2026년 8월 19일 수요일

War and Fool Ivan / Russia

A long time ago, I studied the behaviors of young people and the elderly at various workplaces. From the perspective of violence alone, young people possess an inherent, passionate violent drive, while the elderly—especially older men—possess an inherent violence aimed at replenishing the physical and mental energy they had been depleting. Especially in Korea, the divided situation and the military culture only added to that aspect.

The problem is Russia’s elderly, who have not stopped even after completely crushing Ukraine and Russia. There are statistics that more than 500,000 young people in Russia have already been killed. The elderly Russians, who think of the glory of the former Soviet Union, do not spare the young. Some people think it is merely a disaster caused by President Putin, but what became the political backdrop behind it is the consciousness of the Russian elderly, shaped through their experience of World War II and the communist superpowers. They were writing their own Legend of the Galactic Heroes without sparing the lives of the young people who would bring the nation to life in the future.

With the lament, “If only the old folks would come to their senses, there wouldn’t be war...,” I began a discussion with the AI. Artificial intelligence tells me not to lump an entire generation together and blame it.So soon the conversation connected to the works of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and Dostoevsky, which I like. Even in high school, I secretly read The Brothers Karamazov in class and longed for Russia, but now it seems to have become a country full of bad people.

Russia's Ivan the Fool

— The War in Ukraine, the Psychology of Old Age, and What Russian Literature Already Warned Us About

Lee Hyung-chun · A conversation with Claude · August 2026

Foreword: Why "Ivan the Fool"

In Tolstoy's folk tale Ivan the Fool, a kingdom with no weapons and no money — ruled only by honest labor and simplicity — ends up prospering. The kingdoms of Ivan's clever brothers, built on swords and gold and the drive to conquer, destroy themselves. Tolstoy's point was unambiguous: greatness built on force and conquest ends in self-destruction.

Today's Russia looks like it is walking the very road the fable rejected — the brothers' road. This piece began as a look at the current state of the war in Ukraine, and grew, over conversation, into an inquiry that reaches from the psychology of Russia's aging hardliners all the way back to a diagnosis Russian literature itself made a hundred years ago.

1. The Front: Stalemate and Escalation at Once

As of August 2026, the front line itself is close to stalemate. Russian forces continue offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Donetsk, but confirmed territorial gains remain minimal, while Ukrainian forces have managed small counterattacks near Sloviansk. What has escalated sharply, instead, is the missile and drone campaign against the rear. July was the deadliest month for civilians since May 2022, and the July 2 strike — 31 killed, over 100 wounded — was the single largest attack of the war. Reports that North Korea has deployed missile troops and ballistic missiles to Russia coincide with this intensification.

On the diplomatic track, the Trump–Zelenskyy relationship has visibly warmed, with talk of jointly producing Patriot interceptors and reviving negotiations — but this has not translated into an actual ceasefire or peace agreement.

2. Putin: Between an Intelligence Officer's Caution and Hardliner Pressure

Putin's thinking is not simple. The information control and threat-assessment instincts of a career KGB/FSB officer run through his entire governing style. At the same time, he shows clear signs of military and economic weakening: an estimated half a million casualties, domestic discontent over fuel shortages, the loss of allies like Venezuela and Hungary, and a scaled-down Victory Day parade. In May, he even paired conciliatory language — "the matter is coming to an end" — with agreement to a temporary ceasefire.

The most recent trend, however, points the other way. Seeing a gap in Ukraine's air defenses as an opportunity, Russia has intensified missile strikes rather than negotiating. Compounding this, hardliners — ultranationalist oligarchs like Konstantin Malofeev and siloviki factions — are pressing Putin to halt talks, order full mobilization, and even prepare tactical nuclear options. Observers note that if Putin were to visibly back down, this hardline bloc could brand him a traitor. In other words, Putin's range of choices is constrained less by his own caution than by how tightly the power blocs around him are bound to Soviet nostalgia and imperial narrative.

3. The Psychology of Old Age: The Gap Between Textbook Serenity and Reality

Textbook accounts often portray old age as a natural convergence toward wisdom and detachment. Clinical and field observation frequently shows the opposite: as people become aware of declining physical and cognitive capacity, they often grow more rigid about retaining control, or display "compensatory dominance behavior" — ostentatiously exercising whatever authority remains to them.

This drive toward dominance tends to split into two paths. One is overt — pushing through physical presence or hierarchy, strongly seen among older men from military backgrounds such as the Marines. The other is covert manipulation — leveraging guilt, disguised concern, or a sense of relational obligation, a path chosen by those without the physical force to push through directly. The methods are opposite; the goal is the same — drawing a fading sense of significance and control from someone else. Call it, as this conversation did, "energy vampirism."

Rather than generalizing this as a universal feature of aging, it is more precise to see it as most pronounced in people whose identity has compressed into a single narrative of past glory. Russia's hardline older men fit this condition almost exactly: for the generation that lived through the Soviet collapse and the humiliations of the 1990s, the myth of victory in the "Great Patriotic War" and the memory of superpower status are the last remaining proof of their own significance.

4. Why Kill the Young: Russkiy Mir and the Problem of Legitimacy

Friendly exchange with Ukraine alone could produce something functionally close to reunification — yet the Kremlin's hardliners insist on forced annexation. Their logic isn't framed as naked conquest but wrapped in the self-narrative of "Russkiy Mir" (the Russian World) — the idea that Russian speakers, Orthodox culture, and former Soviet territory form a single civilization whose defense is inherently defensive, not offensive. A security narrative casting NATO's eastward expansion as encirclement is layered on top. Even overt conquest gets repackaged, in its own telling, as survival.

The historical answer is cold: a leadership that believes abandoning this narrative would collapse its own legitimacy has, in practice, paid for that belief with hundreds of thousands of lives. Nostalgia is only the raw material; forging it, again and again, into a weapon for holding power is a choice made by those unwilling to let go of power.

5. How Lives Are Spent: A Structural Problem, Not Just Materialist Ideology

Russia's "meat assault" tactics lay bare a practice of treating soldiers as expendable. But tracing this only to Communist materialism doesn't hold up well. Imperial Russian forces were already notorious for mass frontal assaults in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I — well before the Bolshevik Revolution. Communism, if anything, simply added an ideological gloss — sacrifice of the individual for the collective — on top of a pattern that already existed.

More structural causes are usually cited: a long history of treating a vast population as a strategic asset; an extremely centralized command culture that grants junior officers almost no latitude (in contrast to Western "mission command" doctrine); an information-controlled system where mass casualties struggle to generate opinion strong enough to threaten the regime; and a corruption-riddled procurement system where cheap manpower is, in practice, cheaper than investment in precision weapons and training. Even the recent shift — sending small infantry teams on foot instead of expensive armor, now that drones dominate the battlefield — is simply an adaptation within the same calculus: machines are spared, and people remain the cheapest resource.

6. Russian Literature Already Warned Us

Remarkably, Russian literature diagnosed this entire pattern a century ago. Raskolnikov's "Napoleon theory" in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment — the division of humanity into ordinary people and "extraordinary" individuals entitled to transcend moral law — nearly mirrors the self-justification of today's Kremlin hardliners. The narrator of Notes from Underground shows how a man with no real power but an inflated sense of pride vents his unrecognized self-regard in twisted ways — an exact portrait of the "small heroes" psychology this conversation kept circling back to.

Tolstoy offered the opposite voice. In War and Peace, he relentlessly dismantled the great-man theory of history itself, portraying even Napoleon as a single point swept along by history's vast currents. Late in life he moved toward a Christian anarchism that rejected state violence outright — a stance that would later influence Gandhi. In other words, Russian culture has, from the start, contained both a sharp critique of the person intoxicated by a small heroic narrative, and the very narrative the Kremlin is now enacting at national scale.

The question posed by Legend of the Galactic Heroes — is it justified for the nameless many to be consumed so that one man's heroic story can be completed? — compresses all of this into a single sentence. The work's answer is unambiguous: however compelling the hero, a structure in which the many are sacrificed for that story is itself the problem.

7. Closing

Ivan the Fool's kingdom prospered with no sword, no gold — only working hands. His brothers' kingdoms, built on conquest and display, destroyed themselves. What Russia's hardline elders are holding onto today is not Ivan's wisdom, but the road his brothers walked — the road of finishing one generation's unfinished heroic story with the lives of the next.

References

Al Jazeera, "Putin's 'illusion of victory:' Russia ramps up missile attacks on Ukraine" (Aug 18, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/18/putins-illusion-of-victory-russia-ramps-up-missile-attacks-on-ukraine
Al Jazeera, "Zelenskyy and Trump discuss Patriot deal and reviving Russian peace talks" (Jul 28, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/28/ukraines-zelenskyy-hails-good-meeting-with-trump-at-white-house
Al Jazeera, "Putin suggests Russia's war on Ukraine 'coming to an end'" (May 10, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/10/putin-suggests-russias-war-on-ukraine-coming-to-an-end
Atlantic Council, "With Putin visibly weakened, now is the time to back Ukraine." https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/with-putin-visibly-weakened-now-is-the-time-to-back-ukraine/
Critical Threats (ISW), "Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 5, 2026." https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-5-2026
National Security Journal, "Putin Is Being Cornered by His Own Hardliners — and the Plan They're Pushing Him Toward Crosses the One Line Left." https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/putin-is-being-cornered-by-his-own-hardliners-and-the-plan-theyre-pushing-him-toward-crosses-the-one-line-left/
SOFREP, "Russia's 'Wave-Style' Assault Tactics in Kursk: A Brutal Nod to History." https://sofrep.com/news/russias-wave-style-assault-tactics-in-kursk-a-brutal-nod-to-history/
Newsweek, "Russian soldier describes Russia's use of 'meat assault' tactic." https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldier-describes-moscows-use-meat-assault-tactic-1839375
Al Jazeera, "Russian weapons, tactics seen in Ukraine are shaping Myanmar's civil war" (Mar 24, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/24/russian-weapons-tactics-seen-in-ukraine-are-shaping-myanmars-civil-war
Leo Tolstoy, Ivan the Fool (Иван-дурак, 1885)
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Война и мир, 1869)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Преступление и наказание, 1866)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Записки из подполья, 1864)
Yoshiki Tanaka, Legend of the Galactic Heroes (銀河英雄伝説, 1982–1987)

Compiled from a conversation between Lee Hyung-chun and Claude, August 2026.

전쟁과 바보 이반 / 러시아

나는 오래전 여러 가지 일터에서 젊은이들과 노인들의 행태를 연구했다. 폭력성의 관점에서만 보면 젊은이들의 혈기적인 폭력성이 내재해있고, 노인들 특히 남자 노인들은 감쇄하는 신체적, 정신적 에너지를 보충하기 위한 폭력성이 내재해있었다. 특히 한국같은 경우 분단된 상황과 군대문화는 그런 면모를 더 해주었다.

문제는 우크라이나와 러시아를 완전히 무너뜨리고도 멈추지 않는 러시아의 노인들이다. 러시아의 젊은이들은 이미 50만명 이상 희생되었다는 통계가 있다. 구 소련의 영광을 생각하는 러시아의 노인들은 젊은이들을 아끼지 않는다. 혹자는 푸틴 대통령으로부터 발생한 재앙이라고만 생각하는데, 그 뒤에서 정치적인 배경이 된 것은 2차 대전과 공산주의 대국을 경험하면서 만들어진 러시아 노인들의 의식세계다. 미래에 국가를 영속시킬 젊은이들의 목숨을 아끼지 않고 자신들만의 은하영웅전설을 쓰고 있었던 것이다.

“늙은이들이 정신을 차려야 전쟁이 없을텐데.......”라는 푸념으로 인공지능과의 토론을 시작했다. 인공지능은 한 세대를 다 싸잡아서 비난하지 말라고 한다.그래서 곧 대화는 내가 좋아하는 톨스토이와 차이코프스키 그리고 도스토예프스키의 작품과 연관시켜 나갔다. 나는 고등학교때 수업시간에도 몰래 카라마조프가의 형제들을 읽으며 러시아를 동경했는데, 이제는 나쁜스키들이 많은 나라가 된 것 같다.

러시아의 바보 이반

— 우크라이나 전쟁, 노년의 심리, 그리고 러시아 문학이 이미 경고했던 것

이형춘 · 클로드(Claude)와의 대화 정리 · 2026년 8월

서문: 왜 '바보 이반'인가

톨스토이의 민담 《바보 이반》에서, 무기도 돈도 없이 오직 노동과 순박함만으로 다스려지는 이반의 나라는 끝내 번영한다. 반면 칼과 금으로 세상을 정복하려던 형제들의 나라는 스스로 무너진다. 톨스토이가 이 이야기로 하고 싶었던 말은 명확했다 — 힘과 정복으로 쌓아 올린 위대함은 결국 자기 파괴로 끝난다는 것.

지금의 러시아는 이 우화가 거절했던 형제들의 길을 걷고 있는 것처럼 보인다. 이 글은 우크라이나 전쟁의 현재 국면을 짚어보는 데서 출발해, "왜 이 전쟁이 계속되는가"라는 질문을 러시아 노년 세대의 심리, 그리고 러시아 문학이 백 년 전에 이미 진단해둔 인간상으로까지 파고들어 본 대화의 기록이다.

1. 전황: 교착과 격화가 동시에

2026년 8월 현재 전선 자체는 뚜렷한 변화 없이 교착에 가깝다. 러시아군은 수미·하르키우·도네츠크 등 여러 방향에서 공세를 이어가지만 확인된 영토 진전은 미미하고, 우크라이나군은 슬로비얀스크 인근 등에서 소규모 반격에 성공하고 있다. 반면 후방에 대한 미사일·드론 공격은 크게 격화됐다. 7월은 2022년 5월 이후 가장 많은 민간인 사상자가 발생한 달이었고, 7월 2일 공습은 31명이 사망하고 100명 이상이 부상당한 전쟁 중 최대 규모의 단일 공격이었다. 북한이 미사일 병력과 탄도미사일을 러시아에 배치했다는 정보도 이 공세 격화와 맞물려 있다.

외교 트랙에서는 트럼프-젤렌스키 관계가 눈에 띄게 개선되며 패트리엇 요격미사일 공동생산과 협상 재개가 논의됐지만, 실질적 휴전이나 평화협정으로는 이어지지 않았다.

2. 푸틴: 정보요원의 신중함과 강경파의 압박 사이

푸틴의 사고는 단선적이지 않다. KGB·FSB 출신 특유의 정보 통제와 위협 평가 능력이 그의 통치 스타일 전반에 배어 있다. 그런데 동시에 그는 군사적·경제적으로 뚜렷이 약화된 신호를 보이고 있다 — 약 50만 명에 달하는 사상자 추정, 연료 부족으로 인한 국내 불만, 베네수엘라·헝가리 등 우방 이탈, 축소된 전승절 열병식이 그 증거다. 5월에는 "전쟁이 끝을 향해 가고 있다"는 유화적 발언과 함께 임시 휴전에 합의하기도 했다.

그러나 최근 흐름은 반대 방향을 가리킨다. 우크라이나의 방공망 공백을 기회로 본 러시아는 협상 대신 미사일 공세를 강화하고 있다. 여기에 더해 콘스탄틴 말로페예프 같은 극단 민족주의 올리가르히와 실로비키 강경파들이 협상 중단, 전면 동원, 심지어 전술핵 사용까지 요구하며 푸틴을 압박하고 있다. 만약 푸틴이 실질적으로 물러서는 모습을 보인다면 이 강경 블록으로부터 "배신자"로 낙인찍힐 위험이 있다는 관측도 나온다. 즉 푸틴의 선택지는 그 자신의 신중함이 아니라, 그를 둘러싼 권력 집단이 얼마나 소련에 대한 향수와 제국적 서사에 묶여 있는가에 의해 크게 제약된다.

3. 노년의 심리: 교과서적 달관과 현실의 간극

노년기를 자연스럽게 지혜와 관조로 수렴하는 시기로 그리는 교과서적 서술과 달리, 실제 임상·현장 관찰에서는 정반대 패턴이 자주 나타난다. 신체·인지 능력의 감소를 자각할수록 통제감을 잃지 않으려 더 완고해지거나, 남은 권위를 과시적으로 행사하려는 '보상적 지배 행동'이 나타난다는 것이다.

이 지배 욕구는 크게 두 갈래로 갈린다. 하나는 노골적 지배 — 몸이나 위계로 밀어붙이는 방식으로, 해병대와 같은 군 출신 노년 남성에게서 강하게 나타난다. 다른 하나는 은밀한 조작 — 죄책감, 걱정을 가장한 통제, 관계의 의무감을 지렛대로 삼는 방식으로, 몸으로 밀어붙일 힘이 없는 이들이 택하는 경로다. 방식은 정반대지만 목적은 같다 — 잃어가는 존재감과 통제감을 상대에게서 끌어다 채우려는 것, 이른바 '에너지 흡혈'이다.

이걸 보편적 노년의 특성으로 일반화하기보다는, 정체성이 과거의 영광이라는 단일 서사에 압축되어 있는 사람들에게서 특히 두드러지는 현상으로 보는 것이 더 정밀하다. 그리고 러시아의 강경파 노년 남성들은 정확히 이 조건에 부합한다 — 소련 붕괴와 1990년대의 굴욕을 겪은 세대에게, "위대한 조국전쟁"의 승리 신화와 초강대국 시절의 기억은 자기 존재를 증명하는 마지막 준거점이다.

4. 왜 젊은이들을 죽이는가: 루스키 미르와 정당성의 문제

우크라이나와 우호적으로 교류하는 것만으로도 사실상 통일에 준하는 관계를 만들 수 있는데도, 크렘린 강경파는 무력 병합을 고집한다. 그들의 논리는 노골적 정복욕이 아니라 "루스키 미르"(러시아 세계) — 러시아어권·정교 문화권·옛 소련 영토는 본질적으로 하나의 문명이며 이를 지키는 것은 방어라는 자기 서사로 포장된다. NATO 동진을 포위 전략으로 규정하는 안보 서사가 여기에 덧붙는다. 명백한 정복욕조차 스스로에게는 생존을 위한 방어로 재포장되는 것이다.

역사적으로 답은 냉정하다 — 그 서사를 포기하는 순간 권력의 정당성이 무너진다고 믿는 지도부는, 실제로 수십만 명의 목숨을 그 대가로 치러왔다. 향수는 재료일 뿐이고, 그것을 권력 유지의 무기로 계속 가공해 사용하는 것은 결국 권력을 놓지 않으려는 사람들의 선택이다.

5. 목숨을 다루는 방식: 유물론이 아니라 구조의 문제

러시아군의 '고기 돌격'(meat assault) 전술은 병사를 소모품으로 던져 넣는 관행을 정확히 드러낸다. 하지만 이 뿌리를 공산주의 유물론에서만 찾는 것은 정확하지 않다. 러일전쟁, 1차대전 당시 제정 러시아군도 이미 대규모 정면돌격으로 악명 높았다 — 볼셰비키 혁명보다 앞선 일이다. 공산주의는 여기에 "집단을 위한 개인의 희생"이라는 이념적 포장을 하나 더 씌웠을 뿐이다.

더 구조적인 원인은 이렇다. 광대한 인구를 전략적 자산으로 취급해온 역사, 하급 지휘관에게 판단 권한을 거의 주지 않는 극도의 중앙집권적 지휘 문화(서구의 '임무형 지휘'와 대비), 대규모 사상자에도 정권을 위협할 만큼 여론이 성장하기 어려운 정보 통제 체제, 그리고 정밀무기·훈련 투자보다 값싼 인력이 실질적으로 더 싸게 먹히는 부패 구조. 드론이 전장을 지배하면서 값비싼 기갑 대신 소규모 보병을 투입하는 쪽으로 '적응'한 것도, 결국 기계는 아끼고 사람은 여전히 가장 값싼 자원으로 취급한다는 계산이 바뀌지 않았음을 보여줄 뿐이다.

6. 러시아 문학은 이미 경고했다

흥미롭게도 러시아 문학은 이 모든 패턴을 백 년 전에 이미 진단했다. 도스토옙스키의 《죄와 벌》에서 라스콜니코프가 세운 '나폴레옹 이론' — 평범한 인간과 도덕률을 넘어설 자격이 있는 '비범한 인간'을 나누는 논리 — 은 지금 크렘린 강경파의 자기 정당화와 거의 겹친다. 《지하로부터의 수기》의 화자는 아무 힘도 없으면서 자존심만 비대해진 인물이 인정받지 못한 자의식을 뒤틀린 방식으로 터뜨리는 모습을 보여준다. 힘을 갖지 못한 '작은 영웅들'의 심리를 정확히 짚은 것이다.

반면 톨스토이는 정반대의 목소리를 냈다. 《전쟁과 평화》에서 그는 위인 사관 자체를 집요하게 해체했다 — 나폴레옹조차 역사의 거대한 흐름에 휩쓸린 하나의 점에 불과하다고 그렸다. 말년에는 국가 폭력을 거부하는 기독교 무정부주의로 나아갔고, 이는 훗날 간디에게까지 영향을 미쳤다. 즉 러시아 문화 안에는 '작은 영웅 서사에 도취되는 인간'을 예리하게 비판하는 목소리와, 지금 크렘린이 실제로 밀어붙이고 있는 그 서사가 처음부터 공존해 있었다.

《은하영웅전설》의 질문 — 한 사람의 영웅적 서사를 위해 이름 없는 다수가 소모되는 것이 정당한가 — 은 이 모든 이야기를 한 문장으로 압축한다. 작품은 명확히 답한다. 아무리 매력적인 영웅이라도, 그 영웅담을 위해 다수가 희생되는 구조 자체가 문제라고.

7. 맺음말

바보 이반의 나라는 칼도 금도 없이 오직 일하는 손으로 번영했다. 반대편 형제들의 나라는 정복과 위세로 스스로 무너졌다. 지금 러시아의 노년 강경파들이 붙들고 있는 것은 이반의 지혜가 아니라, 이반의 형제들이 걸었던 길이다. 자기 세대의 못다 이룬 영웅담을, 다음 세대의 목숨으로 완성하려는 그 길 말이다.

참고문헌

Al Jazeera, "Putin's 'illusion of victory:' Russia ramps up missile attacks on Ukraine" (2026.8.18). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/18/putins-illusion-of-victory-russia-ramps-up-missile-attacks-on-ukraine
Al Jazeera, "Zelenskyy and Trump discuss Patriot deal and reviving Russian peace talks" (2026.7.28). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/28/ukraines-zelenskyy-hails-good-meeting-with-trump-at-white-house
Al Jazeera, "Putin suggests Russia's war on Ukraine 'coming to an end'" (2026.5.10). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/10/putin-suggests-russias-war-on-ukraine-coming-to-an-end
Atlantic Council, "With Putin visibly weakened, now is the time to back Ukraine". https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/with-putin-visibly-weakened-now-is-the-time-to-back-ukraine/
Critical Threats (ISW), "Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 5, 2026". https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-5-2026
National Security Journal, "Putin Is Being Cornered by His Own Hardliners — and the Plan They're Pushing Him Toward Crosses the One Line Left". https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/putin-is-being-cornered-by-his-own-hardliners-and-the-plan-theyre-pushing-him-toward-crosses-the-one-line-left/
SOFREP, "Russia's 'Wave-Style' Assault Tactics in Kursk: A Brutal Nod to History". https://sofrep.com/news/russias-wave-style-assault-tactics-in-kursk-a-brutal-nod-to-history/
Newsweek, "Russian soldier describes Russia's use of 'meat assault' tactic". https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldier-describes-moscows-use-meat-assault-tactic-1839375
Al Jazeera, "Russian weapons, tactics seen in Ukraine are shaping Myanmar's civil war" (2026.3.24). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/24/russian-weapons-tactics-seen-in-ukraine-are-shaping-myanmars-civil-war
레프 톨스토이, 《바보 이반》(Иван-дурак, 1885)
레프 톨스토이, 《전쟁과 평화》(Война и мир, 1869)
표도르 도스토옙스키, 《죄와 벌》(Преступление и наказание, 1866)
표도르 도스토옙스키, 《지하로부터의 수기》(Записки из подполья, 1864)
다나카 요시키(田中芳樹), 《은하영웅전설》(銀河英雄伝説, 1982–1987)

이 글은 이형춘과 클로드(Claude)의 대화(2026년 8월)를 바탕으로 정리한 기록이다.

2026년 8월 17일 월요일

Dreams Come True / Image - Revised Edition

The war in Ukraine has been going on for four years. The two nations, which were never originally prosperous, become utterly devastated. A country that wages war to fulfill the dreams of its own people and a country that responds with only the dream of merely existing all live with their own dreams.

I have trauma because of my parents, who are suffering from the trauma of the Korean War. In the cause and effect of everything, there is someone’s dream. Depending on the level of energy in concentration and action, someone’s dream may come true, or, through resonant energy, that dream may become impossible. I hope the dreams of people who can smile toward a peaceful world come true.

I showed an AI a blog post I wrote a long time ago, and mentioned the war in Ukraine and the war my parents went through. Artificial intelligence harshly points out the flawed flow of logic, but because of parents traumatized by war, it seemed to understand better than anyone the anxiety and lack I was harboring within me. According to statistics, the number one purpose for people who use artificial intelligence is things like psychological counseling.

Dreams Come True — On the Image

Children are full of dreams, and their dreams are, for the most part, honored. There is still enough time left for them to come true. An old man's dreams, by contrast, are dismissed — by others, and often by himself — for the opposite reason: too little time remains. But it is not right that a person's entire subjective universe should collapse simply because there is no longer time to translate an idea into something real, to give a dream its shape in the world. Look closely at the relationship between dream and reality and you find that what matters is not the achieved dream but the sustained thought and effort of trying to achieve it — that is what moves the world forward. Idea and reality are not as cleanly separated as we assume. Slowly or quickly, the idea is already, diligently, being carried out upon the real. Once you understand this, you also understand that with enough time nothing in this world is beyond reach — and how hollow it is to remain in mere fantasy instead. If there is something to be gained or accomplished, the work is simple to state, if not to do: take the blocks of thought and action stacked up in the realm of the idea, and keep moving them, one by one, onto the ground of the actual.

The French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) held that human perception takes in only the information an object offers that is useful for action, and assembles that into what he called an Image. The world we see, in other words, is a world already filtered down to what we need. But this is not a claim that the world itself is shaped by our wishing. Bergson never said the world is made of our dreams — he said that the world we inhabit, the subjective universe we walk into each morning, is composed differently depending on what we have kept looking at, kept holding onto. What changes the world is not thought by itself, but thought that sets a direction, and action repeated in that direction. Put more precisely: the world is not made of dreams. The world I live in is made along the trajectory of the dream I have refused to put down.

I have, at times, watched closely the world of people who have lived for a long time inside scarcity. Frequent conflict. No slack. A short fuse over small things. At first I took this for temperament, or for a failure of upbringing. Only after watching for a long while did I understand otherwise. It was not a defect of character but the sheer weight of deprivation itself. A mind that has already spent nearly everything it has on getting through the day, and on carrying an old wound, has nothing left over to picture a distant future or organize daily life toward it. Whether the deprivation comes from war, from poverty, or from loss repeated too many times, it physically narrows a person's field of view. To scold that narrowed sight for lacking dreams is not so different from asking someone drowning why they cannot swim better. What someone who grew up beside that narrowness often carries instead, quietly, for a long time, is the unglamorous work of widening — in their own lifetime — the field of view they inherited.

But it turned out the real beggars were elsewhere. Beside those who possess neither wealth nor comfort and still keep walking toward a dream, there are others who, lacking for nothing, obtain power through every manner of elevated begging, and then use that power to extinguish the dreams other people hold dear before they can become real. Call this the new-age beggar. Poverty is not only material. Whoever seizes or wields power without paying a fair price for it is a beggar too. When someone has gotten what they wanted but the manner of getting it, and the conduct that follows, keep looking threadbare from every angle — that is because, seen from any angle, it is still the posture of a beggar. A political leader worth the name does not look at people who want a decent welfare and see beggars; the leader's task is to build the ground on which those people can widen their own narrowed view and reach their dreams. And yet, with enough time passed, it has often turned out that the real beggars were not the people asking for that ground, but those who privatized it.

This is the landscape of the war between Russia and Ukraine that has continued since 2022. An idea held for decades by one man — who once stood on the front line of the Cold War as an intelligence officer, watching an empire collapse without being able to stop it — has finally, after passing through decades of time, been carried over into the actual acts of a state. His dream was already complete long ago, written in the language of confrontation and spheres of influence; time merely waited for the chance to move it onto the ground of the real. On the other side stand tens of millions holding a far more modest dream: simply to go on existing, not to disappear. The dream to destroy comes true. The dream to endure also comes true. Which one prevails depends on which side carries its idea onto the real longer, and more steadily. In the end, the idea is always carried over onto the real. The only real questions are what that idea is, and who is willing to hold onto it long enough.