The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

My country is so patriarchial, white hegemonied, Christian hegemonied, etc. I think a lot of it has to do with the European settlement/invansion from centuries before. How do you think it would've been like if the Europeans were initially kinder to the Native Americans and allowed them control of these North and South American lands?

The death toll from communicable diseases would have been the same. Considering that some of the vaccines for these were discovered by U.S. scientists, who would not be born in your alternate history, said diseases would still be wiping out communities-here, and in the rest of the world.

Because of course science works that way: people don't make slow and incremental progress until someone makes a breakthrough based on the work of generations and a moment of insight that will happen sooner or later when there is sufficient information, leading to cases of near-simultaneous discovery and development that crop up on occasion. Instead, there is The One True Person Who Can Make A Discovery, who does so ex nihilo, and if that person is never born then nobody will ever learn how anything works.

A secret truth: We would have cured cancer already except the person who was destined to do so died in a car crash, and so now the problem is insoluble.

My country is so patriarchial, white hegemonied, Christian hegemonied, etc. I think a lot of it has to do with the European settlement/invansion from centuries before. How do you think it would've been like if the Europeans were initially kinder to the Native Americans and allowed them control of these North and South American lands?

Well, Europe would probably be a lot better off w/o America's revolutionary prattle. South America and Mexico-ish would be pretty neat and civilised probably, what with the Incans and Aztecs and Mayans and so forth; and I'm guessing that maybe they or the Chinese would colonise the North American continent and introduce civilisation.

I get that a lot.

Tough question. The parameters by which I define civilisation are fairly nebulous; since I know what I mean I haven't gone to any great lengths to delineate the criteria. I tend to rely on the "I know it when I see it" principle. A brief list of civilisations would be:

-- Japan even prior to the Meiji era
-- China, just as a general rule
-- Incans, Mayans, Aztecs, etc. Generally "south of Texas" as far as native peoples go
-- Europe and "the West", obviously
-- Islamic civilisation as a whole
-- Surprise, surprise, a not-Egyptian/Nubian African entry: Ethiopia, owing to her early Christianisation

and a few other bits and bobs in the history books.