Putin and our human archetypes, my worries and my hopes…

I know very little or close to nothing about geopolitics, modern urban warfare, the science of misinformation, international global financial interrelationships, nuclear risks, and the history of Ukraine and Russia.

This ignorance doesn’t reassure me when I hear about Russia invading Ukraine. 

When a man chooses violence to affirm his views, this is always a mistake. 

When a nation chooses violence to expand its territory, this is always a mistake. 

“An eye for an eye makes the world go blind,” said Gandhi, and it is hard not to agree with him. 

I am both sad and worried. 

I am sad because people are suffering. 

I am worried about the state of our world, about its future, and its values. 

I am but a man who likes to write and to think. 

When I think about this conflict, everything seems so complicated and overwhelming that I would like to give up and let news media make sense of this for me.  The problem is that the first victim of war is the truth. So thinking this conflict through is an interesting exercise for me.  

I tend to simplify to make things easier to understand. It is the only way my mind works. When I come back to the basics, I see that one man makes most decisions in this war, Vladimir Putin. I find it much easier to understand the man than to grasp the interplay of historical, political, and economic factors in this war. 

If you ask me who is Putin? My honest answer is simple: I don’t know. 

If you ask me, what is Putin? There is a recognition that emerges.  

Putin, the man, is not an original creature that the universe spontaneously created from scratch. In humanity’s history, we’ve seen this model of a man many times.  From our collective history,  archetypes, and DSM-5 personality disorders, I can reasonably fathom that Putin probably lays in the narcissist/anti-social/psychopathic spectrum. It is the easiest human personality type to understand and predict: everything centers on me, myself, and I from their perspective. 

Putin probably has low empathy, which allows him to sleep at night knowing that his people suffer and his army is killing innocent people. He is also most likely power-hungry. He cares much less about money than about power and control; this is his motivation. 

So what happens to such leaders in times of war?  

They become so focused on conquering that it overwhelms everything in their life. The more power they gain and use, the more blind they become.  Power corrupts. They want and need to control everything and everyone. Ordering the death of thousands and, at the same time, worrying about one’s safety and legacy will eventually cause crippling anxiety, even for the finest antisocial psychopathic narcissist personality. The only way for the human mind to support this is to share the pressure with people of absolute trust and loyalty.  In wartime, success will breed loyalty but failures will test the resilience of Putin’s entourage. It is almost impossible for a narcissistic antisocial leader to surround himself exclusively with people who would follow him without question and without eventually hoping to take his place. If you play with fire, prepare to get burned.

In the face of growing problems, the human mind has four simple choices: fight, freeze, flight, or make friends. Hitler’s suicide was an escape because he lost the war, and he had no other means to fight. Hitler did not want to make friends; he wanted to dominate. Narcissists do not freeze or curl up to cry in bed.  So Hitler picked the only path he had left: flight in oblivion.  We were lucky that Hitler did not have nuclear weapons. Putin is in a different situation. I am worried because if Putin is an antisocial psychopathic narcissist, his internal emotional landscape has no space for remorse and compassion, and it is clear that he simply won’t stop.  I certainly hope that I am wrong. 

If Putin won’t stop himself, who will?  

NATO will probably continue to support Ukraine but won’t fight with them. Their active involvement would only enrage Putin and fuel his narrative. Financial sanctions will weaken Russia but probably won’t change Putin’s conquering mindset. I  worry that if Putin successfully invades and gains control of the Ukrainian people, then China might invade Taiwan. I don’t even want to think what would ensue after such an outcome.

I hope that Ukrainians will successfully defend their country while growing resentment from the Russian people to Putin’s policies fuels an internal motivation to remove him from power and replace him with a leader who is open to reconnecting and rebuilding ties with the rest of the world.

Thank you for your comments.