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If you could change a single part of pre 18th century history what would you change? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml to c/chat@hexbear.net

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I'm looking for specific and non obvious answers. Give me something visceral, rid the world of a figure or nation you hate. Preserve a culture you adore. It doesn't have to make sense either, you are basically god here.

What I mean is don't just say you'd get rid of imperialism or colonialism bc no shit

Personally I would make it so that the Americas are never discovered by the old world and every "would be" conquistador (especially cortez and pizarro) explodes.

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[–] doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

At the advent of agriculture and the transition away from pastoralism and nomadism, I wish that all tribes had enforced a collectivist mentality regarding possessions instead of allowing chains of inequality that have lashed out for millennia.

I think inequality is one of those things that is really difficult to erase once it has already been normalized. It allows for accumulation of power, and then uses that power to fight against the fragmented opposition to itself. I think there would have been so much less suffering if that issue had been nipped in the bud back at the start of "civilization."

[–] HumanAnarchist@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I highly recommend The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It presents a new anthropological survey of humanity starting at the question “What is the origin of inequality.”

[–] doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think I hold the same position as Graeber, I was just keeping it simple.

For example that's partially why I said "all" tribes. I agree that it didn't happen linearly, and agriculture wasn't adopted by all groups at the same time. As Marx pointed out late in his life, many tribes had instead adopted a proto-communism that didn't derive from a local implosion of the capitalist order. However the exploitative form of material relations has nonetheless become dominant over the course of millennia. It is obsessed with subjugation and highly normalized. Therefore I think preventing its instances of origination would have led to the development of very different civilizations.