the revolution in our understanding of emotion.
For thousands of years, it was common in Western thought to imagine that there was an eternal war between reason and our emotions. ... Modern neuroscience has delivered a body blow to this way of thinking.... Most of the time emotions guide reason and make us more rational. It’s an exaggeration, but maybe a forgivable one, to say that this is a turnabout to rival the Copernican Revolution in astronomy.
Read MoreTranscript: Ezra Klein Interviews Timothy Snyder
…So by the politics of inevitability, I mean the notion that sometimes goes under the heading of progress. I mean the idea that some kind of outside force is going to guarantee that the things that we desire and wish for are actually going to come about. And if that seems abstract, then what I mean in particular with reference to the United States after the end of communism in 1989 is the notion that there are no alternatives left in the world.
To quote Margaret Thatcher or to quote Frances Fukuyama, history is over. And it’s inevitable that a larger force, namely capitalism, is going to bring about the thing that we desire, namely, democracy and freedom. And that idea was in the air. That idea shaped everything else. And I think that idea has a lot to do with the crisis of democracy and freedom that we’re in right now.