Kadir

“This progression is a manifestation of synaptic pruning. When our brains are growing, we make more neurons than we need. As we navigate our lives, solving problems and adapting to different environments, we use certain networks of neurons more than others. These commonly used networks become more numerous and better able to compute information; then they streamline their connections and become more efficient. By the time we are adults, our brain networks are stripped down and specialized. We lose plasticity, but our cognition becomes better at solving the problems we are most likely to face.”
― Brian Hare, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity

“Like all immorality, eternity politics begins by making an exception for itself. All else in creation might be evil, but I and my group are good, because I am myself and my group is mine. Others might be confused and bewitched by the facts and passions of history, but my nation and myself have maintained a prehistorical innocence. Since the only good is this invisible quality that resides in us, the only policy is one that safeguards our innocence, regardless of the costs. Those who accept eternity politics do not expect to live longer, happier, or more fruitful lives. They accept suffering as a mark of righteousness if they think that guilty others are suffering more. Life is nasty, brutish, and short; the pleasure of life is that it can be made nastier, more brutish, and shorter for others.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“One can record that these people were not fascists or Nazis or members of a gay international conspiracy or Jewish international conspiracy or a gay Nazi Jewish international conspiracy, as Russian propaganda suggested to various target audiences. One can mark the fictions and contradictions. This is not enough. These utterances were not logical arguments or factual assessments, but a calculated effort to undo logic and factuality. Once the intellectual moorings were loosed, it was easy for Russians (and Europeans, and Americans) to latch on to well-funded narratives provided by television, but it was impossible to work one’s way towards an understanding of people in their own setting: to grasp where they were coming from, what they thought they were doing, what sort of future they imagined for themselves.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“The meaning of each democratic election is promise of the next one. If we anticipate that another meaningful election will take place, we know that the next time around we can correct our mistakes, which in the meantime we blame upon the people whom we elect. In this way, democracy transforms human fallibility into political predictability, and helps us to experience time as movement forward into a future over which we have some influence. If we come to believe that elections are simply a repetitive ritual of support, democracy loses its meaning.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America