As this is an Alt-History site, I’m curious on how you guys would rate our timeline. Is it a bad one or whew we we’re quite lucky to get to this point?
Absolutely impossible to answer without seeing other timelines play out. I just say it's awfully weird a bunch of random horsemen in a forgotten region of the world basically conquered Eurasia. It's weird one continent was able to colonize and conquer most of the world. It's unbelievable that a bunch of random backwater colonies were able to design a novel government that would eventually become the world's largest economy within one hundred years and the undisputed most powerful nation by far in just over two hundred years.
The terrible things that have happened, like the Holocaust don't really surprise me. I don't think people have even the desire to grasp the potential for evil all of humanity has within them. It just needs to be unlocked. In my opinion I think these things could have happened far more often and I'm surprised it hasn't.
I think our society values life and abhors violence, and I think that wasn't necessarily inevitable. Say a global religion began in Sparta which was basically proto-social darwinism and the moral thing was to kill off the weakest and enslave the rest of the weak for the catapultation of the strong. Doesn't seem very far fetched to me.
I also think we're just starting to understand generational trauma and how it influences entire societies and the zeitgeist. At least I'm starting to understand it a little more, especially after the last few years, and that's strongly affecting my view of history and the decisions that were made, as well as the decisions currently being made.
I don't know what I'd rate our timeline, but I'm not certain things could have better much better, which makes me feel rather fortunate.