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Showing posts with label Snyder Timothy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snyder Timothy. Show all posts
Monday, October 18, 2021
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Democracy is messy
Your brain on authoritarianism:
The inside forces that drive people to turn on democracy
WBUR, This program aired on October 5, 2021
Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale. Author of several books, including "Our Malady" and "The Road to Unfreedom." (@TimothyDSnyder)
Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University. Chief science officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital. Author of “7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain." (@LFeldmanBarrett)
WBUR, This program aired on October 5, 2021
Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University. Chief science officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital. Author of “7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain." (@LFeldmanBarrett)
Interview Highlights
On the history of philosophical thought and democracy
Timothy Snyder: "We don't even need 2021 to tell us. There's a long tradition of philosophical thought about this. From Plato, who has Socrates say that none of us is self-sufficient, all the way up to Rousseau, who has a book called Emile about how you have to educate people to work in public. We've known for a very long time that if you want to have a complex form of politics, the kind that you described in your introduction, you have to have individuals who are educated in a certain way, and who are aware of what they are doing, who have a kind of reflectiveness.
"Democracy's about reflection. It's about seeing the world, it's about self-correction. Which means that it's not at all the default form of politics. Historically speaking, it's quite exceptional. And I think one of the problems we have in America is that we've kind of come to think that freedom just means, 'Whatever I happen to think, whatever I happen to be convinced of, whatever I feel like doing at this very moment.' And that notion of freedom is highly manipulable by larger forces, by media, especially by social media. And that version of freedom is probably incompatible with democracy. Because it makes reflection something that we just don't do."
On the 'most important purpose' of our brains
Lisa Feldman Barrett: "We don't have brains because brains are rational. They allow us to be rational and controlled in some deliberate way. That's not really the pinnacle of brain evolution. We have brains because brains are important for regulating bodies. And if you look all the way back to the dawn of when brains evolved, they evolved for the ... most important purpose ... to really regulate the systems of your body. So your brain, you can think is running like a budget for your body, all the systems inside your body.
"So right now, as we're talking, as our listeners are listening, there's a whole drama going on inside each of us that we're really largely unaware of because our brains are basically taking care of regulating our hearts, our lungs and so on. We can talk about it as a body budget, and the brain doesn't budget money. It's budgeting glucose, and salt, and oxygen, and water and so on to keep us alive and well. And the two most expensive things your brain can do is move your body around, like when you're exercising or just dragging yourself out of bed in the morning.
"And learning something new, particularly in conditions of uncertainty. And so learning something new, something unexpected, particularly when circumstances are uncertain, doesn't have to be a bad stress. Because a bad stress just means that your brain is preparing your body for a big metabolic outlay that isn't replenished after the fact. But you know, people who exercise every day know that if they replenish what they spend, it's just a good investment. And so education can be that as well."
On the hardships of American life, and the importance of monitoring brain health
Lisa Feldman Barrett: "In addition to all the political uncertainty and the difficulties that come from economic hardship and so on, there is also day to day ambiguities that are built into American life, and that make our body budgets just a little harder to keep in balance. Like the casual brutality of everyday life where people speak to each other in ways that you don't know if those harsh words are a greeting of friendliness, or a threat to your physical well-being. And we can't use salty words on air, so I won't give you specific examples.
"There is a certain degree of social isolation that everyone is experiencing, even people who are very wealthy. And you know, we are social animals. We evolved to have socially dependent nervous systems. So you don't manage your body budget on your own. Other people metaphorically make deposits and withdrawals. And one thing that seems important here is that when you join a social movement, you surround yourself with people who are like-minded. Who think the way that you do. Whose behavior is very predictable to you, because you're predictable to them.
"And that actually gives your body budget a bit of a break. It makes it just easier to get through the day when other people are very predictable to you. Because in the end, the best thing for a human nervous system, for your body budget, is another human. But the worst thing also is another human. And being around people who are unpredictable or who believe things that you don't believe ... you pay some metabolic taxes for that. And it doesn't really matter how monetarily impoverished or enriched you are. You'll pay that tax."
On the benefit of making eye contact and talking with each other, despite differences
Lisa Feldman Barrett: "We have this amazing capacity, when we talk about connecting with each other, that's not just a metaphor. So when we're in the same room with each other and we are communicating, our breathing and our heart rates can synchronize, our movements can synchronize. We regulate each other's attention by eye contact. Making eye contact can actually make someone pay more attention to you. It can direct what they pay attention to and so on.
"So in a very real way, we are the regulators and caretakers of each other's nervous systems as much as our own. And this is really important. Because it means that we are even for the briefest moment, creating a social reality that is different from one where everyone is in their own little sort of informational silos.
"And I just want to make a point. We haven't really talked about social reality and then what that is. But almost everything we're talking about here, democracy, the presidency, politics and so on. This is in the domain of social reality, where a group of people basically by collective agreement claim, make up a reality and then it becomes true. Like we impose the function of currency on little pieces of paper and then poof, those little pieces of paper have value, to trade for material goods.
"So much so that they influence people's actual [reality]. And so when people talk to each other and when they communicate with each other, that is the basis of a more robust social reality. When a president all of a sudden starts doing something that's different than other presidents did, and the public who elected that president don't do anything, or implicitly agree that it's OK. Then in fact, by definition, it becomes OK because the rule is defined by social reality. And the only antidote there is for people to actually communicate with each other."
On the role democratic institutions have in pushing back
Timothy Snyder: "We've identified, let's say, three problems. Social media, wealth inequality, the lack of a welfare state. If we solved all of those problems, would Americans all be perfect angels of democracy? No. But would America be a sounder democracy? And would people in general behave better? In general, have more time for one another? In general, be better listeners? And in general, be more open to the facts? Yes, in general, they would be.
"So I would say first, let's do all the things that we know would work and then confront the issue, which I agree ... exists of bad will. I mean, of course, there are people who don't like democracy. Of course, there are people who love authoritarianism. One of them was just the president of the United States. We got to watch it for four years and we're still watching it.
"So of course, there's also a moral side to this. And when one speaks of institutions and one speaks about neurological structures, there's still something left over, which is ethics. Democracy is also an ethic. I also think democracy leads to good outcomes. I have an ethical commitment to democracy. I think everyone has the right to be represented. And we can't leave that aside. That's of course, also part of the picture."
On the history of philosophical thought and democracy
Timothy Snyder: "We don't even need 2021 to tell us. There's a long tradition of philosophical thought about this. From Plato, who has Socrates say that none of us is self-sufficient, all the way up to Rousseau, who has a book called Emile about how you have to educate people to work in public. We've known for a very long time that if you want to have a complex form of politics, the kind that you described in your introduction, you have to have individuals who are educated in a certain way, and who are aware of what they are doing, who have a kind of reflectiveness.
"Democracy's about reflection. It's about seeing the world, it's about self-correction. Which means that it's not at all the default form of politics. Historically speaking, it's quite exceptional. And I think one of the problems we have in America is that we've kind of come to think that freedom just means, 'Whatever I happen to think, whatever I happen to be convinced of, whatever I feel like doing at this very moment.' And that notion of freedom is highly manipulable by larger forces, by media, especially by social media. And that version of freedom is probably incompatible with democracy. Because it makes reflection something that we just don't do."
On the 'most important purpose' of our brains
Lisa Feldman Barrett: "We don't have brains because brains are rational. They allow us to be rational and controlled in some deliberate way. That's not really the pinnacle of brain evolution. We have brains because brains are important for regulating bodies. And if you look all the way back to the dawn of when brains evolved, they evolved for the ... most important purpose ... to really regulate the systems of your body. So your brain, you can think is running like a budget for your body, all the systems inside your body.
"So right now, as we're talking, as our listeners are listening, there's a whole drama going on inside each of us that we're really largely unaware of because our brains are basically taking care of regulating our hearts, our lungs and so on. We can talk about it as a body budget, and the brain doesn't budget money. It's budgeting glucose, and salt, and oxygen, and water and so on to keep us alive and well. And the two most expensive things your brain can do is move your body around, like when you're exercising or just dragging yourself out of bed in the morning.
"And learning something new, particularly in conditions of uncertainty. And so learning something new, something unexpected, particularly when circumstances are uncertain, doesn't have to be a bad stress. Because a bad stress just means that your brain is preparing your body for a big metabolic outlay that isn't replenished after the fact. But you know, people who exercise every day know that if they replenish what they spend, it's just a good investment. And so education can be that as well."
On the hardships of American life, and the importance of monitoring brain health
Lisa Feldman Barrett: "In addition to all the political uncertainty and the difficulties that come from economic hardship and so on, there is also day to day ambiguities that are built into American life, and that make our body budgets just a little harder to keep in balance. Like the casual brutality of everyday life where people speak to each other in ways that you don't know if those harsh words are a greeting of friendliness, or a threat to your physical well-being. And we can't use salty words on air, so I won't give you specific examples.
"There is a certain degree of social isolation that everyone is experiencing, even people who are very wealthy. And you know, we are social animals. We evolved to have socially dependent nervous systems. So you don't manage your body budget on your own. Other people metaphorically make deposits and withdrawals. And one thing that seems important here is that when you join a social movement, you surround yourself with people who are like-minded. Who think the way that you do. Whose behavior is very predictable to you, because you're predictable to them.
"And that actually gives your body budget a bit of a break. It makes it just easier to get through the day when other people are very predictable to you. Because in the end, the best thing for a human nervous system, for your body budget, is another human. But the worst thing also is another human. And being around people who are unpredictable or who believe things that you don't believe ... you pay some metabolic taxes for that. And it doesn't really matter how monetarily impoverished or enriched you are. You'll pay that tax."
On the benefit of making eye contact and talking with each other, despite differences
Lisa Feldman Barrett: "We have this amazing capacity, when we talk about connecting with each other, that's not just a metaphor. So when we're in the same room with each other and we are communicating, our breathing and our heart rates can synchronize, our movements can synchronize. We regulate each other's attention by eye contact. Making eye contact can actually make someone pay more attention to you. It can direct what they pay attention to and so on.
"So in a very real way, we are the regulators and caretakers of each other's nervous systems as much as our own. And this is really important. Because it means that we are even for the briefest moment, creating a social reality that is different from one where everyone is in their own little sort of informational silos.
"And I just want to make a point. We haven't really talked about social reality and then what that is. But almost everything we're talking about here, democracy, the presidency, politics and so on. This is in the domain of social reality, where a group of people basically by collective agreement claim, make up a reality and then it becomes true. Like we impose the function of currency on little pieces of paper and then poof, those little pieces of paper have value, to trade for material goods.
"So much so that they influence people's actual [reality]. And so when people talk to each other and when they communicate with each other, that is the basis of a more robust social reality. When a president all of a sudden starts doing something that's different than other presidents did, and the public who elected that president don't do anything, or implicitly agree that it's OK. Then in fact, by definition, it becomes OK because the rule is defined by social reality. And the only antidote there is for people to actually communicate with each other."
On the role democratic institutions have in pushing back
Timothy Snyder: "We've identified, let's say, three problems. Social media, wealth inequality, the lack of a welfare state. If we solved all of those problems, would Americans all be perfect angels of democracy? No. But would America be a sounder democracy? And would people in general behave better? In general, have more time for one another? In general, be better listeners? And in general, be more open to the facts? Yes, in general, they would be.
"So I would say first, let's do all the things that we know would work and then confront the issue, which I agree ... exists of bad will. I mean, of course, there are people who don't like democracy. Of course, there are people who love authoritarianism. One of them was just the president of the United States. We got to watch it for four years and we're still watching it.
"So of course, there's also a moral side to this. And when one speaks of institutions and one speaks about neurological structures, there's still something left over, which is ethics. Democracy is also an ethic. I also think democracy leads to good outcomes. I have an ethical commitment to democracy. I think everyone has the right to be represented. And we can't leave that aside. That's of course, also part of the picture."
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Trump is 1930s
Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History at Yale, has just published On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. If you missed any of his book lectures, one is above and the one he gave to the Wilson Center in Washington is HERE.
In his New York Times op ed before the election (9/20/16) he describes the Russian fascist philosophy of Ivan Ilyin behind Putin's desire to crush Western democracy. A desire for an ordered world is more important than geo-political power. Snyder's is must reading for our troubling era.
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| click to order |
By TIMOTHY SNYDER
NEW HAVEN — The president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as a “geopolitical catastrophe.” But the political thinker who today has the most influence on Mr. Putin’s Russia is not Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Communist system, but rather Ivan Ilyin, a prophet of Russian fascism.
The brilliant political philosopher has been dead for more than 60 years, but his ideas have found new life in post-Soviet Russia. After 1991, his books were republished with long print runs. President Putin began to cite him in his annual speech to the Federal Assembly, the Russian equivalent of the State of the Union address.
To complete the rehabilitation, Mr. Putin saw to it that Ilyin’s corpse was repatriated from Switzerland, and that his archive was returned from Michigan. The Russian president has been seen laying flowers on Ilyin’s Moscow grave. And Mr. Putin is not the only disciple of Ilyin among the Kremlin elite.
Vladislav Y. Surkov, Moscow’s arch-propagandist, also sees Ilyin as an authority. Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, who served as president between 2008 and 2012, recommends Ilyin to Russian students. Ilyin figures in the speeches of the foreign minister, the head of the constitutional court and the patriarch of the Orthodox Church.
What are the ideas that have inspired such esteem?
Ilyin believed that individuality was evil. For him, the “variety of human beings” demonstrated the failure of God to complete the labor of creation and was therefore essentially satanic. By extension, the middle classes, political parties and civil society were also evil, because they encouraged the development of personalities beyond the single identity of the national community.
According to Ilyin, the purpose of politics is to overcome individuality, and establish a “living totality” of the nation. Writing in the 1920s and ’30s after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, when he became a leading emigré ideologue of the anti-Communist White Russians, Ilyin looked on Mussolini and Hitler as exemplary leaders who were saving Europe by dissolving democracy. His 1927 article “On Russian Fascism” was addressed to “My White brothers, the fascists.” Later, in the 1940s and ’50s, he provided the outlines for a constitution of a fascist Holy Russia governed by a “national dictator” who would be “inspired by the spirit of totality.”
This leader would be responsible for all functions of government in a completely centralized state. Elections would be held, with open voting and signed ballots, purely as a ritual of support of the leader. The reckoning of votes was irrelevant: “We must reject blind faith in the number of votes and its political significance.”
The brilliant political philosopher has been dead for more than 60 years, but his ideas have found new life in post-Soviet Russia. After 1991, his books were republished with long print runs. President Putin began to cite him in his annual speech to the Federal Assembly, the Russian equivalent of the State of the Union address.
To complete the rehabilitation, Mr. Putin saw to it that Ilyin’s corpse was repatriated from Switzerland, and that his archive was returned from Michigan. The Russian president has been seen laying flowers on Ilyin’s Moscow grave. And Mr. Putin is not the only disciple of Ilyin among the Kremlin elite.Vladislav Y. Surkov, Moscow’s arch-propagandist, also sees Ilyin as an authority. Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, who served as president between 2008 and 2012, recommends Ilyin to Russian students. Ilyin figures in the speeches of the foreign minister, the head of the constitutional court and the patriarch of the Orthodox Church.
What are the ideas that have inspired such esteem?
Ilyin believed that individuality was evil. For him, the “variety of human beings” demonstrated the failure of God to complete the labor of creation and was therefore essentially satanic. By extension, the middle classes, political parties and civil society were also evil, because they encouraged the development of personalities beyond the single identity of the national community.
According to Ilyin, the purpose of politics is to overcome individuality, and establish a “living totality” of the nation. Writing in the 1920s and ’30s after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, when he became a leading emigré ideologue of the anti-Communist White Russians, Ilyin looked on Mussolini and Hitler as exemplary leaders who were saving Europe by dissolving democracy. His 1927 article “On Russian Fascism” was addressed to “My White brothers, the fascists.” Later, in the 1940s and ’50s, he provided the outlines for a constitution of a fascist Holy Russia governed by a “national dictator” who would be “inspired by the spirit of totality.”
This leader would be responsible for all functions of government in a completely centralized state. Elections would be held, with open voting and signed ballots, purely as a ritual of support of the leader. The reckoning of votes was irrelevant: “We must reject blind faith in the number of votes and its political significance.”
In the light of Ilyin’s rehabilitation as Russia’s leading ideologue, Moscow’s manipulations of elections should be seen not so much as a failure to implement democracy but as a subversion of the very concept of democracy. Neither the parliamentary elections of December 2011 nor the presidential elections of March 2012 produced a majority for Mr. Putin’s party or for Mr. Putin personally. Votes were therefore added to produce a decisive result.
Russians who protested the fixed elections were branded as national enemies. Nongovernmental organizations were forced to register as “foreign agents.” Mr. Putin even claimed that Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, “gave the signal” to the Russian opposition to go on the streets. The notion that defending democracy meant betraying Russia was perfectly consistent with Ilyin’s view.
Since then, Mr. Putin has relied on Ilyin’s authority at every turning point in Russian politics — from his return to power in 2012 to the decision to intervene in Ukraine in 2013 and the annexation of Ukrainian territory in 2014. Last spring, he claimed that the American intelligence services would intervene in the Russian parliamentary elections held this past weekend and in the Russian presidential elections of 2018. The question of whether anyone in the Kremlin actually believes this is beside the point. These claims of constant American interference are intended to show that the democratic process is nothing more than a geopolitical game.
While Russian leaders consciously work to hollow out the idea of democracy in their own country, they also seek to discredit democracy abroad — including, this year, in the United States. Russia’s interventions in our presidential elections are not only the opportunistic support of a preferred candidate, Donald J. Trump, who backs Russian foreign policy. They are also the logical projection of the new ideology: Democracy is not a means of changing leadership at home, but a means of weakening enemies abroad. If we see politics as Ilyin did, Russia’s ritualization of elections becomes a virtue rather than a vice. Degrading democracy around the world would be a service to mankind.
If democracy is merely an invitation to foreign influence, then hacking a foreign political party’s email is the most natural thing in the world. If civil society is nothing but the decadent opening of a rotting society to foreign influence, then constant trolling of media is obviously appropriate. If, as Ilyin wrote, the “arithmetical understanding of politics” is harmful, then digital meddling in foreign elections would be just the thing.
For a decade, Russia has been sponsoring right-wing extremists as “election observers” — most recently, in the farcical referendums in the Crimea and in the Donbas region of Ukraine — in order to discredit both elections and their observation. Since democracy is a sham, as Ilyin believed, then it is right and good to imitate its language and procedures in order to discredit it. It is noteworthy that the Trump campaign has now imitated this very practice, supplying both its own private “observers” and the advance conclusion about the fraud they will find.
The technique of undermining democracy abroad is to generate doubt where there had been certainty. If democratic procedures start to seem shambolic, then democratic ideas will seem questionable as well. And so America would become more like Russia, which is the general idea. If Mr. Trump wins, Russia wins. But if Mr. Trump loses and people doubt the outcome, Russia also wins.
From Moscow’s point of view, it is easier to bring down democracy everywhere than it is to hold free, fair elections at home. Russia will seem stronger if other states follow its course of development toward a cynicism about democracy that allows authoritarianism to thrive. So we might as well get used to the interference, and take sensible precautions. It no longer makes sense to carry out elections and regulate campaign finance as if such matters were of no interest to hostile foreign powers.
Americans have plenty of other reasons to reform the democratic process, but protecting their integrity should take priority. Paper ballots for every voter and public financing of campaigns, to give two examples, would make sense both for citizens and for the electoral system. A simpler democracy would be a more secure one — and a more exemplary one.
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