Inside Putin's Head
As I sit here at anchor in Falmouth Harbor, Antigua, with the morning sun up about an hour and streaming into the boat and the steady Easterly Trade Wind of 14-17 mph tossing the surface of the water my house is floating upon, I decided I had to share with you an article from my morning news read. I generally just flip through the few online feeds I get on my email, but this one fits quite nicely with my focus on control.
It comes from a writer I’ve followed for a few years and whom I consider to have his head on straight about assessing what people think, why, and the results of ensuing actions. (Sort of like my sitting here in the Caribbean at this moment.) Anyway, as I’ve explained in my Control book and various blog entries, to understand why we all take the actions that we do, we need to pay particular attention to what it is we are trying to control—not only the environmental elements outside ourselves, such as other people, but also the factors of our historical events, feelings about those, and self-perceptions about ourselves.
In this article, which is trying to explain what might be involved in leading Putin to invade Ukraine, Robert Wright hypothesizes that we must not just consider events outside Putin that he tried to control but also how he is trying to control the personal factors just mentioned within himself, his psychology. This latter element I have always considered to be of utmost importance in understanding the events of life: look at the individual’s need for personal control first because it usually explains much/most about what happens in the world, personal and beyond. And that is exactly what Robert does—and is so rarely seen in explanations of life events, especially in rapidly evolving political events. So, it’s nice to see some confirmation of my thesis about control.
Although this is sort of outside my usual blog entry, I think it fits and is pertinent to the times. It’s a bit long but very readable. Enjoy.