Uber Alles

January 23rd 2015

I have a good friend who is one quarter Cherokee, whose name is Son of Little Horse, and with whom I talk about the dark things, the mind-bending things. He tells me that according to the Indian way of thinking, there are seven directions: north, south, west, east, up, down and inward. It's the "inward" things we talk about. He hasn't read my published book and doesn't think he needs to, because he knows my intent. He knows that ultimately the point of this series lies in the shadowlands. Every time I see him he says, "And how is the third book coming along?" He knows fine well I haven't even begun the third book, but he is trying to urge me to it.
I have been to the place in Scotland, way up north and east in the hinterland, a final stronghold of the ancient Picts, where I want to set the book, but the topic scares me. I don't know if it's not too big for me to tackle. You see, because it's asking the explosive question: How would our world look today if Christianity had not flown on the wings of Roman expansion and spread throughout Europe, but settled back into the Middle East as a cultish off-shoot of Judaism, as is how it began. The problem is, I can't think of any area of our life that would not be different. And so I am shying away from thinking about it at all.

I think it would all be very different, because once patriarchy takes over, it changes how we live, how we worship, how we go about meeting our fellow man, woman and animal. It beats its chest and says me uber alles! The ancient Japanese sage described Christianity thus: "Man against God, man against man; Man against nature, God against nature; God against man - funny religion."
I don't want to be idealistic and say that if matriarchies had been the norm, than all would be rosy. But I do want to say that it would be a hell of lot rosier! If you take male territorialism out of the equation, then how many wars would there have been? If you take male territorialism out of the equation, would we be on the brink of destroying our planet? If you take male territorialism out of the equation, then the native people of the Americas would be a much happier less ravaged people (which is why my Cherokee friend is pushing me here!)

So, if you shift the paradigm, how would things look? That is the enormous, maybe unanswerable, question for my third book in the Veil of Time series: if a parallel universe exists in which humanity had not gone the male supremacy route, the Roman-driven Priest-laden road, what would it look like? Think about it. (And if you come up with any really good answers, let me know.)