprehension of the evil and persecution sweeping over and through our post-Christian society. (p. 34) The biblical explanation for moral imbecility and narcissism in connection with the end of society resides in the concept of judgment upon an idolatrous people (Ro. 1:28-32):
"Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you...saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known..." (Deut. 13: 13; Judges 19: 22, 20:13; 1 Sam. 1:16, 2:12, 10:27, 25:17, 25:25, 30:22; 2 Sam. 16:7, 20:1, 23:6; 1 Kings 21:10, 21:13; 2 Chron. 6:15, 13:7)
Scripture depicts a societies' people as either having submitted themselves to the Triune God or else as idolaters (sons of Belial) who having rebelled against Him have been delivered by Him over to worthless, useless, hardened, loveless minds. This is how the Old Testament portrays Israel. Israel had become an evil nation of idolaters fully deserving the judgment the Lord brought against it. Its' rebellion was accompanied by a turning to idols (which can also be idols of mind such as scientism and evolutionary cosmogonies) and this idolatry brought the nation to it's' end.
The Decalogue shows that the beginning of idolatry is pride (preference for self over the Holy Trinity and neighbor). The will of the proud man is not in submission to the Trinity but self, thus having made an idol out of himself he assumes he possesses honor and rights. This is why pride leads to contempt for truth, law, wisdom, norms, authority, standards, rules, institutions and other people in combination with any or all of the following vices: pathological lying, treachery, murderous thoughts, gluttony, greed, covetousness, lust, hate, cheating, promiscuity, sadism, sodomy, pederasty, pedophilia, adultery, theft and the dehumanization of other people resulting in psychological and physical slavery, population control schemes, abortion, brutality, terror, mass-murder (genocide) and man-made famines
In the final analysis, malice and envy towards the Holy Trinity compels man to destroy creation and to annihilate his God-given soul/spirit by imagining himself as 'one' with the evolving universe of matter and energy. This is the definition of damnation, said Fr. Aquaro. Hell is not a punishment meted out by a hateful Holy God as some would think, but an absolute refusal of a pardon granted all mankind. It is impossible to receive good from a person one envies, and so it is that one cannot be saved if one resents the Holy Triune God. This is the message of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 when the elder brother refused to enter the house upon his brother's return. It is also the underlying meaning of CS Lewis's pointed observation that the door to hell will be slammed and locked from inside:
"The man wakes from the final struggle of death, in absolute loneliness...Not a hint, not a shadow of anything outside his consciousness reaches him...Soon misery will beget on his imagination a thousand shapes of woe, which he will not be able to rule, direct, or even distinguish from real presences." (C.S. Lewis: George MacDonald, an Anthology, p. 61)
2015@Linda Kimball
Linda writes on worldview and related subjects.
1. Death by Envy, Fr. George R.A. Aquaro
© Linda Kimball
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
