Russia, the War, May 9 and a Narrative of Insecurity

There is a core property of human experience that aligns with the reflexive self-validation of narrative cognition.

Whatever facts might exist in the world, the structure and cadence of the conversation (and, clearly, of interpreted conflict) has a tendency for better and for worse to exploit behavioural and psychological instinct as bias towards pattern recognition.

This means that human beings are endemically predisposed towards being seduced much less by the substantive meaning of an argument, much more by the ways in which the structure and organisation of words, phrases and miscellaneous assertions recursively mimics and reinforces the kinds of thought patterns, insecurities and catharses quite natural to our minds.

I doubt that the autocratic aggressor much cares how they will achieve whichever shifting goals they might settle upon to attempt to justify the rationale for this terrible war to their own people on May 9th, but – the essence of their arguments to date seek to exploit a weakness as common pathology or cognitive bias writ large upon their own nation by fear, deception and oppression.

Whoever is winning or losing the battle for information/narrative dominance, the core insecurity being invoked by one side to steel their forces is also their weakness.