Quite a few enlightenment thinkers were inspired by contact with indigineous peoples in the Americas where certain democratic frameworks existed.

Several different parts of the world had various democratic frameworks throughout history including in South and West Asia, Africa, and certain indigenous groups in the Americas.

The Eurocentric narrative persists though, but perhaps for not much longer.

This quote in OPs image is by the late anthropologist who cowrote the Dawn of Everything which explores global civilizational history further.

Calling the US highly developed is a bit of a stretch. Maybe its tier 1 cities sure but much of its midsize cities and less prosperous states have been in a process of urban decay for the past 20 years.

Not mutually exclusive though I can understand how the West’s experience has led them to that conclusion.

Though there are many scientists in the West that are religious.

One should understand that the purpose of prayer and community isn’t necessarily to improve material circumstances.

Right. Coming back to the original point though, if there are multiple countries to do this transaction with, there are important strategic reasons to avoid doing it with Israel and to go with those other countries instead.

Certainly Israel is not the only nation with which such a transaction could occur.

Not a wise strategic move in my opinion. Ukraine has very little to gain by providing Israel with drones.

It would be generous to call that a plan.

This must be devastating for the Switch which also happens to be nearly tied for best selling console of all time.

I’m not a woman but will speak on what little I know from life experience.

From a woman’s perspective, an offer to share intimacy is not necessarily validating in the way a similar offer may be received by a man.

For some, perhaps many, women there is the looming question of whether an offer of intimacy is simply a man looking to make them the object of their sexual gratification. Many women are not interested in that.

As men, we’re not used to getting offers. So much so that when we get one it makes our day, week, month etc. For many women, the challenge is not getting offers, but there is a looming question of whether the offer genuine. What is the intention of the person showing interest? It’s not that men aren’t also concerned with these questions. It’s just that, for a variety of reasons, the stakes are lower for men. So they spend less time thinking about them and more on just being excited someone noticed them.

An unsurprisingly one sided perspective on gentrification with no attention given to the displacement and economic exclusion of those already living in those ‘ghettos’ and ‘hoods’.

Can communities built on a settler mindset ever reconcile their past and grow beyond it? Or will it always be ok as long as the people that do it have money and dress / act / talk the way some may like?

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As we are seeing, in real time, with the flourishing of the far right in the West. Thank you for the opportunity to contextualize my argument for you in my post above. Wish you the best on your personal journey to better understand our world.

Many of every other nation, race, culture and creed do too.

Not in the way that Indigineous cultures actively do today. See the sources listed by fossilesque above. Indigineous peoples often find themselves in a position where they have to protect the environment from Western corporate interests (which are an extension of Western culture).

No, there is value in sperating out the West here. Let’s refer to the past 500 years of human history. You can claim that my approach is binary ie. western by seperating them out as an entity but the reality is it was their binary view of the world (ie. white people being superior) that has led us to this point. They developed the economic and technologic leverage to make that binary our lived reality. Ignoring that would be naive at best, disingenuous at worst.

It was less than 100 years ago that the average Westerner felt that white countries / cultures were moral, sophisticated, trustworthy and non-white counterparts were immoral, simple, suspicious. The noble savage is a rare stereotype that went off the beaten path, but it was still an example of yet another binary (they’re simple, we’re sophisticated) Western stereotype / worldview.

Coming back to the present day, was it not the Canadian government that signed a memorandum of understanding to build an oil pipeline to its west coast without consulting the Indigineous community there? I recall multiple Indigineous leaders stating they would take the government to court. That sounds to me like the Indigineous community in Canada (as one example) takes environmental sustainability more seriously.

Many indigineous peoples uphold sustainability as crucial to their culture.

It is actually a common logical failing of Western thinking to assume that everyone sees the world and interacts with it the same way (like them). An unfortunate legacy of Eurocentrism during the colonial era.

The noble savage archetype itself came from Western schools of thought, and though it’s now accepted as overly reductive, that doesn’t mean that many Indigineous cultures do not live lives closer to nature and therefore put more thought into their ecological impact.

Indigineous cultures are layered and sophisticated. Some argue that principles of egalitarianism and self governance were introduced to englightenment thinkers through contact with Indigineous peoples in the Americas. Unfortunately a Eurocentric world view meant that crediting non European cultures for anything over most of the past 500 years has been discouraged.

I wouldn’t include India in that group (the relationship has soured a bit recently) but your point on the effectiveness of their propoganda is certainly valid.

America had a positive perception among the countries it offered loans to help rebuild (Western European countries, Japan). Keep in mind that a lot of the colonial and slavery based wealth that Europe accrued was essentially transferred to the US during WW2. By the end of world war 2, the British empire was essentially bankrupt. Most of the world’s gold reserves were now in the US and greater than 50% of global industrial output was US based so the economic outcome was immensely positive for America. It makes sense that your allies would gong your drum when you are offering to finance their reconstruction.

Essentially outside of this sphere knew the US would simply become the continuation of the British / other colonial empires and history has shown that to be true.

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The question is when though. The British empire only got its comeuppance a third of a millennia into its imperialistic practices. We have a rules based world order now, which can help, but with America rocking in the fetal position in the corner and China continuing to ascend (and China-Russia relations growing) the West is going to have to get its house in order if it wants a favorable outcome here.

This is cited from 2012 according to Wikipedia. Archived versions can be accessed in the citations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_al-Qarawiyyin

This article from BBC in 2018 also makes the same mention:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180318-the-worlds-oldest-centre-of-learning

Interesting that googling would take precedence over UNESCO or Guinness in a science community of all places. Guinness particularly is known to have rigorous quality standards.

I’m going to trust actual organizations with institutional standards over a Google search. That’s just me though. Other readers can draw their own conclusions.

1. al-Qarawiyyin was started as a mosque-madrasa complex.

2. Science and spirituality were intricately entwined during this era. As an example, Dharmic concepts of sunya led to the conceptualization of zero and its use in mathematical operations which is foundational to many subsequent scientific advancements and necessary to our communication through this platform.

3. Part of what sets al-Qarawiyyin apart is that it offered degrees or certificates of scholarly achievement before other institutions.

4. This is why UNESCO’s World Heritage description of the Fez Medina explicitly calls al‑Qarawiyyin “the oldest university in the world,” and Guinness lists it as the “oldest existing, continually operating higher‑learning institution”.