Why is Putin doing what he’s doing?
We humans…we search for meaning. We are thrust into this world by birth and told to survive. That you have only a few years to live. Maybe there’s something after this life…maybe not.
But we must survive in the meantime. And we join up with other like-minded people in tribes, in clans. Ideologically. Geographically. Genetically. There is power in numbers. So we, like the Persians, the Romans, the Catholics in the Crusades, the religious missionaries of our own age, seek to grow our kind.
And in the process we gain power. Power is intoxicating. People follow strong leaders…leaders who offer them a purpose beyond their mere mortal existence. It’s us vs. them.
And when you have people who follow because they like your message, because they are drawn to apparent strength, because they seek security in like-minded others…you become more and more intoxicated with power. With wealth. With ownership. With believing you are bigger, more important, than a mere mortal.
When that power is lost, as it inevitably will be, as demonstrated by the fall of every empire in history, you are lost. You are diminished. Your ego is not just bruised, but destroyed. And you lash out to demonstrate that what is obvious to everyone is actually not. You gas-light your people.
You recruit lackeys from other nations who admire your chutzpah…to weaken their own domain and thereby apparently strengthen yours.
And you throw away the rules. Because you know that life is short and you will soon be gone. And it won’t matter that you have declared war on an innocent people. The apparent sacrosanct world order of developed relative peace is no more, because there was no inevitability to it in the first place. And you knew that. The people you govern, and the enemies you have engaged with in apparent good faith, have been lulled to sleep.
So you strike. You feel you have few years left to be the great leader you always wanted to be. And you, and your absolute power garnered through time over your people, recklessly abandon all logic, rationality, humanity…in a last-ditch effort to bring meaning to your sad, pathetic life. A life that now is diminished and which will go down in history as deranged and unhinged…without the glory for which you so desperately strove.