Patanjali's five root psychological afflictions—ignorance, ego, attachment, aversion, and fear—as foundational drivers of political dysfunction and authoritarianism.
Patanjali identifies five kleshas or afflictions that cloud consciousness: avidya (ignorance), asmita (ego), raga (attachment), dvesha (aversion), and abhinivesha (fear of annihilation). These directly illuminate political psychology's deepest patterns. Political ignorance manifests as citizens uninformed about actual policy impacts; ego drives leaders toward narcissistic authoritarianism; attachment creates tribal loyalty immune to evidence; aversion generates scapegoating and dehumanization; and existential fear fuels zero-sum competition. Authoritarian movements explicitly exploit these five kleshas—spreading misinformation (avidya), elevating a supreme leader (asmita), creating in-group identity (raga), targeting enemies (dvesha), and warning of civilizational extinction (abhinivesha). Political psychology grounded in kleshic analysis stops treating authoritarianism as aberration and recognizes it as systematic activation of universal psychological vulnerabilities. Democratic resilience, then, requires systematic cultivation of their opposites: awareness, humility, non-attachment, equanimity, and security—making political maturity a developmental achievement rather than mere institutional design.
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