In Moscow, hollow men with empty hearts play their desperate ego games on fantasy chessboards in their heads, making their moves with easy orders at a safe distance but using real lives that are deeply harmed and cut short. It's not just Putin, though it is of course primarily, but also those who put him into power, and those who serve him, who acquiesce and obey eagerly for their own false sense of power and ego.

When Lord Acton wrote that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it was after he had extensively read and studied the letters and private papers of those considered politically great, or massive in their undertakings, throughout European history. His conclusion was that in this precise sense great men are seldom good men. The sad truth is that it is badly damaged egos, the hollow men, who claw their way to the top far too often, where they can do immense damage to those around them and to the broader world. We see it in our own nation and in many of our states. Containment is a messy and partial solution once such people have power and act on it. The key is to keep them from amassing power in the first place. On every level, we need to resist and suppress the ambitions of damaged, grandiose egos - from local elections and small business endeavors to the institutions that span a national and global scale. Such people come to power from two sources, by appealing to the sadly like minded, and because the rest of us are too careless and distracted to act early enough to stop their ascent. And there are always heavy costs as a result.

I've been quietly working on these issues for twenty years and have finally compiled what I've learned in a book manuscript called "The Frankenstein Factor: Monster Success and Massive Failure." It's all about grandiose ego, and the motives, means, and methods that repeatedly create havoc in the world. In Mary Shelley's famous novel about the production of a monster, which is one of the greatest cautionary tales about ambition and success ever written, we are given insights we can use to comb history for the wisdom we need right now. With Putin's invasion of Ukraine, we're seeing the Frankenstein Factor on a large scale. And if history tells us anything clearly, it's that this will not go well for the perpetrators, as well as a great many innocent people, in the long term. Without wisdom and the virtue to act on it, suffering spreads unfettered through the world. With the right measure of caution and courage, we can do something about it instead.