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/ January 2023
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.61.01.20
How to Cite:
Lepskyi, M., Masiuk, O., Skvorets, V., & Kudinov, I. (2023). Decision-making attractors in the conditions of war (the modern
Russian-Ukrainian war example). Amazonia Investiga, 12(61), 193-201. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.61.01.20
Decision-making attractors in the conditions of war (the modern
Russian-Ukrainian war example)
Центри тяжіння прийняття рішень в умовах війни (на прикладі сучасної російсько-
української війни)
Received: January 25, 2023 Accepted: February 28, 2023
Written by:
Maksym Lepskyi81
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5604-641X
Oleh Masiuk82
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3853-5863
Volodymyr Skvorets83
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7558-0773
Igor Kudinov84
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7785-1637
Abstract
Features of the phenomenon of human decision-
making in the conditions of war are analyzed.
The paper is revealing the phenomenon of
decision-making during war based on the events
form the modern Russian-Ukrainian war. The
research findings state that decision-making in
the conditions of war has differences between
people who defend their lives, family, country,
and aggressors who seek to seize territories, turn
free people into acolytes or colonies of their state,
and impose autocracy on a democratic society.
The authors defined the attractors of people's
decision-making in war, such as: “home”, “heart
and mind”, “strength and will”, “heroism and
dignity”, “social order and victory”. The
conducted research has a conceptual nature and
serves as a methodological basis for conducting
practical scientific research on the development
of effective decision-making skills in conditions
of destructive human influence and existential
disasters.
Keywords: attractor, decision making, home,
actor, peace, war.
81
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the European Academy of
Sciences of Ukraine, Professor of Sociology department, Zaporizhzhia National University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
82
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Professor of Social Philosophy and Public Administration department, Zaporizhzhia National
University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
83
Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Academician of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Head of Sociology
department, Zaporizhzhia National University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
84
PhD, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of Sociology department, Zaporizhzhia National University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
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Introduction
War changes the everyday life of people, social
relations, structure, modes of operation of life –
everything that defines stability and certainty of
the social system in which people live and make
decisions. In this context, war appears before
people as conditions of uncertainty, complexity,
and instability of the social system, where people
begin to organize their lives. This provides an
opportunity to apply the theories of self-
organization and synergetics, which are applied
to complex, unstable, and chaotic systems. At the
same time, according to the theory of self-
organization, we study the process of ordering
the social system and people's lives as a series of
decisions, which we consider as a phase
transition from certainty to uncertainty, from a
stable state of life to an unstable one, and the
tendency of people towards ordering centers – to
attractors.
Using the example of the modern Russian-
Ukrainian war, where democratic and autocratic
values collide, and where the international order
of the democratic world depends on the resilience
of the Ukrainian people and support from the
global community, we investigate decision-
making attractors, which depend on the choices
of specific individuals and define their dynamics
and the dynamics of their lives. First, we consider
the choice of decision-making guidelines during
the war, examining the home as an attractor for
deciding whether to stay at home on the frontline,
near the frontline, in the rear, or to be an
internally displaced person or a refugee. The
home, in a broad sense, defines the center of
gravity for organizing everyday social life.
After addressing this issue, we turn to the
foundation of subjectivity in conditions of
uncertainty and threats to life, such as the "heart
and mind" as the balance between rational and
irrational decision-making (cognitive and
emotional attractors), "strength and will" as
attractors that determine people's capabilities in
the conditions of military uncertainty
(praxeological and conative attractors), and
"heroism and dignity" as the axiological
attractors, asserting the meaning of life in the
war, defending the values that people are willing
to fight for.
The research on the state and role of organizing
decision-making in wartime conditions is defined
as the structures of organizing social life that
create the social order of the state in wartime and
define the image of victory as an attractor for
organizing life, the image of a desired future in
decision-making that carries the meaning of
victory.
Theoretical Framework
Our research was based on:
1) analysis of the interaction of emotional and
rational systems (Kahneman, 2020), the
subjective influence on a person's perception
of the world (Berne, 1975), (Fisogni, 2022),
(Jung, 1953), as well as the logical
interrelationship development of optimism
and pessimism, which determines the extent
of existence during non-standard situations
(Lepskiy, 2006), (Perellin, 2009);
2) analysis of previous victories and defeats,
where well-known examples of heroic
behavior of the past and present
(Lane-Poole, 2018), (Rusch, 2022), as well
as traumatic experiences that needs to
process by a human (Herman, 2015) and the
world (Benard et al., 2022);
3) synergistic methodology of I. Prigogine,
I. Stenger (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984), and
the fractal approach to scaling self-
organizing processes by J. West (West,
2016) and attraction and repulsion in
migration (Lepskiy, 2016).
Methodology
The authors of the article investigate war as a
state of chaos in people's lives, who perceive
peace as order and war as disorder, uncertainty,
and chaotic processes. Therefore, our
methodology applies the concept of social
synergetics, transitioning from the peaceful order
through the chaos of war to the military state, to
the attractors of military order (sometimes
strange attractors). In synergetic methodology,
we rely on the works of I. Prigogine, I. Stenger
(Prigogine & Stenger, 1984), and the fractal
approach to scaling self-organizing processes by
J. West (West, 2016).
The main method of the research is document
and content analysis of Ukrainian mass and
social media concerning Russian-Ukrainian war.
At the center of our research is mainly civilian
population, which makes decisions about its fate.
At the same time, with all the uncertainty of the
processes, there are attractors that determine
individual and group decisions, and scale to mass
decisions, as they are replicated. War also
determines the processes of repulsion from
ordinary everyday life, attractors of people’s
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movement, which, together with centripetal
forces, determine people’s decisions (directions
of movement) in war conditions. Decision-
making is a central process of management and
organization of actors’ activity, the meaningful
aspect of which is the cognitive and evaluative
and volitional choice of alternatives for solving
the problem by a person. This central
organizational process provides a
communicative process that supposedly
permeates all management and organizations. All
these processes are under the pressure of the war
situation, which is another phase of the society.
Results and Discussion
Peace is considered as a special phase of the
existence of society and relations between
societies, in which the desire for progressive
development and evolutionary improvement of
living arrangement prevails. This phase of
society’s development has its own economy,
politics, culture and technology, ecology and
orientation of social relations. War is considered
as a phase of confrontation and irreversible
destruction (protection from destruction) of
society and relations between societies, living
arrangement is restructured to ensure this
destruction and the social development of peace
is destroyed, the question arises of survival and
victory over the enemy. It is important for us to
understand that war has a negative, destructive
economy, since it is aimed at the survival of
society, the development of means of death and
defeating the enemy.
Decision-making phenomenon during wartime is
a complex, multi-layered representation that is
often influenced by propaganda, ideological and
sometimes insane influences, information war
for worldview, thought patterns and impulsive
mass actions. The war phase has a simplification
of the multifaceted activity of peaceful life and
the stability of everyday life in the search for a
balance of human relations, the military sphere is
in a “cold” (minimally sufficient) or “warm”
restorative state of security readiness. Everything
is changing during the war: the military and
security spheres become dominant which
restructure the social organism of the country
according to their needs, according to the needs
of the survival of society and the state, and
victory over the enemy.
People’s actions during war are determined by
instincts (for example, life and death), vital
needs, as C.G. Jung wrote, by that what defines
the body, archetypes – that what defines the
psyche in the collective unconscious, and senses,
which determines the mind and will. The
satisfaction of vital needs in instincts shifts from
the usual everyday life to the deficient everyday
life and adaptation to the new social reality. The
archetypes of social relations are shifting to the
mobilizing collective unconscious, in its way in
Ukraine there is an actualization of the
archetypes of protective heroes – Cossacks,
warriors, women guards, generals, diplomats, at
the same time, in the full-scale aggression of the
Russian Federation, we see an actualization of
the archetypes of criminals, looters, executioners
and others. War, as the military psychologist
Lawrence LeShan proved, always tends to the
transition to the level of archetypes, to the
transition from sensitive reality to mythological
(LeShan, 1992).
No less interesting is the study of emotions and
irrationality, meanings and rationality in
decision-making. According to the Nobel
laureate D. Kahneman, there are two modes of
human thinking that lead to impulsive and
rational decisions (Kahneman, 2020). However,
the question arises about the specifics of the
functioning of these modes in wartime
conditions. Practice has shown that impulsive
emotional decisions at the beginning of the
Russian-Ukrainian war were dominant in the
short-term behavior of most people. It is
generally accepted that a person based on
emotions chooses life through escape. However,
this is only half the truth. The emotion of
indignation at aggression can also trigger a
choice in favor of weapons and self-sacrifice for
the benefit of a common future. There are many
reasons for choosing one of the options, but the
basis is the dominance of egoism and altruism in
the value world of a person and society.
Previous attempts to rationally evaluate the
behavior of a potential aggressor were erroneous.
At the root of the flaw in the rational
understanding of war lies in a person's
habituation to risk during his long stay in his/her
life. Such a problem is characteristic of the
inhabitants of the whole world. Analyzing the
complexities of danger perception in the USA,
C. Perellin remarks on specific blindness: “I have
been interested for years in the near – total lack
of connection between perception and reality of
fear. If you think about this, you can easily find
many examples. About 3,000 people died in
9/11. Forty-two thousand Americans die on our
highways each year. How proportional is our
government’s response?” (Perellin, 2009, 144).
So, this is an irrational unwillingness of a person
to see the near non-existence and to think about
its possibility, to accept the fact that death is
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always nearby and accompanies his/her life. That
is, evil that is constantly present in our living
space ceases to be perceived as a danger, and
unexpected evil creates panic and suspicion. This
can be attributed to the periodic return of
Ukrainian refugees to their homes before the war
gives rise to a new shock.
1. Choosing decision-making guidelines
during war
Within the framework of the philosophical
discourse, the worldview of peace and the
worldview of war are separately distinguished, in
which optimism and pessimism are combined
with the help of evaluative and volitional
activity. In the worldview, optimism is
established through the measure of life (the
existence of people, the acquisition of soul and
spiritual, and their implementation in practical
activities), and pessimism is realized through the
measure of death (as the protection of the
measure of life from irreversible destruction – the
measure of death), this dichotomy always has an
intensity of force vs powerlessness, will vs lack
of will.
War as an existential tension illuminates this
measure of life and death of people, society,
homeland, humanity, which becomes a
manifestation of a dignified and fulfilled life. As
claimed by K.G. Jung, death instinct is about the
fullness of life (Jung, 1953). The value
orientations of a person immerse the activity to
the deep essence – “who is a person in this
humanity”. The measure of death acquires an
intersubjective character. Arises the spectrum of
emotions of mortido and destrudo instincts.
Sometimes endless revenge can become the
leitmotif of existence, destroying the soul and
spiritual. Affirmation of life becomes possible
only after accepting the fact of its vulnerability,
near and accidental end.
Decision-making in the conditions of war has
differences between people who defend their
lives, family, country, and aggressors who seek
to seize territories, turn free people into acolytes
or colonies of their state, and impose autocracy
on a democratic society.
Human behavior during war is based on the
priorities of survival and achieving victory,
development in the negative destructive political
economy of war is compressed and moved
mainly to the military sphere and its provision.
Basic human aspirations, as well as ideal images
of life, are contained in a worldview with a
divided reality, where the desired and
unacceptable, pre-war and wartime, are clearly
demarcated, which is what constitutes the space
for finding solutions, as well as models of
behavior and activities of its participants.
War is a choice of one's own destiny, which
differentiates people into military and civilian,
“ours” and “enemies”, not only in the reality of
warring actors, but also at the level of awareness
of their desired future. At the same time, these
roles become part of a person's worldview, which
directly affects the decision-making process. A
problematic question arises – what are the
attractors of people’s choices in war-decision-
making? This choice is based on an identity that
allows to survive in difficult conditions.
R. Nalbandov explains it as follows: “Specific
identity constructs force them to choose different
options not based on the objective utility
calculations but on their subjectively constructed
assessment of the objective reality” (Nalbandov,
2013, 94). In our case, the decision is made on
the basis of a subjectively constructed
assessment of objective reality, which turns into
directed actions, which is based on the
identification of a person with war or with peace,
and the main formation of reality, the interaction
of people in the social relations of war. In our
opinion, these are the following attractors:
“home”, “heart and mind”, “strength and will”,
“heroism and dignity”, “social order and
victory”.
2. Home
“Home” is a multi-layered semantic concept that
determines people’s decisions to leave or stay
home. For instance, the first wave of refugees
(IDPs) in Ukraine was caused not so much by the
war itself, but by its threat. People left their
homes to move to a safe territory or country.
Sometimes the motives were also the search for
a better fate, a new home – under the pretext of
war. The search for safety as a shelter, sometimes
a temporary home, was both global,
international, and regional (within the country)
(Razumkov Center, 2022a). The second wave is
refugees from the areas near the frontline zone,
which is exposed to shelling, and the frontline
zone, where hostilities are taking place, has
significant differences in the psychological state
of people. Often it is a home destroyed by the
war, a family that lost loved ones or was injured.
Their motivation to seek shelter and often find a
new home is to “start over” (Razumkov Center,
2022b). “Home is under fire”, “home is a
fortress”, “ruined home” is not only the
conditioning of decisions – it is also a long-term
trauma and motivation of the defenders to fight
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against the occupiers. The third wave of refugees
is determined by displacement from the occupied
territory, it is “home under occupation” (BBC
Nvs, Zaporizhia, 2022). A home under
occupation is a home in lawlessness and looting.
The occupation is “home under the rule of
violence”, destroyed self-governance and
everyday life, it is a home of lawlessness. “Home
under occupation” causes resistance and the
formation of partisans and the underground.
Let’s turn to the decisions of the people-of-war
who chose the path of fighting and destroying the
enemy. Here, the most important component of
life is the feeling of family unity with people with
whom you have experienced a common disaster
and overcame insurmountable challenges. In
fact, this is a reproduction of family relations in
the military circle. A special category is the
“home of military personnel”, when a military
unit becomes the image of a family – with a
father as a commander, brothers, and sisters. As
an example, let us give the return to the ranks of
one of the most famous British officers of the
First World War, “Crazy Jack” Z. Sassoon, who
was treated by V. Rivers for post-traumatic stress
disorder after the death of part of his squad. Thus,
having gained the experience of reconstructing
the life narratives of his protégé Z. Sassoon, his
friend and doctor V. Rivers claimed: “The most
effective motivation to overcome that fear was
something stronger than patriotism, abstract
principles, or hatred of the enemy. It was the
brotherly love of soldiers for one another”
(Herman, 2015, 22). That is, shared grief, the
challenge of death and victory over it form a
stable “family circle” that influences decision-
making in wartime. This happens due to the
establishment of landmark actors, to which an
active or former participant in hostilities listens.
A similar situation is typical for the military, as
well as for medics and volunteers, as well as all
those who have experienced the devastating
effects of war together.
3. Heart and mind
I. Moiseyv defines a category as “cordocentrism”
which “accompanies the genesis of personal self-
awareness. The heart is primarily a valuable
integrator of the integrity of being.
Cordocentrism attributes feeling, reason,
cognition (intuitive), will, contemplation,
memory to the heart, which to a certain extent
inhibits the differentiation and systematic
subordination of these abilities” (Moiseyv, 2002,
303). The concept is consistent with an idea of
the Arbinger Institute. They convince that even
in war the heart can be at peace and war, and the
difference is in the attitude towards other people:
“The contrast between Saladin’s taking of
Jerusalem and the Crusaders’ taking of Jerusalem
teaches an important lesson: almost any behavior
– even behavior as stark as war – can be done in
two different ways” (The Arbinger Institute,
2015, 43). Such way there is two ways of being
with “heart at peace” and “heart at war”. “Heart
in peace” defines the protection of human rights,
their equality. Unjust war, unmotivated
aggression asserts “heart in war”, where people
are objects, the fight is for territories, for
acolytes, but not for people, their dignity and the
future. The heart can be in the past, revanchism,
political and geopolitical traumas, but certainly
not in peace, these are the signs of the heart in
war. The extreme forms of the heart in war, to
recall Erich Fromm, are necrophilia, the love of
death and destruction, or, to recall Karen Horney
(Horney, 1994), the neurotic lust for power. The
heart at war always seeks to impose its will on
others in war crimes.
4. Strength and will
The beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian military
conflict in 2014 proved that the strength of a
society striving to preserve the independence of
its own state can be weakened by the position of
“pacification” of the aggressor, unreadiness to
protect its own interests, this also relates to
international actors that make up the
international security architecture. The full-scale
aggression of the Russian Federation in 2022
showed that the will to fight of people and society
has changed the course of aggression. The war
decision-making leader sets not only the nature
of decision-making within the group, but also
acts as a model for decisions regarding
interaction with the enemy. Thus, describing
Sultan Saladin's victory over Saif al-Din in the
conquest of Syria, S. Lane-Pool wrote about the
exemplary dignity of the victory and
consideration in the use of its results. Saladin did
not take any of war mining for himself: “In this
he displayed alike the instincts of a generous
nature and the foresight of a statesman. He bound
both his own troops and the enemy’s to him with
ties of gratitude and personal devotion”
(Lane-Poole, 2018, 111). Therefore, the image of
the military-political leadership, the ruler-
general, who builds connections with other
participants in the conflict based on complicity in
their lives, and also models the nature of “us–
them” interaction, is of great importance in the
decision-making process in war.
Difficult events in the life of the country and the
world can leave their mark on decision-making
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both during war and in peacetime. The Battle of
Thermopylae (480 BC), the Siege of Jerusalem
(1187), the Battle of the Alamo (1836), the Verde
Meat Grinder (1916), the Battle of Kruty (1918)
and the defense of the Donetsk airport (2014)
became not only the object of attention of
researchers of military history, but also the
choice in favor of the decision to self-sacrifice
for the sake of the collective good, which still
affects people today who associate themselves
with the participants of those events, regardless
of the conditions of life and circumstances. The
image of war affects the nature of people’s
decisions even in periods of peace at the
subconscious level. K.G. Jung diagnosed the
danger of irrational behavior of a Swiss patient
who dreamed of the tragic and desperate battle of
the Swiss army at Basel in 1444 (Jung, 1953).
Therefore, the image of important battles of the
past can serve as an example for heroic behavior
during war, as well as an indicator of the
tendency to make unreasonably risky decisions
in peacetime.
Any society in the conditions of war lives in a
mythical reality, where evil exists here and now,
and the fight against it can only be to the death.
At the same time, the accumulated malice
towards the enemy in a civilian does not have a
direct outlet in the form of armed confrontation.
Something similar to the sublimation of the
mortido takes place, whereby civilians respond to
reflexive calls of conscience and contribute, real
or illusory, to a common victory. A supporter of
mortido sublimation was E. Berne, who insisted
that: “Mortido can also be I sublimated, as in
stonecutting, carpentry, and mining, which create
beautiful or useful things by attacking inanimate
objects. Surgery involves one of the most useful
sublimations of mortido” (Berne, 1975, 65). We
note that the attack is carried out on an object, but
at the same time the image of the enemy is used,
which is defeated at the level of a creative act. In
such cases, a civilian in the conditions of war
associates himself with a soldier, but gives his
forces not to the front, but to the rear. Thus, when
it is impossible to use force in war to satisfy the
need for revenge, the energy of the mortido is
directed into sublimation. It manifests itself in
active volunteering for the defense of the
country, wartime songs, informational
marathons, works of street artists and other
similar humanitarian and patriotic activities.
5. Heroism and dignity
War is a special time for every person. Time to
rethink your own existence. Updated weighting
of your deeds from birth and probable death. And
here it will be appropriate to modernize
M. Heidegger's thesis: “…the meaningfulness of
human existence rest on our “being – towards –
death” (Bowring, 2021). That is, during the war,
only the active fulfillment of life until death gives
meaning to existence. In order to determine the
value of life before its end, standards of social
interaction are needed, which serve as “beacons”
for decision-making. Here it is worth
distinguishing two attractors “Hero” and
“Antihero”, which depend on the vector of
interaction “man – world”, as well as on the
choice of being and non-being by a person for
himself and for the surrounding world. Overall,
these attractors are fundamental components that
define the decision-making space in war. The
basic characteristics of hero are dignity and
respect for the opponent. One of the first
illustrations of this thesis can also be found in
S. Lane-Poole, who describes the course of the
relationship between René de Chatillon and
Saladin in 1184 during the siege of the last castle
of the city of Carac, in which the wedding took
place: “Reginald sent Saladin meat and wine, –
as it were a piece of the bridecake, – to share in
the feast; and in return the Sultan gave strict
orders, proclaimed to the army, that the nuptial
tower of the bride and bridegroom should be
scrupulously respected by his archers and
artillery!” (Lane-Poole, 2018, 136). That is,
chivalrous manners and noble decisions during
war are possible, but this requires the proper
behavior of all parties to the conflict. Today, the
code of ethics in making decisions in war is
effective only if the participants in the conflict
agree to rely on the reference images of the
heroes of the past. Another important virtue of a
hero is self-sacrifice. H. Rusch sees it as:
“…altruistic suicide” operationalized as
protecting comrades from explosions using their
own body as a shield” (Rusch, 2022, 239). That
is, it is a choice in favor of death, but from
altruistic motives and with the preservation of
optimism, but in relation to the already
immeasurable future of the war participant. In
addition, the author’s conclusions about the fact
that the heroic behavior of a person is fixed and
developed with the help of symbolism and
identification with intangible values are
important. According to H. Rusch, the owners of
the Medal of Honor in the US armed forces act
more courageously and selflessly than those who
do not have such a distinction. So, social
responsibility recorded through identifying
symbols and a code of honor promotes heroic
behavior of individuals, and in some cases,
groups of people. However, people must share
the values and ideals of society that produce such
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symbols, as well as pass them down from
generation to generation.
If heroism is the acceptance of the energy of
mortido as a certain driving force for continuing
life in war conditions, then treason is the
sublimation of mortido, when a person’s loss of
honor, property, value orientations, love, social
status turns into a desire to fill the insufficiency
of being by going to the opponent of militarily
conflict. Starting from Tarpeia (the daughter of a
Roman general) to modern collaborators – all
traitors try to fill the void of existence, but
“nothing” materializes just after their decision to
change the side of the conflict in the war, the
measure of life is determined only by existence,
the soul and spiritual are distorted by the lack of
unity with humanity and humanness, fear pushes
them to the side of the aggressor. The ratio of
altruism and selfishness is especially important
in choosing the next role model. The main
functional load of the role of the defender is a
reference point for the continued existence of the
world. Opposite to the defender is the role model
of the terrorist, who is involved in making a
decision about the complete destruction of the
enemy's world. At the same time, the most brutal
form of this is the destruction of the future enemy
at the expense of killing and raping the civilian
population. I. Chowdhury and M. Lanier note:
“Dating from the very first wars and civil
disturbances, “rape and pillage” of the losing
force has been one of the “spoils of war” taken
by the victors. In ancient times in addition to rape
and pillage, slavery was commonly employed
against losing families, tribes, city-states or
countries (Chowdhury & Lanier, 2012, 47). It
illustrates the nature of terrorism, which, unlike
the activity of the defender, is built on the
destruction of the world of a hypothetical or real
enemy. At the same time, the authors of the
terrorist act build their own irrational reality,
where the value of justice as the harmony of life
is replaced by retribution to the world. In contrast
to protection, terror does not carry a constructive
social meaning, but is only a means for the
formation of a vicious circle of resentment, when
the emptiness of nothingness is transferred from
the terrorist to the victim.
The role of a peacemaker as a guide to life is not
possible without forgiveness, but in war there can
be no forgiveness without atonement, which in
the end gives rise to revenge. Forgiveness and
revenge are attempts to restore the balance of
interaction between a person and the world based
on the restoration of life in oneself or through the
realization of a subjective idea of justice. This is
reflected not as the pacification of the aggressor,
the rapist and the terrorist, but as the restoration
of justice after victory in the free choice of the
heart in peace. S. Benard and co-authors
associate such restoration of balance as an
increase or restoration of social status: “Whether
moral behaviors are perceived to be status
worthy, and whether morality provides a
pathway from intergroup revenge or forgiveness
to intragroup status” (Benard et al. 2022, 123).
However, revenge in war or after it has much
deeper roots, because it touches the categories of
being and non-being, and also forms the
possibility of a constructive future. Accordingly,
the role of a peacemaker and an avenger is a story
not only about social status, but also about
finding a solution to how to live on in the
conditions of war and after it.
Another question arises: how to make difficult
decisions in the conditions of war and not
become pure evil? Comparing the views of
H. Arendt and T. Aquinas, P. Fisogni considers
evil as the possibility of action without thought:
“The norms taken as a parameter of the action,
(‘you must’) had been able to de-empower
human responsibility both with respect to reason
(I do not need to think about what I do, but only
at the command of the norm) and will (which
follows the ‘you must’ command)” (Fisogni,
2022, 143). That is, a constructive decision
during a war is not possible not only without
thought, but also without a proper evaluative and
volitional act, when the chosen model of the
future is supported by a positive emotional
assessment and the will to win.
6. Social order and victory
The organization of society as a relationship
between civil society and the state determines the
strength of the integrity of society, this happens
both in peacetime and in wartime. Civil society
in Ukraine is formed as an extension of self-
organization, first of all, starting from opposition
to corrupt political system and falsification of
elections in 2004, then to the revanchist post-
colonial state in 2013 and finally to Russian full-
scale military aggression in 2022. This resistance
formed a special large-scale phenomenon – the
volunteer movement as a self-organization of
society (Liubyva, 2022). Civil society progressed
with the development of local self-government
and a network of public organizations, which
proved the effectiveness and stability of
Ukrainian society in the war. Civil society puts
pressure on the state and co-evolutionarily fills
the gaps in the state system. Civil society forces
the state to overcome inertia, stiffness, over-
bureaucratization, inflexibility, since the price of
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the issue is the life of soldiers at the front or
citizens in the areas near the frontline, the
frontline and liberated territories. This
contradiction also manifests itself in the military
sphere as the interaction of territorial defense and
professional military units. This approach
determined the creativity, flexibility and
responsibility of the junior command and officer
staff. Admiral James Stavridis claims that under
the new conditions of confrontation between
global actors, the joint actions of the armies of
the democratic world, the coordination of the
actions of irregular military formations and the
professional regular army are needed. “In the
end, the nation needs to maintain the lighthouse
of deterrence shining well away from its shores,
where it can have the most effect. And it is on the
anvil of those forward deployments that it will
forge the most combat-ready force. Together, the
anvil of deployment and the lighthouse of
deterrence must remain the touchstones of the
Navy and Marine Corps team in this turbulent
21st century” (Stavridis, 2022).
Such an interaction of civil society (which came
to like the image of “a beehive that stings an
aggressor bear”) and the state has greater speed,
maneuverability and ability to innovate in the
military sphere, as opposed to an autocratic state.
The disadvantages of the autocratic state with its
slow hierarchical system, dependent on the
decisions of the autocrat, which nevertheless has
a great potential for forced mobilization, but
despises and destroys the democratic social
potential of creativity of individuals and
reference communities. An important problem of
the organization of society is the harmonization
of “civil society – state” relations as a
representation of self-organization and
organization of society for victory.
Conclusions
Summarizing the results of this study, we note
that decision-making during war is a complex
and multi-vector process of approval by the
decision-making actor of a plan of action for
further life, which depends on the existing
construction of the interaction “man – world” and
its emphasis on existence and non-existence in
the conditions of a military conflict. The
decision-making process during war is
determined by several attractors, which named as
“home”, “heart and mind”, “strength and will”,
“heroism and dignity”, “social order and
victory”.
Attractor “home” ensures the stability of the
people in war, as people identify themselves with
this source of existence and gravitate towards it.
“Heart and mind” is the basic attractor during
decision process, which determine priorities
“Peace – War” and “I – World”. The heart and
mind in peace give birth to actors’ decision-
making models that are reflected in the heroic
defense of one’s world against an aggressor. The
heart and mind in war give birth to objectified
models of behavior of traitors and terrorists.
“Strength and will” and “heroism and dignity”
attractors form and reflect the figures of decision-
making leaders whom one wants to follow,
whom one wants to transfer power and place
responsibility on them. War actually gives birth
to a mythical reality, but it is not a degradation of
world perception, but the creation of a basis for a
potential change of reality in the desired
direction. Civil society resistance together with
self-organization contributes to the restoration of
the balance “society – state”, “individual –
collective”, which should lead the country to
victory.
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