Political outrage: Why all sides get it wrong about the arc of history | Timothy Snyder | Big Think

Political outrage: Why all sides get it wrong about the arc of history
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Is there an arc to history? The danger that we’re in right now in the U.S. is that we’re shifting from a politics of inevitability to a politics of eternity, believes historian Timothy Snyder. That means whether we want to or not, America is moving squarely back into history, when anything can happen. Europe too has its own politics of inevitability to deal with, as the idea of the European Union implies believing in history that simply never happened.
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TIMOTHY SNYDER:

Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University and the author of On Tyranny, Black Earth, and Bloodlands. His work has received the literature award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Snyder's most recent book is The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Timothy Snyder: I think the word “history” is a lot more demanding of us than we think. We spend much of our time dwelling in things that aren’t history.

We have notions of the way time flows that are comfortable but basically wrong and allow us to sleepwalk and drift away from what’s actually confronting us and what we should actually be seeing and feeling.

One of those is what I call the “politics of inevitability,” or for short we could call it progress, and that’s the idea “we know the rules of history, A is always going to lead to B, the world is pretty good as it is and it’s only going to get better. That idea has been very present in the U.S. in the form of “history is over, there are no alternatives, liberal democracy is inevitable, the market is just going to bring about democracy, so there’s nothing that we really have to do.” And of course that’s a core problem: this kind of thinking takes you out of history and it says you’re not responsible, what you do as an individual doesn’t really matter very much.

Now the problem with that, or one of the many problems, is that eventually you’re going to get some kind of a shock. You might get shocked in 2008 when you figure out you can’t own a house, or you might get shocked in 2016 when somebody you don’t expect wins a presidential election, but something is going to happen in your life which is going to shock you, and suddenly this story about inevitability, about progress is no longer going to make sense to you.

And then you’re going to be vulnerable to what I call the “politics of eternity,” which is another way of dwelling in time, which isn’t history. In the politics of eternity we say “it’s not my fault; I’m an innocent victim; everything which is wrong comes from enemies from the outside, those others, those enemies over and over again come for us, attack us, try to penetrate us, hurt us. And history then just becomes a cycle where over and over and over again the innocent people are attacked by the bad guys,” basically. And the politics of eternity what also happens is that the news cycle, the daily cycle overwhelms you and it instructs you who you’re supposed to be afraid of, how you’re supposed to feel. So the danger that we’re in right now in the U.S. is we’re shifting from a politics of inevitability to a politics of eternity, and then along the way we won’t notice how we’re in history. History demands of us that we understand that it’s not inevitable to become better, it’s also not inevitable to become worse. There are certain structures and what we do within those structures of matters, and what history teaches us is what those structures are.

The Europeans have a different politics of inevitability. So the structure is the same, the overall structure is that “things are pretty good, they’re going to get better; there are rules to history we know what those rules are therefore it doesn’t matter what we do.” But the particulars are very different. The European myth goes something like this: “European nations are old; European nations are wise; European nations learned from the second world war that war was a bad thing and therefore cooperate economically to form this thing called the European Union.” Now that’s completely false. It’s just as bogus as the American idea that “the market is going to bring about capitalism and there are no alternatives.” Not a word of that European story is true, even though pretty much all Europeans believed in it. European nations...

[davorianware]

We have a strange fervor for one-sidedness. There is no one way, one philosophy, one direction that works. We always have to be adaptable.

[DNj]

Amazing take, also those who try revise history for an agenda are ignorant of the serious danger of that.

[CarFreeSegnitz]

To be unaware of progress, that today is better than yesterday and tomorrow can be better still, leads to hopelessness and a willingness to "burn it all down". The past was not better. We were isolated, prone to famines, superstitious, prone to pestilence. We DO NOT want to trash progress in some vain hope of resurrecting a mythical golden past. Things are not perfect now, the never will be, but they're far better than the state of the world a few centuries ago. Do not give up on knowing more, on striving, on fixing the problems we know about.

[futurehistory]

While this reality may seem bleak, I think it's inspiring in some ways. It tells us; if you want the future to go a certain way, get out there and make it go that way.

[MickeyThomas]

Very thought provoking. The best part I took from it, is that the arc of history is an illusion. Each chapter of history, has its own structures within it's own place in the timespan of history.

[rtd]

There are two aspects of Big Think videos that annoy me: 1) there’s never a link to the speaker’s book(s), and 2) there’s never a direct connection between the “big idea” and the individual.

[NastyCupid]

very interesting and thought provoking video :)

[ucasvb]

Really well put. This is a lesson we can learn from anthropology, actually, in the way societies create myths to justify their way of life and thinking and resist certain changes.

These are our modern myths.

[dingane]

Exaggeration does no one any good. Re France and Britain alone, is it not obvious to say that these were nation states with empires? Moreover the EEC, as it originally was, involved economic cooperation and a single market only. It is the attempt at a single currency, political integration and open borders of the EU over the last 15 years that is unprecedented (since the days of the Roman empire). Not the attempt to assert national sovereignty. Let's deal with reality please. This from someone who is pro-EU but very worried about its current overeach.

[LX]

Thought provoking, but i think he conflates a free market with anarchism a little to heavily. Not many out there saying no regulation just that at this point in time the market is over regulated in many sectors. Other than that I enjoyed the video immensely.

[vivalibertasergovivitelibe]

So basically what he says is that there isn't a fixed order to history that the present and future must follow, right? Well that is true however nobody in the right mind would claim that. However there are certain patterns in history that do repeat themselves and it is good to keep an eye on them because they might just as well repeat themselves.

[katherinekelly]

Human beings are fearful, ignorant and selfish. Everything is an expression of that "Collectively expressed". Whatever exceptions you see otherwise are by the few who have transcended fear, ignorance and selfishness. History is a imperfect record of this.

[frankbieser]

I'm wondering who ever said that markets lead to democracy? Markets lead to greater wealth creation. Politics is something else.

[thmsdngsn]

Just looked him up & downloaded his books.

[anubis]

So true. Listen to the "Behind the bastards" podcast. It should be required for all teens in school. It will change so much of these ideas.

[tammysilverwolf]

I think a startling but fascinating example of modern 'progress' being married to non-democratic ideals would be something like China. Their use of social scoring to keep people in line, quash dissent and technologies that can (and do) modify messages and videos in real time is pretty interesting. Terrifying, but interesting. Their economic systems also show us that democracy isn't necessary for capitalism to enrich a nation.

Not a fan, personally- I have a lot of issues with their human rights track record, but I'd be blind to deny the argument *against* the arc of history being a progressive one in this country.

Great video, it's given me a lot to think on.

[glascoebowie]

Lawyers take sides not investigators, You must investigate every one involved and bring all evidence to the prosecutor.

[alalohwhydee]

the tragedy of our present situation is that we are so “enlightened” that the chances are that Timothy Snyder will most probably receive death threats because of what was just said

[marqstheman]

Great video, very interesting.
I’ll probably watch it again to try and understand his take on the subject more thoroughly. Might even recommend it to some friends.

[trishthompson]

Yes progress is not linear. Not too hard to figure out.