Lennox

If they don't die in a droves, supposedly due to transported disease from the Old World, they will make their bones as a majority-indigenous continent akin to the former, and at worst, end up more like the western-imperialized people of Asia and Africa that later fights back rather than the near-genocided state they are known as, today...

That's why I'd do it about 1000 years before, to give the American population time to bounce back.

If despite the previous disease exposure and skills given, they die in similar amounts during the European conquest, we can more certainly conclude it was European imperialists and settlers, such as by their scorched earth tactics, and forced labor plantations, whose policies more purposely seeked to eliminate them in the early 1500s-1600s

I figure if they have iron or steel weapons, along with cavalry and other various animals to serve as beasts of burden and food sources, they'd be able to defend themselves from the Europeans pretty adequately no matter what.

Preventing contact between Eurasia and the Americas would significantly hamper human development, leading to a world without socialism or communism. Also, assuming that you'd do the wall to prevent the genocide of native Americans, there's the underlying assumption that any kind of contact would necessarily lead to genocide, which is an inherently right wing assumption (genocide and conquest = human nature).

I know I'm overthinking a joke answer, but it's what it is.

I mean, I don't want to take your joke too seriously or anything, but that's kind of anti-Marxist...

A successful role model.

Like 1000-ish years before Columbus, I'd give the native Americans all the Eurasian/African domestic animals and knowledge of metallurgy. When sustained contact happens, it will be on a more equal footing, stopping European colonialism before it can really start.

Is this dialectics?

Toot toot motherfuckers

I think there's an internalized misogyny that's getting worse at play as well, where it's feminine (and therefore weak and shameful) to explore feelings or one's inner life in a serious way. It seems like that kind of misogyny is increasing.

My broader concern is that any cultural space for men to do the things that engaging with art and literature encourages, like exploring their own interiority, or developing empathy, or critically engaging with a message that's put before them, is being slowly erased. I'm concerned that this leaves the world a much poorer place.

I mean western academia broadly isn't exactly progressive, right?

No, but people who can read critically frequently produce progressive ideas, so it seems like a bit of a negative that there might be fewer of those people, particularly in an entire gender. Like however imperfect literary men could be, having a cultural space where men can be literary is still better than men reading fucking NOTHING.

Also, it's really annoying that you're mischaracterizing my point as being about "the classics" and the authors I mentioned were like Hunter S. Thompson and Chuck Pahlaniuk. I'm not being some Greek statue PFP person here

what an odd reaction to have to my question

That's not what the original post is saying, and that's not how engaging with art is supposed to work. Of course most RATM fans aren't necessarily developing deep understandings of leftism from the lyrics in such a blunt literal way. That's how conservatives who want to censor art think it works.

But exposing yourself to art and culture, engaging with it in a critical way, and experiencing it collectively with other people, can make you more empathetic, more aware of the different dimensions of the human experience. It's why art and literature have traditionally been taught in schools- because it was understood that studying these things helped you learn to think. It seems like young men aren't being taught to think, even through passive cultural experiences, in the way they used to.